(From boxing-monthly.co.uk)
A world champion no longer, McCrory was still desperately in debt. He had bought a pub and that too was now swimming deep in the red. But he knew the name-value of ex-world champions to the promoters of up and coming prospects. He smiled as he began: “I thought: ‘Right who’s on the way up?’ And the only guy I could see was Lennox Lewis! But I knew how to get the fight.”
With a hint of embarrassment, McCrory sniggered. “I went down to a Boxing Writers’ dinner and got a bit bevvied [drunk], and sat on the table next to Lewis and just started popping at him and Frank Maloney. I started saying: ‘I’d beat ya, ya Canadian, ya can’t fight - you’re no good.’ I really, really wound him up! I gave him all sorts of abuse.” Whatever else it took to break Lewis’s legendary cool, McCrory would not say, but, judging by the fact it riled Lewis, it must have been industrial-strength stuff.
McCrory continued to harass until poor Lennox could take no more. In front of the press, the two did a WWF-style pull-apart which, as planned, made headlines. “I knew what I was up to,” said McCrory. “They had all the press there and we were standing up shouting at each other. Within a week I was named No. l contender for Lewis’s European title and I’d only had one fight at heavyweight in ages!
“That was the only time I ever had a pop at an opponent and fortunately Lennox, a class guy, is alright about it now. But I had to clear that debt and that’s why when they first offered me the fight I asked for more money. Eventually they paid me enough to wipe out the debts.” “I knew I couldn’t beat him. I knew he was too big. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through with - getting the crap kicked outta me. The strength he had to push you around the ring was incredible and when he hits you it feels like someone whacking you over the head with a bag of wet cement.
“If I’d have fought that Lennox Lewis two years before, I’d have given him a
hell of a fight. But it wasn’t that Glenn McCrory; it was one that just didn’t
wanna be there.”