All right class, what do Jerry Cooney, Tommy Morrison, Jerry Quarry, Ernie Shavers, John Tate, Andrew Golota and Michael Grant have in common?

Give up? They failed to win the big one.

They are boxing’s orphans, successes who come into focus as failures. Old ladies spit on them. Kids give them the raspberry. The press ignores them. They are mentioned in the same breath with leprosy, umpires and motorcycle cops. Don King.

Lots of fighters have failed to live up to promise but few have failed as miserably as Michael Grant. If burglary is against the law, and swindlers and pickpockets go to jail, then why doesn’t someone arrest this man ? Lord knows there were enough witnesses for a prosecutor to have an open and shut case. "Your Honor, the state will prove this man pinched $4 million under false pretences and snuck off like a thief in the night." F. Lee Bailey couldn’t save this one.

It was like a Joe Louis fight -- over while you were looking for your seat. As one-side as a lynching. This is one fight that lived up to it’s hype. It was hyped as "Two Big." It went two big rounds. To be precise, seven seconds short of two rounds.

The only thing more embarrassing than the fight was the Boyz II’s sorry remediation of our national anthem. This group would have lasted 30 seconds on the old Gong Show. It was un-American. In the McCarthy era they would have been blacklisted. It goes to show that nothing in America is scared anymore. There goes patriotism, God and country, the Fourth of July -- the whole American concept. Ringling Brothers should sign up this act and put them on a train. Kate Smith turns over in her grave.

Before the fight Michael Grant said, "All the non-believers will see the light." Call an electrician. The lights went out in Madison Square Garden. Lewis knocked him down three times in the first round. Groping around on the canvas, he looked like a guy rolling carpet. I’m surprised this fight was held in a state that has literally banned capital punishment. It was a slaughter. If you liked this fight you sat through "The Texas Chain Massacre" twice. I hid my eyes. My beer buddies told me Lewis finished him off in the second round with a terrific uppercut. 17,349 fans at Madison Square Garden were victims of the biggest heist since the Boston Bank robbery.

It was disheartening. It was like two honeymooners booking passage on the Titanic. Asking General Custer if you can ride along. This fight should be mentioned in the same breath as Stephen King’s Scariest Scenes Ever Captured on Film.

No one is saying Grant didn’t try his best, but his best wasn’t good enough. And don’t listen to these guys who say his aggressiveness was his downfall. A general never looks good in retreat. He wanted to be General Grant, not a general failure. But his chin is made of China. Nothing to be ashamed of, since some of the roughest scrappers in the business have glass chins. Tommy Morrison and Ernie Shavers comes to mind.

Brits snickered behind their hands as Lewis withstood Grant’s barrage and caught him with a right uppercut to the body followed by a right to the head that floored him with 1:23 left in the round. Grant bravely got up at 1:17, but he was staggering around like a wrestler who had just been clobbered by a chair. It was all over.

Cancel the guest shot on Oprah. Forget the championship belt and all the endorsements that go with it. A rematch? Grant would rather see the rent bill coming than face Lewis again. Nothing to be ashamed of. Ernie Banks never played in a World Series. Laffit Pincay never won a Kentucky Derby. You go on with life, like a guy who had lost a sale and was getting passed over for a promotion. Guys like Michael Grant don’t cry. Jimmy Swaggarts cry.

"He showed a lot of heart by getting up after the knockdown," said Lewis. "I was surprised his corner sent him out for the second round. I didn’t know how much he was hurt. But I realized if I kept on hitting him, he wouldn’t be able to take too many of these kind of shots."

Lewis went after him with the ferocity of a bull terrier. The firing at Furstenfenfeldbruck could scarcely have been more disastrous. Jesse James never pulled the trigger so much. Grant folded like a cheap suitcase. He wasn’t able to get the genie out of the bottle like he did in the Golota fight. But then Golota isn’t Lewis. Golota lacks the courage of say, Jack Broughton.

Let me tell you about Broughton. In 1950, badly beaten and with both eyes closed, he protested loudly when his fight against Jack Slack was stopped: "I'm blind," he yelled, "but I’m not beat!" He belonged at the Alamo, not in the ring.

The whole world knows Golota, Bonecrusher Smith and Roberto Duran quit when the going got tough. Waved the white flag. "Don't shoot -- I’m unarmed!" Jack Broughton would have laughed.

Referee Arthur Mercante, Jr. counted Grant out with seven seconds left to go. Lewis, now 36-1-1 with 28 knockouts retained the WBC and IBF belts by dispatching Grant with the ruthless efficiency of a contract killer. "I was shocked and very surprised when he came at me," the champ told Larry Merchant. "Most of the time I could see it when he was winding up. I just held my position so I could get a good shot."

Sergeant York did that very same thing during World War I. Lee Trevino won two U.S. Opens, PGAs and British Opens that way. They stood their positions until they got good shots.

