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Chaco War

The Chaco War (Guerra del Chaco, Cháko Ñorairõ ) was fought from 1932 to 1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay, over the control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco region (known in Spanish as Chaco Boreal) of South America, which was thought to be rich in oil. The war is also referred to as La Guerra de la Sed (Spanish for "The War of Thirst") in literary circles since it was fought in the semi-arid Chaco. The bloodiest interstate military conflict fought in South America in the 20th century, it was fought between two of its poorest countries, both of which had lost territory to neighbours in 19th-century wars.

During the war, both landlocked countries faced difficulties shipping arms and supplies through neighbouring countries. Bolivia, in particular, faced external trade problems and poor internal communications. Although Bolivia had lucrative mining income and a larger and better-equipped army, a series of factors turned the tide against it, and Paraguay controlled most of the disputed zone when the war had ended.

The peace treaties ultimately granted two-thirds of the disputed territories to Paraguay.

Origins
The origins of the war are commonly attributed to a long-standing territorial dispute and to the discovery of oil deposits on the eastern Andes range; in 1929, the Treaty of Lima ended the hopes of the Bolivian government of recovering a land corridor to the Pacific Ocean, which was thought imperative to further development and trade.

Both Bolivia and Paraguay were landlocked. The 600,000 km2 Chaco was sparsely populated, but control of the Paraguay River running through it would provide access to the Atlantic Ocean. That became especially important to Bolivia, which had lost its Pacific coast to Chile during the 1879 War of the Pacific. Paraguay had lost almost half of its territory to Brazil and Argentina in the Paraguayan War of 1864 to 1870 and was not prepared to surrender its economic viability.

In international arbitration, Bolivia argued that the region had been part of the original Spanish colonial province of Moxos and Chiquitos to which Bolivia was heir. Meanwhile, Paraguay based its case on the occupation of the land. Indeed, both Paraguayan and Argentine planters were already breeding cattle and exploiting quebracho woods in the area, and the small nomadic indigenous population of Guaraní-speaking tribes was related to Paraguay's own Guaraní heritage. As of 1919, Argentine banks owned 400,000 hectares of land in the eastern Chaco, and the Casado family, a powerful part of the Argentine oligarchy, held 141,000. The presence of Mennonite colonies in the Chaco, who settled there in the 1920s under the auspices of the Paraguayan Parliament, was another factor in favour of Paraguay's claim.

The impetus for war was exacerbated by a conflict between oil companies jockeying for exploration and drilling rights, with Royal Dutch Shell backing Paraguay and Standard Oil supporting Bolivia. The discovery of oil in the Andean foothills sparked speculation that the Chaco might prove a rich source of petroleum, and foreign oil companies were involved in the exploration. Standard Oil was already producing oil from wells in the high hills of eastern Bolivia, around Villa Montes. However, it is uncertain if the war would have been caused solely by the interests of the companies, not by aims of Argentina to import oil from the Chaco. In opposition to the "dependency theory" of the war's origins, the British historian Matthew Hughes argued against the thesis that Bolivian and Paraguayan governments were the "puppets" of Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell respectively by writing: "In fact, there is little hard evidence available in the company and government archives to support the theory that oil companies had anything to do with causing the war or helping one side or the other during the war". The historian Bret Gustafson, on the other hand, argues that "the blurred lines between the bank and the oil industry show that [Standard Oil] did indeed finance the Bolivian build-up, even if instigating the war was left to Bolivian generals."

Prelude to war
The first confrontation between the two countries dates back to 1885, when the Bolivian entrepreneur Miguel Araña Suárez founded Puerto Pacheco, a port on the Upper Paraguay River, south of Bahía Negra. He assumed that the new settlement was well inside Bolivian territory, though Bolivia had implicitly recognized Bahía Negra as Paraguayan. The Paraguayan government sent in a naval detachment aboard the gunboat Pirapó, which forcibly evicted the Bolivians from the area in 1888. Two agreements followed, in 1894 and 1907, which neither the Bolivian nor the Paraguayan Parliaments ever approved. Meanwhile, in 1905 Bolivia founded two new outposts in the Chaco, Ballivián and Guachalla, this time along the Pilcomayo River. The Bolivian government ignored the halfhearted Paraguayan official protest.

Bolivian penetration in the region went unopposed until 1927, when the first blood was shed over the Chaco Boreal. On 27 February, a Paraguayan Army foot patrol and its native guides were taken prisoners near the Pilcomayo River and held in the Bolivian outpost of Fortin Sorpresa, where the commander of the Paraguayan platoon, Lieutenant Adolfo Rojas Silva, was shot and killed in suspicious circumstances. Fortín (Spanish for "little fort") was the name used for the small pillbox and trench-like garrisons in the Chaco, although the troops' barracks usually consisted in no more than a few mud huts. The Bolivian government formally regretted the death of Rojas Silva, but Paraguayan public opinion called it "murder." After subsequent talks arranged in Buenos Aires failed to produce any agreement and eventually collapsed in January 1928, the dispute grew violent. On 5 December 1928, a Paraguayan cavalry unit overran Fortin Vanguardia, an advance outpost established by the Bolivian army a few kilometres northwest of Bahía Negra. The Paraguayans captured 21 Bolivian soldiers and burned the scattered huts to the ground.

