LOS ANGELES, June 21: While Mike Tyson’s life has been on full display, played out in tabloids and courtrooms, his last conqueror, world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, remains very much boxing’s international man of mystery.

Once or twice a year, the Canadian Olympic gold medal-winning Briton with Jamaican roots emerges from boxing’s shadows, knocks someone out, collects millions of dollars and disappears back into happy anonymity.

Over a year since his last fight, Lewis has resurfaced in Los Angeles where he will face Ukraine’s Vitali Klitschko in a world title bout on Saturday and then slip out of Tinseltown with his pay cheque, mother Violet and entourage in tow.

“He doesn’t crave attention,” said Emanuel Steward, Lewis’s long-time trainer, confidant and friend.

“You could tell him he could get $20 million to go downstairs and do some interviews and Lennox would take off and play chess with his buddies and he’d do it.

“He’s very comfortable with himself now as a champion, he’s been a champion a long time but has never felt comfortable, but he’s very comfortable with his position now.

“Publicity doesn’t mean anything to him.”

It is partly for that reason that the world championship fight has generated little buzz in a city that lives on hype and has not hosted a world heavyweight title bout in almost half a century.

Despite being the dominant heavyweight of his era, and now generally regarded to be among the all-time greats, the American public has never warmed to Lewis. They view him as aloof, arrogant and, worse yet, boring.

Outside the ring, Lewis sightings have become increasingly rare.

Although based in Britain, Lewis spends large chunks of the year in or near Kitchener, a small city encroaching on Toronto where he grew up and learned to box, or at his mother’s home.

At other times he can be found on the Jamaican beaches or making occasional business trips to Britain.

The one place Lewis is seldom seen between fights, however, is in the headlines. His private life remains just that — private.

“Evander (Holyfield) with his babies, Tyson with his problems, Lennox is totally different, he’s an unusual guy,” said Steward.

“Publicity doesn’t mean anything to him, in Canada, in America, in England, in Jamaica...nowhere. When he goes to visit his relatives in Jamaica no one even knows he’s there.

“He loves to party but never gets in trouble. He just enjoys himself quietly. He’s done it all and he’s enjoying life now.”

Portrayed as a tea-toddling, chess-playing mama’s boy with a devastating knockout punch, Lewis’s choirboy persona appears at odds with the rough and tumble normally associated with boxing.

He is often reluctant to get involved in any serious trash talking but his verbal jabs can be as stinging as those he uses to keep opponents at bay in the ring.

You will not find the usual assortment of hangers-on among Lewis’s entourage led by his mother, who attends all her son’s fights, many of his news conferences and can be generally found cooking for him at training camp.—Reuters