Rahman, Lewis Just Can’t Wait

It wasn’t exactly the Rumble in the Jungle, or the Thrilla in Manila. But Thursday’s Dispute at Disney, which culminated with heavyweights Hasim Rahman and Lennox Lewis wrestling on top of a table, left everybody involved smiling.

And why not?

Nobody got hurt when the two clashed in front of TV cameras at the ESPN Zone in Disneyland and everybody probably got a little richer.

Rahman’s defense of the heavyweight titles he won from Lewis in April in South Africa, scheduled for Nov. 17 at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center, figures to be a tough sell. Lewis has never been a big draw and Rahman, despite his momentous upset victory, is still relatively unknown.

So Thursday’s unscheduled event was worth millions in free publicity.

Perhaps it was inevitable. These two had been together for 48 hours on a publicity tour that stretched from Baltimore to New York to L.A., and on to Las Vegas today.

The bitterness began early Thursday on Jim Rome’s radio show when Rahman said Lewis was “acting gay” when he took Rahman to court to force a rematch.

When Rahman repeated the charge on ESPN’s “Up Close” show, filmed in front of a lunchtime audience, Lewis responded by saying, if Rahman wanted proof of Lewis’ masculinity, he should “bring your sister by.”

Rahman stood up and told Lewis, “Do not say nothing about my family.”

Lewis also stood and got up close in Rahman’s face.

Words turned to stares, stares turned to chest bumps and chest bumps turned to shoves.

With observers trying to pull the behemoths apart--not easy considering Lewis is 6 feet 5 and 253 pounds, Rahman 6-2 and 237--they rolled onto the interview table, sending papers and microphones and host Gary Miller scrambling.

Lewis managed to rip a necklace off Rahman before they were separated. When it appeared peace had been restored, Lewis went after Rahman a second time, but failed to get past a crowd of peacemakers.

Was it staged? When it was over, the worst injury was a small cut on Rahman’s left hand and no one had thrown a punch.