The Bolivians retaliated with an air strike on Bahía Negra on 15 December, which caused few casualties and little damage. On 14 December, Bolivia seized Fortin Boquerón, which later would be the site of the first major battle of the campaign, and 15 Paraguayans died. A return to the status quo ante was eventually agreed on 12 September 1929 in Washington, DC, under pressure from the Pan American League, but an arms race had already begun, and both countries were on a collision course. The regular border clashes might have led to war in the 1920s if either side had been capable of waging war against one another. As it was, neither Paraguay or Bolivia had an arms industry, and both sides had to import vast quantities of arms from Europe and the United States to arm themselves for the coming conflict. It was the need for both sides to import sufficient arms that held back the outbreak of the war to 1932, when both sides felt capable of resorting to arms to settle the long-running dispute.

Armies

Bolivian infantry forces were armed with the latest in foreign weapons, including DWM Maxim M1904 and M1911 machine guns, Czechoslovak ZB vz. 26 and Vickers-Berthier light machine guns, Mauser-type Czechoslovak Vz. 24 7.65 mm rifles (mosquetones) and Schmeisser MP-28 II 9 mm submachine guns. At the outset, the Paraguayan troops used a motley collection of small arms, including the German Maxim, the British Vickers, the Browning MG38 water-cooled machine guns, and the Danish Madsen light machine gun. The primary service rifle was the M1927 7.65 mm Paraguayan Long Rifle, a Mauser design based on the M1909 Argentine Long Rifle and manufactured by the Oviedo arsenal in Spain. The M1927 rifle, which tended to overheat in rapid fire, proved highly unpopular with the Paraguayan soldiers. Some M1927 rifles experienced catastrophic receiver failures, a fault that was later traced to faulty ammunition. After the commencement of hostilities, Paraguay captured sufficient numbers of Bolivian VZ-24 rifles and MP 28 submachine guns (nicknamed piripipi) to equip all of its front-line infantry forces.

Paraguay had a population only a third as large as that of Bolivia (880,000 vs. 2,150,000). However, Paraguay gained the upper hand because of its innovative style of fighting, centered on rapid marches and flanking encirclements, compared to Bolivia's more conventional strategy. In June 1932, the Paraguayan Army totaled about 4,026 men (355 combat officers, 146 surgeons and non-combatant officers, 200 cadets, 690 NCOs and 2,653 soldiers). Both racially and culturally, the Paraguayan Army was practically homogeneous. Almost all of its soldiers were European-Guaraní mestizos. Bolivia's army, however, were mostly descended from the Altiplano's aboriginals of Quechua or Aymará (90% of the infantry troops), while the lower-ranking officers were of Spanish or other European ancestry, and the army commander-in-chief, Hans Kundt, was German. Although the Bolivian army had more manpower, it never mobilized more than 60,000 men, and no more than two-thirds of its army were ever on the Chaco. Paraguay, on the other hand, mobilized its entire army. A British diplomat reported in 1932 that the average Bolivian had never been anywhere close to the Chaco and "had not the slightest expectation of visiting it in the course of his life." Most Bolivians had little interest in fighting, let alone dying, for the Chaco. Furthermore, the typical Bolivian soldier was a Quechua or Aymara peasant conscript accustomed to life high in the Andes Mountains and did not fare well in the low-lying, hot, and humid land of the Chaco.

Many Paraguayan Army commanders had gained combat experience as volunteers with the French Army in World War I. Its army commander, Colonel (later General and then Marshal) José Félix Estigarribia, soon rose to the top of the combat command. Estigarribia capitalized on the native Guarani knowledge of the forest and ability to live off the land to gain valuable intelligence on conducting his military campaigns. Estigarribia preferred to bypass Bolivian garrisons, and his subordinates, such as Colonel Rafael Franco, proved adept at infiltrating enemy lines often by encircling Bolivian strongholds (Paraguay held over 21,000 prisoners-of-war when the war ended, Bolivia some 2,500). Both sides resorted to entrenched strongpoints and used barbed wire, mortars, machineguns, and mines with interlocking fields of fire.

