LOS ANGELES, 20 June 2003 — World heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis has one year and two fights to secure his legacy among the greatest names in boxing history, his trainer Emmanuel Steward said on Wednesday.

Briton Lewis defends his WBC and IBO titles against Ukrainian Vitali Klitschko at Los Angeles’s Staples Center on Saturday, confident it will pave the way for a career swansong against WBA champion Roy Jones Jr later this year.

“Lennox wants one or two more fights to satisfy his hunger,” Steward told reporters.

“Roy Jones is a winner and he has an ego...he is someone we would take very seriously, he would be a threat. But Lennox still has the urge to fight and he is in unbelievable condition for a man of his size.

“This is a ‘farewell tour’...it will all be over in 12 months’ time. Then he will go down in history with the best - with (Muhammad) Ali, right up there.”

Steward, respected as the best trainer in the game, is anxious for Lewis — whose last fight was an eighth-round knockout of Mike Tyson in June 2002 - to make a clean break from boxing when he feels it is the right time.

“After Tyson, I said to Lennox, ‘take your time to decide what next, if you give up your belts at your age, you’ll not get them back’,” said Steward.

At 6-foot-7, Klitschko (32-1) is the tallest opponent Lewis (40-2-1) has ever faced but the 37-year-old Briton, who calls himself the “last of the great heavyweights”, expressed little apprehension.

“I like a challenge and I match up well against a big guy,” Lewis told a news conference at the Staples Center.

“(Klitschko) says he has seen weaknesses in me but I can tell him I’ve seen a whole heap of weaknesses in him. He has never seen a boxer like me. I’m focused and ready.” Lewis-Klitschko was hastily arranged after Lewis’s original opponent, Canada’s Kirk Johnson, withdrew with a chest injury.

It gives Klitschko, a resident of Los Angeles and Lewis’ mandatory challenger in the WBC division, the world title shot he has craved, while the Briton gets the chance to accelerate his carefully-defined career plan.

The only two hiccups to befall Lewis have come in shock defeats to Oliver McCall in 1994 and Hasim Rahman in 2001, when he was accused of complacency. Lewis believes tomorrow’s fight will be settled in his favor by the fifth round, an outcome that would help smooth negotiations for an eagerly-anticipated Lewis-Jones fight — with November this year a possible date.