The average American fan would rather have a case of diphtheria than to see the heavyweight championship leave its shores. Big George Foreman tried to appease his television audience by saying since Lewis fought most of his fights in the U.S. we consider him an American. He doesn’t talk like any American I know. He sounds more like the Duke of Cumberland with a mouthful of muffins. The boxing element of his country take to him like Carrie Nation took to bars. To them he’s a reincarnation of James Figg. Figg, you will remember, became the first British heavyweight champion in 1719. Lennox is another on a long roll call of British prize ring kings, no matter what Big George says.

With a combined weight of 497 pounds, if it wasn’t the most exciting matchup in heavyweight history, it was the heaviest. The previous record was of 488 pounds set by Paulinto Uzcudun and Promo Carnera in their title go in 1933. Not much when you consider wrestling great Andre the Giant stood 7 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 500 pounds.

Maybe Grant’s size at 6-7, 250 pounds, reaffirms the old adage: The bigger they come the harder they fall.

"I was just too anxious," Grant tells you. "People were looking for me to bring this home and I didn’t execute the things my corner was telling me or the things I needed to do. It was a learning experience."

You have to snicker. In the old days "learning experience" happened before you were granted a title fight - not after.

They "groomed" Joe Louis for four years before allowing him a title shot against Jimmy Braddock. Along the way, he had 40 fights against top opposition like Max Baer, Paolino Uzcudun and Max Schmeling. Jimmy Braddock fought 81 fights over a period of eight years before he dethroned Max Baer in 1935. The point is, you don’t look for "experience" in a title fight. Did F. Lee Bailey join the Dream Team because he needed the experience? Did Errol Flynn say to Jerry Giesler, "Why don’t you defend me in this rape case, you could probably use the experience." No, they obtained the experience before they took on the big one. You don’t drive the Indy 500 on a learner’s permit.

From James Figg to Lennox Lewis is a long stretch 281 years -- and in that period many great heavyweight came to the fore. There were white men, black men, big men, small men, men of science and rough-and-tumble men. Each was a heavyweight champion who had gained the top rung of the pugilistic ladder. Lennox Lewis has earned that position. No matter what Don King says.

A much better fight probably would have been Grant against Vladimir Klitscho, who looked good while winning a second-round TKO over David Bostice. Klitscho (33-1-30 KOs) slammed Bostice (21-2-1, 12 KOs) to the canvas with a sledgehammer right. When he got up, Bostice was sent kicking again. But fighters have to be judged by their opposition, not numbers, and Klitscho hasn’t been tested yet.

The INF featherweight championship fight between champ Paul Ingle (23-1,15 KOs) and Junior Jones (47-5, 27KOs) was the best fight of the night. Ingle, fighting out of Scarborough, was lucky to escape with his title back to England. The referee and two of the judges should be reported to the Better Business Bureau. The Racket Squad. The Bunce Detail. In the Old West they would have been strung up.

Look, if your going to pull a stickup, you don’t do it front of ten million witnesses. Don King, might, but your average heist man wouldn’t think of it. There is no record of Dillinger double parking in front of a police station while robbing the First National. This was clearly an attempt rob the Britisher of his title just as surely as big oaks grow from little acorns.

The attempted heist was hardly out of Unsolved Mysteries. I mean, if your going to cheat on your wife you don’t come home with lipstick on your shirt. Or tattoo your mistress’s phone number on your forehead. Don’t bring home flowers or candy -- it’s a dead giveaway.

Did I lose you? Okay, look, unless you’re going through life with blinkers on, it should have been obvious to you that the American officials tried to rob the Britisher of his title. Give me a break. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. A monkey in the second row took one look at the score cards and yelled, "To hell with the Darwin theory -- they’re not going to make a man out of me!"

You saw it -- Ingel used Junior Jones for a punching bag for 10 rounds. Ingle was far in front when he got knocked down in the ninth round, which gave two of the three judges the excuse they were looking for to shuffle the deck.

The biggest joke was referee Steve Smoger stepping in to give Jones a standing eight count when he was on the verge of a certain knockout defeat. I visualized a thief emptying out my silver drawer and tiptoeing to the fire escape. It was a bigger disgrace than the JoAnn Bennet investigation. Almost.

To Jones’ credit, he tried desperately to hang on, but Ingle battered Jones so helpless that referee Smoger had to stop it or be arrested for being an accomplice to murder.

Unless you like scaring kids in a graveyard at midnight, you had to feel sorry for outclassed Eric Jakubowski (20-7, 4 KOs) who was felled by tough Arturo Gatti ( 32-4, 26KOs) 40 seconds into the second round. Referee Wayne Kelly had to stop it. Jakubowski came away looking like he had been locked in a closet with a Doberman Pinscher. Bela Lugosi would have loved it.

Oscar De La Hoya has been paid the ultimate accolade. Gatti has chosen him as the man he would like to fight next. You hope Gatti has a day job. Life insurance. Oh well, It gives me and Rick Renald something to write about. ***

A Bit About Bill Kelly