Paraguay's war effort was total. Buses were commandeered to transport troops, wedding rings were donated to buy weapons, and Paraguay had by 1935 widened conscription to include 17-year-olds and policemen. Perhaps the most important advantage enjoyed by Paraguay was that the Paraguayans had a rail network running to the Chaco with five narrow-gauge railroads totaling some 266 mi running from the ports on the Paraguay River to the Chaco, which allowed the Paraguayan Army to bring men and supplies to the front far more effectively than the Bolivians ever managed. In 1928, the British legation in La Paz reported to London that it took the Bolivian Army two weeks to march their men and supplies to the Chaco and that Bolivia's "inordinately long lines of communication" would help Paraguay if war broke out. Furthermore, the drop in altitude from 12000 ft in the Andes to 500 ft in the Chaco imposed further strain on Bolivia's efforts to supply its soldiers in the Chaco. Bolivia's railroads did not run to the Chaco, and all Bolivian supplies and soldiers had to travel to the front on badly-maintained dirt roads. Hughes wrote that the Bolivian elite was well aware of the logistical problems but that throughout the war, Bolivia's leaders had a "fatalistic" outlook. It took for granted that the fact that the Bolivian Army had been trained by a German military mission whilst the Paraguayan Army had been trained by a French military mission, together with the tough nature of their Quechua and Aymara Indian conscripts and the country's will to win and determination, would give them the edge in the war.

Cavalry forces
Both armies deployed a significant number of cavalry regiments, but they actually served as infantry since it was soon learned that the dry Chaco could not provide enough water and forage for horses. Only a relatively few mounted squadrons carried out reconnaissance missions at the divisional level.

Armor, artillery, and motorized forces
At the insistence of the Minister of War General Hans Kundt, Bolivia purchased a number of light tanks and tankettes for support of infantry forces. German instructors provided training to the mostly-Bolivian crews, who received eight weeks' training. The Vickers light tanks bought by Bolivia were the Vickers Type A and Type B, commissioned into the Bolivian army in December 1932 and were originally painted in camouflage patterns.

Hampered by the geography and difficult terrain of the Gran Chaco, combined with scarce water sources and inadequate logistical preparations, the Bolivian superiority in vehicles (water-cooled), tanks, and towed artillery did not prove decisive in the end. Thousands of truck and vehicle engines succumbed to the thick Chaco dust, which also jammed the heavy water-cooled machine guns employed by both sides. Having relatively few artillery pieces of its own, Paraguay purchased a quantity of Stokes-Brandt Model 1931 mortars. Highly portable (each of three parts could be carried by a soldier) and accurate, with a range of 3,000 yards, the angu'as ("corn-mashers" or "mortar" in Guarani) caused many casualties among Bolivian troops. In the course of the conflict, Paraguayan factories developed their own type of pyrotechnic-ignater hand grenade, the pineapple shaped carumbe'i (Guaraní for "little turtle")  and produced trailers, mortar tubes, artillery grenades, and aerial bombs. The Paraguayan war effort was centralized and led by the state-owned national dockyards, managed by José Bozzano. The Paraguayan Army received its first consignment of carumbe'i grenades in January 1933.

Logistics, communications, and intelligence
The Paraguayans took advantage of their ability to communicate over the radio in Guaraní, a language not spoken by the average Bolivian soldier. Paraguay had little trouble in transporting its army in large barges and gunboats on the Paraguay River to Puerto Casado and from there directly to the front lines by railway, but most Bolivian troops had to come from the western highlands, some 800 km away and with little or no logistic support. In fact, it took a Bolivian soldier 14 days to cross the distance, as opposed to a Paraguayan soldier's four. The heavy equipment used by the Bolivian Army made things even worse. The poor water supply and the dry climate of the region played a key role during the conflict. There were thousands of non-combat casualties from dehydration, mostly by the Bolivian troops.

Air and naval assets
The Chaco War is also important historically as the first instance of large-scale aerial warfare to take place in the Americas. Both sides used obsolete single-engined biplane fighter-bombers. The Paraguayans deployed 14 Potez 25s, and the Bolivians made extensive use of at least 20 CW-14 Ospreys. Despite an international arms embargo imposed by the League of Nations, Bolivia in particular went to great lengths in trying to import a small number of Curtiss T-32 Condor II twin-engined bombers, disguised as civil transport planes, but they were stopped in Peru before they could be delivered.

The valuable aerial reconnaissance produced by Bolivia's superior air force in spotting approaching Paraguayan encirclements of Bolivian forces was largely ignored by Kundt and other Bolivian Army generals, who tended to dismiss such reports as exaggerations by overzealous airmen.

Four Junkers Ju 52s were purchased by Bolivia, which used the German transports mainly for medical evacuation and air supply. The Ju 52s alone delivered more than 4,400 tons of cargo to the front.

The Paraguayan Navy played a key role in the conflict by carrying thousands of troops and tons of supplies to the front lines via the Paraguay River, as well as by providing anti-aircraft support to transport ships and port facilities.

The Humaitá and Paraguay, two Italian-built gunboats, ferried troops to Puerto Casado. On 22 December 1932, three Bolivian Vickers Vespas attacked the Paraguayan riverine outpost of Bahía Negra, on the Paraguay River, and killed an army colonel, but one of the aircraft was shot down by the gunboat Tacuary. Both surviving Vespas met another gunboat, the Humaitá, while they were flying downriver. Paraguayan sources claim that one of them was damaged. Conversely, the Bolivian army reported that the Humaitá limped back to Asunción seriously damaged. The Paraguayan Navy admitted that Humaitá was struck by machine gun fire from the aircraft but claimed that its armor shield averted damage.

