Let me get this straight: Hasim Rahman and John Ruiz are world heavyweight champions.

	Hasim Rahman's (left) first title defense won't be an easy one.

Next thing you know someone will try to tell me the Minnesota Twins are talented enough to win the World Series.

Puh-leez.

Rahman, a pedestrian fighter to be sure, pulled off one of the most shocking upsets in boxing history Saturday night in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he clobbered IBF and WBC champ Lennox Lewis with a fifth-round knockout.

When The Rock slugged the smug Lewis with a sledgehammer right hand, boxing's premier division hit rock bottom.

Hear that whoopee-cushion sound? That's Lewis' over-inflated balloon getting pricked.

And without the hint of an unbeatable presence, this now is the worst period in heavyweight history. Not even the Lost Era compares with this wasted landscape.

From 1979-86 the pantheon of heavyweight champions was defiled by names such as John Tate, Mike Weaver, Michael Dokes, Gerrie Coetzee, Greg Page, Tony Tubbs, Tim Witherspoon, Bonecrusher Smith, Pinklon Thomas and Trevor Berbick.

During that desolate period, however, Larry Holmes also reigned. Holmes, possibly the most underrated heavyweight of all-time, relinquished his WBC belt in 1983 to accept the newly formed IBF's. The WBC's vacancy and the shaky WBA opened the door to the rabble until Mike Tyson cleaned it up in 1987.

There is no figure today like Holmes. Not a single contemporary heavyweight has the right to rank on a pound-for-pound top 10 list. And when you stop to consider most fans are more familiar with Butterbean than our current champions -- refer back to the first sentence of this column if you've forgotten their names already -- maybe we should hold a requiem for all heavyweights.

The heavyweight blight is so grave the IBF has been unable to find enough big men to rank. In the organization's March ratings, the top two contenders' spots were left vacant. The WBA's No. 1 challenger slot also was vacant.

Among the luminaries who did get ranked were -- in no certain order, which is how the ratings folks apparently like it -- Kirk Johnson, Larry Donald, David Tua, Fres Oquendo, Mount Whitaker, Henry Akinwande, Vaughn Bean, Danell Nicholson, Michael Moorer, David Izon and the Flying Klitschko Brothers (Wladimir and Vitaly).

There are only three marquee heavyweights ranked, and all of them have serious flaws: Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Lewis.

Tyson, his stature still slipping by the day, likely will be the first to get another title shot. Rahman and Lewis had a rematch clause in their contract, but the WBC allows any new champion to take an interim fight. Rahman already has stated his desire to fight Tyson, and Iron Mike is equally as interested. Tyson would quickly cancel his scheduled June bout with David Izon for anther view from the mountain top.

Holyfield, who was virtually handed the WBA's title when a court stripped Lewis of it, is considered among the heavyweight elite despite the fact he is embarrassingly bad. Holyfield, who fought poorly against Ruiz in their first fight and looked even worse in their rematch, is scheduled to fight the WBA champ again Aug. 4 in China.

		The heavyweight blight is so grave the IBF has been unable to find enough big men to rank. In the organization's March ratings, the top two contenders' spots were left vacant. The WBA's No. 1 challenger slot also was vacant.

Tua once knocked out Ruiz in 19 seconds. But, then again, Oleg Maskaev once knocked Rahman clear out of the ring.

Those are our champions.

Up until Saturday Lewis looked poised to rest in the heavyweight throne for some time.

In the days leading up to his Waterloo, Lewis publicly refuted the recurring rumor he is gay. No human being -- public figure or not -- ever should have to defend his sexuality. But people certainly have a right to question Lewis' manhood in light of his smug approach to defending his status as the sporting world's alpha male.

Lewis, a 20-to-1 favorite, weighed a career-high 253 pounds and already was sucking South Africa's thin air before the second round ended. It was a plausible scenario many writers around the world warned when they discovered how inattentive Lewis was to his training.

	GRAHAM'S TOP 15
	Pound-for-pound 1. Felix Trinidad 2. Shane Mosley 3. Roy Jones 4. Floyd Mayweather 5. Marco Antonio Barrera 6. Oscar De La Hoya 7. Fernando Vargas 8. Kostya Tszyu 9. Erik Morales 10. Bernard Hopkins 11. Lennox Lewis 12. Zab Judah 13. Paulie Ayala 14. Naseem Hamed 15. William Joppy

He arrived in South Africa less than two weeks before the fight. That made it difficult to properly adjust to the 5,748-foot altitude and the 10-hour time differential from Las Vegas, where his training included shooting fight scenes with Wladimir Klitschko for a remake of the Frank Sinatra film "Ocean's Eleven."

Lewis continued to go through the motions against Rahman. As a result Rahman's hand was raised, and the heavyweight division was razed.

The most disappointing aspect of Lewis' defeat was his potential to evolve into one of boxing's all-time greats. Many boxing experts felt with a few more defenses against big-name opposition, particularly Tyson, Lewis could legitimately be mentioned in the same sentence as Ali, Frazier and Holmes.

Lewis had us fooled. There was too much hubris and not enough humility. He didn't respect his mantle.

Boxing allows everyone one chance to come back from a humiliating knockout, but not two. We had all but forgotten Oliver McCall's upset second-round stoppage of Lewis in 1994. We wrote it off as an aberration, and Lewis confirmed the fluky nature of his only previous loss by taking care of business from that point forward, including literally reducing McCall to tears in a rematch.

But in preparing for Rahman, Lewis arrogantly stopped caring.

"Being poleaxed again by a man who surely could not have lived with a Larry Holmes, Riddick Bowe or a prime Evander Holyfield," wrote The (London) Guardian's John Rawling, "means Lewis can be regarded only as a decent technician with a questionable chin who prospered in a mediocre era."

Mediocre?

We would only be so lucky.

ESPN.com boxing writer Tim Graham covers boxing for The Buffalo News and The Ring Magazine, and formerly wrote for the Las Vegas Sun.