Lewis backed to fight again

Lennox Lewis will box on at the age of 38, according to his American trainer Emanuel Steward.

Since securing a controversial win against world heavyweight championship challenger Vitali Klitschko last June, Lewis has kept the boxing world waiting while he ponders a future still inside the ring or in retirement.

But Steward, the tactical genius behind London-born Lewis's rise to become Britain's first undisputed heavyweight title-holder in over a century, has admitted: "My gut feeling is he's going to come back."

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Steward recalled meeting Lewis at the recent marriage of Courtney Shand, the boxer's long-time friend and conditioning coach.

He said: "Lennox looked like he was in shape when before, when I had seen him in New York, he looked a little bloated.

"I told him, 'You look like you're in shape and you've been working out.' He told me he had been running and getting himself in shape."

Steward harbours no doubts that Lewis, even at his advanced age, would be in danger of losing his WBC title to Klitschko in a rematch already tentatively scheduled for April.

When the two men met in Los Angeles last summer Lewis was losing on all three judges' cards when his Ukrainian opponent was forced to quit at the end of the sixth round with ugly cuts around his left eye.

Steward said: "In that sixth round Lennox was getting to him with that left jab and busting him up.

"That's where those cuts came from. It won't take Lennox more than four rounds to finish him off this time."

Britain's Joe Calzaghe will move up to light-heavyweight this year and seek career-defining fights against WBO world title-holder Julio Gonzalez or Antonio Tarver.

But first he must successfully defend his WBO super-middleweight belt against Mger Mkrtchian, the mandatory challenger from Armenia, in Cardiff on 21 February.