Shortly before 29 March 1933, a Bolivian Osprey was shot down over the Paraguay River, and on 27 April, a strike force of six Ospreys launched a successful mission from the base at Muñoz against the logistic riverine base and town of Puerto Casado, but the strong diplomatic reaction of Argentina prevented any further strategic attacks on targets along the Paraguay River. On 26 November 1934, the Brazilian steamer Paraguay was strafed and mistakenly bombed by Bolivian aircraft while it was sailing the Paraguay River near Puerto Mihanovich. The Brazilian government sent 11 naval planes to the area, and its navy began to convoy shipping on the river.

The Paraguayan navy air service was also very active in the conflict by harassing Bolivian troops deployed along the northern front with flying boats. The aircraft were moored at Bahía Negra Naval Air Base, and consisted of two Macchi M.18s. The seaplanes carried out the first night air attack in South America when they raided the Bolivian outposts of Vitriones and San Juan, on 22 December 1934. The Paraguayan Navy has celebrated ever since the annual "Day of the Naval Air Service" on the anniversary of the action.

The Bolivian Army deployed at least 10 locally-built patrol boats and transport vessels during the conflict, mostly to ship military supplies to the northern Chaco through the Mamoré-Madeira system. The transport ships Presidente Saavedra and Presidente Siles steamed on the Paraguay River from 1927 to the beginning of the war, when both units were sold to private companies. The 50-ton armed launch Tahuamanu, based in the Mamoré-Madeira fluvial system, was briefly transferred to Laguna Cáceres to ferry troops downriver from Puerto Suárez and challenged for eight months the Paraguayan naval presence in Bahía Negra. She was withdrawn to the Itenez River, in northern Bolivia, after Bolivian aerial reconnaissance revealed the actual strength of the Paraguayan Navy in the area.

Pitiantuta Lake incident

On 15 June 1932, a Bolivian detachment captured and burned to the ground the Fortín Carlos Antonio López at Pitiantutá Lake. The captain in charge had disobeyed explicit orders by Bolivian President Daniel Salamanca to avoid provocations in the Chaco region. One month later, on 16 July, a Paraguayan detachment drove the Bolivian troops from the area. The lake had been discovered by Paraguayan explorers in March 1931, but the Bolivian High Command was unaware of that when one of its aircraft spotted the lake in April 1932.

After the initial incident, Salamanca changed his status quo policy over the disputed area and ordered the outposts of Corrales, Toledo, and Fortín Boquerón to be captured. All three were soon taken, and in response, Paraguay called for a Bolivian withdrawal. Salamanca instead demanded that they were included in a "zone of dispute." On a memorandum directed to Salamanca on 30 August, Bolivian General Filiberto Osorio expressed his concerns over the lack of a plan of operations and attached one that focused on an offensive from the north. Quintanilla also asked for permission to capture two additional Paraguayan garrisons: Nanawa and Rojas Silva. In August, Bolivia slowly reinforced its 4,000-men First Bolivian Army, which was already in the conflict's zone, with 6,000 men.

The breaking of the fragile status quo in the disputed areas of the Chaco by Bolivia convinced Paraguay that a diplomatic solution on agreeable terms was impossible. Paraguay gave its general staff orders to recapture the three forts. In August, Paraguay mobilized over 10,000 troops and sent them into the Chaco region. Paraguayan Lieutenant Colonel José Félix Estigarribia prepared for a large offensive before the Bolivians had mobilized their whole army.

First Paraguayan offensive
Fortín Boquerón was the first target of the Paraguayan offensive. The Boquerón compound was guarded by 619 Bolivian troops and resisted a 22-day siege by a 5,000-man Paraguayan force. An additional 2,500 Bolivians attempted to relieve the siege from the southwest but were beaten back by 2,200 Paraguayans, who defended the accesses to the siege area. A few Bolivian units managed to enter Fortín Boquerón with supplies, and the Bolivian Air Force dropped food and ammunition to the besieged soldiers. Having begun on 9 September, the siege ended when Fortín Boquerón finally fell on 29 September 1932.

After the fall of Fortín Boquerón, the Paraguayans continued their offensive and executed a pincer movement, which forced some of the Bolivians to surrender. The Paraguayans had expected to lay a new siege on Fortín Arce, the most advanced Bolivian outpost in the Chaco, but when they got there, they found it in ruins. The 4,000 Bolivians who were defending Arce had retreated to the southeast to Fortín Alihuatá and Saveedra.

Bolivian offensive
In December 1932, Bolivia's war mobilization had concluded. In terms of weaponry and manpower, its army was ready to overpower the Paraguayans. General Hans Kundt, a former German officer who had fought on the Eastern Front of World War I, was called by Salamanca to lead the Bolivian counteroffensive. Kundt had served intermittently as military advisor to Bolivia since the beginning of the century and had established good relationships with officers of the Bolivian Army and the country's political elites.

The Paraguayan Fortín Nanawa was chosen as the main target of the Bolivian offensive and was to be followed by the command centre at Isla Poí. Their capture would allow Bolivia to reach the Paraguay River and to endanger the Paraguayan city of Concepción. The capture of the fortines of Corrales, Toledo, and Fernández by the Bolivian Second Corps were also part of Kundt's offensive plan.

In January 1933, the Bolivian First Corps began its attack on Fortín Nanawa. The stronghold was considered by the Paraguayans to be the backbone of their defenses. It had zig-zag trenches; kilometres of barbed wire; and many machine-gun nests, some of which were embedded in tree trunks. The Bolivian troops had stormed the nearby Paraguayan outpost of Mariscal López, which isolated Nanawa from the south. On 20 January 1933, Kundt, who personally commanded the Bolivian force, launched six to nine aircraft and 6,000 unhorsed cavalry supported by 12 Vickers machine guns. However, the Bolivians failed to capture the fort but formed a defensive amphitheater in front of it. The Second Corps managed to capture Fortín Corrales and Fortín Platanillos but failed to take Fortín Fernández and Fortín Toledo. After a siege that lasted from 26 February to 11 March 1933, the Second Corps aborted its attack on Fortín Toledo and withdrew to a defensive line, built 15 km from Fortín Corrales.

After the ill-fated attack on Nanawa and the failures at Fernández and Toledo, Kundt ordered an assault on Fortín Alihuatá. The attack on the fortín overwhelmed its few defenders. The capture of Alihuatá allowed the Bolivians to cut the supply route of the Paraguayan First Division. When the Bolivians were informed of the isolation of the First Division, they launched an attack on it. The attack led to the Battle of Campo Jordán, which concluded in the retreat of the Paraguayan First Division to Gondra.

In July 1933, Kundt, still focusing on capturing Nanawa, launched a massive frontal attack on the fortín in what came to be known as the Second Battle of Nanawa. Kundt had prepared for the second attack in detail by using artillery, airplanes, tanks, and flamethrowers to overcome Paraguayan fortifications. The Paraguayans, however, had improved existing fortifications and built new ones since the First Battle of Nanawa. The Bolivian two-pronged attack managed to capture parts of the defensive complex but was soon retaken by Paraguayan counterattacks by reserves. The Bolivians lost more than 2,000 men, who were injured or killed in the Second battle of Nanawa, but Paraguay lost only 559, men who were injured or killed. The failure to capture Nanawa and the heavy loss of life led Salamanca to criticize the Bolivian high command and to order it to spare more men. The defeat seriously damaged Kundt's prestige. In September, his resignation of his position as commander-in-chief was not accepted by the president. Nanawa was a major turning point in the war since the Paraguayan Army regained the strategic initiative, which had belonged to the Bolivians since early 1933.

Second Paraguayan offensive
In September, Paraguay began a new offensive in the form of three separate encirclement movements in the Alihuatá area, which was chosen since its Bolivian forces had been weakened by the transfer of soldiers to attack Fortín Gondra. As a result of the encirclement campaign, the Bolivian regiments Loa and Ballivián, totaling 509 men, surrendered. The Junín regiment suffered the same fate, but the Chacaltaya regiment escaped encirclement because of the intervention of two other Bolivian regiments.

The success of the Paraguayan Army led Paraguayan President Eusebio Ayala to travel to the Chaco to promote José Félix Estigarribia to the rank of general. In that meeting, Ayala approved Estigarribia's new offensive plan. On the other side, the Bolivians gave up their initial plan of reaching the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, and switched to defensive and attrition warfare.

The Paraguayan Army executed a large-scale pincer movement against Fortín Alihuatá and repeated the previous success of those operations; 7000 Bolivian troops had to evacuate Fortín Alihuatá. On 10 December 1933, the Paraguayans finished their encirclement of the 9th and 4th divisions of the Bolivian Army. After attempts had been made to break through Paraguayan lines and 2,600 of their men had been killed, 7,500 Bolivian soldiers surrendered. Only 900 Bolivian troops, led by Major Germán Busch, managed to slip away. The Paraguayans obtained 8,000 rifles, 536 machine guns, 25 mortars, two tanks, and 20 artillery pieces from the captured Bolivian forces. By then, Paraguayan forces had captured so many Bolivian tanks and armored vehicles that Bolivia was forced to purchase Steyr Solothurn 15 mm anti-tank rifles to fend off its own armor. The remaining Bolivian troops withdrew to their headquarters at Muñoz, which was set on fire and evacuated on 18 December. Kundt resigned as chief of staff of the Bolivian Army.

Truce
The massive defeat at Campo de Vía forced the Bolivian troops near Fortín Nanawa to withdraw northwest to form a new defensive line. Paraguayan Colonel Rafael Franco proposed to launch a new attack against Ballivián and Villa Montes but was turned down, as Ayala thought that Paraguay had already won the war. A 20-day ceasefire was agreed upon between the warring parties on 19 December 1933. On 6 January 1934, when the armistice expired, Bolivia had reorganized its eroded army and had assembled a larger force than the one involved in its first offensive.

Third Paraguayan offensive
By early 1934, Estigarribia was planning an offensive against the Bolivian garrison at Puerto Suárez, 145 km upriver from Bahía Negra. The Pantanal marshes and the lack of canoes to navigate through them convinced the Paraguayan commander to abandon the idea and to turn his attention to the main front. After the armistice had ended, the Paraguayan Army continued its advance by capturing the outposts of Platanillos, Loa, Esteros, and Jayucubás. After the Battle of Campo de Vía in December, the Bolivian Army built up a defensive line at Magariños-La China. The line, carefully built, was considered to be one of the finest defensive lines of the war. However, a small Paraguayan attack on 11 February 1934, managed to breach the line to the surprise of the Paraguayan command, which forced the abandonment of the whole line. A Paraguayan offensive towards Cañada Tarija managed to surround and to neutralize 1,000 Bolivian troops on 27 March.

In May 1934, the Paraguayans detected a gap in the Bolivian defenses, which would allow them to isolate the Bolivian stronghold of Ballivián and to force its surrender. The Paraguayans worked all night to open a new route in the forests to make the attack possible. When Bolivian reconnaissance aircraft noticed the new path being opened in the forest, a plan was made to let the Paraguayans enter halfway up the path and then to attack them from the rear. The Bolivian operation resulted in the Battle of Cañada Strongest between 18 and 25 May. The Bolivians managed to capture 67 Paraguayan officials and 1,389 soldiers. After their defeat at Cañada Strongest, the Paraguayans continued their attempts to capture Ballivián. It was considered to be a key stronghold by the Bolivians, mostly for its symbolic position, since it was the most southeastern Bolivian position that remained after the second Paraguayan offensive.

In November 1934, Paraguayan forces once again managed to surround and to neutralize two Bolivian divisions at El Carmen. The disaster forced the Bolivians to abandon Ballivián and to form a new defensive line at Villa Montes. On 27 November 1934, Bolivian generals confronted Salamanca while he was visiting their headquarters in Villa Montes and forced him to resign. They replaced him with Vice President José Luis Tejada. On 9 November 1934, the 12,000-man-strong Bolivian Cavalry Corps managed to capture Yrendagüé and to put the Paraguayan Army on the run. Yrendagüé was one of the few places with fresh water in that part of the Chaco. Although the Bolivian cavalry was marching towards La Faye from Yrendagüé, a Paraguayan force recaptured all of the wells in Yrendague. Therefore, upon their return, the exhausted and thirsty Bolivian troops found themselves without water. The already-weakened force fell apart. Many were taken prisoner, and many of those who had avoided capture died of thirst and exposure after they had wandered aimlessly through the hot, dry forest. The Bolivian Cavalry Corps had been considered one of the best units of the new army that was formed after the armistice.

Espionage and Counterespionage
In February 1934, Emilio Sfeir--a Lebanese-Bolivian merchant residing in Jujuy, Argentina--masterminded the planning and execution of the capture, in Argentine territory, of Juan Valori, the most important Paraguayan spy of the Chaco War.

Last battles
After the collapse of the northern and the northeastern fronts, the Bolivian defenses focused on the south to avoid the fall of their war headquarters and supply base at Villa Montes. The Paraguayans launched an attack towards Ybybobó and isolated some of the Bolivian forces on the Pilcomayo River. The battle began on 28 December 1934 and lasted until early January 1935. It caused 200 Bolivian troops to be killed and 1,200 to surrender, but the Paraguayans lost only a few dozen men. Some fleeing Bolivian soldiers were reported to have jumped into the fast-flowing waters of the Pilcomayo River to avoid capture.

After that defeat, the Bolivian Army prepared for a last stand at Villa Montes. The loss of that base would allow the Paraguayans to reach the proper Andes. Colonel Bernardino Bilbao Rioja and Oscar Moscoso were left in charge of the defenses after other high-ranking officers had declined. On 11 January 1935, the Paraguayans encircled and forced the retreat of two Bolivian regiments. The Paraguayans also managed in January to cut off the road between Villa Montes and Santa Cruz.

The Paraguayan commander-in-chief, Estigarribia, decided to launch a final assault on Villa Montes. On 7 February 1935, around 5,000 Paraguayans attacked the heavily fortified Bolivian lines near Villa Montes with the aim of capturing the oilfields at Nancarainza, but they were beaten back by the Bolivian First Cavalry Division. The Paraguayans lost 350 men and were forced to withdraw north toward Boyuibé. Estigarribia claimed that the defeat was largely because of the mountainous terrain in which his forces were not used to fighting. On 6 March, Estigarribia again focused all his efforts on the Bolivian oilfields, this time at Camiri, 130 km north of Villa Montes. The commander of the Paraguayan 3rd Corps, General Franco, found a gap between the Bolivian 1st and 18th Infantry regiments and ordered his troops to attack through it, but they became stuck in a salient with no hope of further progress. The Bolivian Sixth Cavalry forced the hasty retreat of Franco's troops to avoid being cut off. The Paraguayans lost 84 troops who were taken prisoner, and more than 500 dead were left behind. The Bolivians lost almost 200 men, but unlike their exhausted enemies, they could afford a long battle of attrition. On 15 April, the Paraguayans punched through the Bolivian lines on the Parapetí River and took over the city of Charagua. The Bolivian command launched a counteroffensive, which forced the Paraguayans back. Although the Bolivians' plan fell short of its target of encircling an entire enemy division, they managed to take 475 prisoners on 25 April. On 4 June 1935, a Bolivian regiment was defeated and forced to surrender at Ingavi, in the northern front, after a last attempt had been made to reach the Paraguay River. On 12 June, the day that the ceasefire agreement was signed, Paraguayan troops were entrenched only 15 km away from the Bolivian oil fields in Cordillera Province.

The military conflict ended with a comprehensive Paraguayan victory, but from a wider point of view, it was a disaster for both sides. Bolivia's Criollo elite had forcibly pressed large numbers of the male indigenous population into the army even though they felt little or no connection to the nation state, and Paraguay fomented nationalist fervor among its predominantly-mixed population. On both sides, especially Bolivia, soldiers were ill-prepared for the dearth of water and the harsh conditions of terrain and weather that they encountered. The effects of the lower-altitude climate had seriously impaired the effectiveness of the Bolivian Army. Most of its indigenous soldiers lived on the cold Altiplano, at elevations of over 12000 ft, and they found themselves at a physical disadvantage when they were called upon to fight in tropical conditions at almost sea level. In fact, of the war's 100,000 casualties, about 57,000 of whom were Bolivian, more soldiers died from diseases such as malaria and other infections than from combat-related causes. Also, the war brought both countries to the brink of economic collapse.

Arms embargo and commerce
The Bolivian Army was dependent on food supplies that entered southeastern Bolivia from Argentina through Yacuíba. The army had great difficulty importing arms purchased at Vickers since both Argentina and Chile were reluctant to let war material pass through their ports. The only remaining options were the port of Mollendo, in Peru, and Puerto Suárez, on the Brazilian border. Eventually, Bolivia achieved partial success since Vickers had managed to persuade the British government to request Argentina and Chile to ease the import restrictions imposed on Bolivia. Internationally, the neighboring countries of Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina tried to avoid being accused of fueling the conflict and so limited the imports of arms to both Bolivia and Paraguay, but Argentina supported Paraguay behind the neutrality façade. Paraguay received military supplies, economic assistance, and daily intelligence from Argentina throughout the war.

The Argentine Army established a special detachment along the border with Bolivia and Paraguay at Formosa Province in September 1932, called Destacamento Mixto Formosa, to deal with deserters from both sides trying to cross into Argentine territory and to prevent any boundary crossing by the warring armies, but the cross-border exchange with the Bolivian army was banned only in early 1934, after a formal protest by the Paraguayan government. By the end of the war, 15,000 Bolivian soldiers had deserted to Argentina. Some native tribes living on the Argentine bank of the Pilcomayo, like the Wichí and Toba people, were often fired at from the other side of the frontier or strafed by Bolivian aircraft, and a number of members of the Maká tribe from Paraguay, led by deserters, who had looted a farm on the border and killed some of its inhabitants, were engaged by Argentine forces in 1933. The Maká had been trained and armed by the Paraguayans for reconnaissance missions. After the defeat of the Bolivian Army at Campo Vía, at least one former Bolivian border outpost, Fortin Sorpresa Viejo, was occupied by Argentine troops in December 1933, which led to a minor incident with Paraguayan forces.

Advisers and volunteers
A number of volunteers and hired personnel from different countries participated in the war on both sides. The high command staff of both countries was at times dominated by Europeans. In Bolivia, General Hans Kundt, a German World War I Eastern Front veteran, was in command from the beginning of the war to December 1933, when he was relieved after a series of military setbacks. Apart from Kundt, Bolivia had also been advised in the last years of the war from a Czechoslovak military mission of World War I veterans. The Czechoslovak military mission assisted the Bolivian military after the defeat of Campo Vía. Paraguay was getting input from 80 former White Russian officers, including two generals, Nikolai Ern and Ivan Belaieff, the latter of whom was part of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel's staff during the Russian Civil War. In the later phase of the war, Paraguay would receive training from a large-scale Italian mission.

Bolivia had more than 107 Chileans fighting on its side. Three died from different causes in the last year of the conflict. The Chileans involved in the war enrolled privately and were mostly military and police officers. They were motivated by the unemployment caused by both the Great Depression and by the political turbulence in Chile in the early 1930s (after the Chaco War ended, some of the Chilean officers went on to fight in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War). The arrival of the first group of Chilean combatants in La Paz sparked protests from Paraguay and led the Chilean Congress on 7 September 1934 to approve a law that made it illegal to join the armies of countries at war. That did not, however, stop the enrollment of Chileans in the Bolivian Army, and it has been argued that Chilean President Arturo Alessandri Palma secretly approved of the practice to get rid of potentially-troublesome elements of the military.

The enrollment of Chilean military personnel in the Bolivian Army caused surprise in Paraguay since former Chilean President General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in 1928 had supported Paraguay after Bolivian reprisals for the destruction of Fortin Vanguardia. The Paraguayan press denounced the Chilean government as not being neutral and went on to claim that the Chilean soldiers were mercenaries. On 12 August 1934, the Chilean ambassador in Asunción was recalled back to Santiago in response to official Paraguayan support of the accusations against the Chilean government in the press. Early in the war, however, a few Chilean officers had joined the Paraguayan Army.

At least two Uruguayan military pilots, Benito Sánchez Leyton and Luis Tuya, volunteered for some of the most daring missions carried out by Paraguayan Air Force Potez 25s, like the resupply of besieged forces during the Battle of Cañada Strongest and the mass air strike on the Bolivian stronghold of Ballivián on 8 July 1934. During the relief mission on Cañada Strongest, Leyton's Potez nº 7 managed to come back home although it had been hit by almost 200 rounds.

Argentina was a source of arms and ammunition for Paraguay. The Argentine military attaché in Asuncion, Colonel Schweizer, continued to advise the Paraguayan command well after the start of hostilities. However, the more valuable contribution to the Paraguayan cause came from Argentine military intelligence (G2), led by Colonel Esteban Vacareyza, which provided nightly reports on Bolivian movements and supply lines running along the border with Argentina. Argentine First World War veteran pilot Vicente Almandoz Almonacid was appointed Director of Military Aviation by the Paraguayan government from 1932 to 1933.

The open Argentine support for Paraguay was also reflected on the battlefield when a number of Argentine citizens, largely from Corrientes and Entre Ríos, volunteered for the Paraguayan Army. Most of them served in the 7th Cavalry Regiment "General San Martín" as infantrymen. They fought against the Bolivian Regiments "Ingavi" and "Warnes" at the outpost of Corrales on 1 January 1933 and had a narrow escape there after they had been outnumbered by the Bolivians. The commander of the "Warnes" Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Sánchez, was killed in an ambush set up by the retreating forces, while the Argentine volunteers lost seven trucks. The greatest achievement of "San Martín" took place on 10 December 1933, when the First Squadron, led by Second Lieutenant Javier Gustavo Schreiber, ambushed and captured the two surviving Bolivian Vickers six-ton tanks on the Alihuatá-Savedra road during the Battle of Campo Vía.

A major supporter of Paraguay was US Senator Huey Long. In a speech on the Senate floor on 30 May 1934, Long, a radical populist, claimed the war was the work of "the forces of imperialistic finance" and maintained that Paraguay was the rightful owner of the Chaco but that Standard Oil, which Long called "promoter of revolutions in Central America, South America and Mexico," had "bought" the Bolivian government and started the war because Paraguay had been unwilling to grant it oil concessions. Because Long believed that Standard Oil was supporting Bolivia, he greatly supported Paraguay, and in a speech about the war on the Senate floor on 7 June 1934, he called Standard Oil "domestic murder[re]s," "foreign murder[er]s," "international conspirators," and "rapacious thieves and robbers." As a result, Long became a national hero in Paraguay, and in the summer of 1934, when the Paraguayans captured a Bolivian fort, it was renamed Fort Long in his honor.

Aftermath
When a ceasefire was negotiated for noon 10 June 1935, Paraguay had controlled most of the region. The last half-hour had a senseless shootout between the armies. That was recognized in a 1938 truce, signed in Buenos Aires in Argentina and approved in a referendum in Paraguay by which Paraguay was awarded three-fourths of the Chaco Boreal, 20000 sqmi. Bolivia was awarded navigation rights on the Paraguay and Paraná Rivers despite having been provided with such access before the conflict. Bolivia retained the remaining territory, which bordered Puerto Busch.

The war cost both nations dearly. Bolivia lost between 56,000 and 65,000 people, 2% of its population, and Paraguay lost about 36,000, or 3% of its population.

Paraguay captured 21,000 Bolivian soldiers and 10,000 civilians (1% of the Bolivian population); many of the captured civilians chose to remain in Paraguay after the war. In addition, 10,000 Bolivian troops, many of them ill-trained and ill-equipped conscripts, deserted to Argentina or injured or mutilated themselves to avoid combat. By the end of hostilities, Paraguay had captured 42,000 rifles, 5,000 machine guns and submachine guns, and 25 million rounds of ammunition from Bolivian forces.

Bolivia's stunning military blunders during the Chaco War led to a mass movement, known as the Generación del Chaco, away from the traditional order, which was epitomised by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, which led to the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952.

A final document to demarcate the border based on the 1938 border settlement was signed on 28 April 2009 in Buenos Aires.

Over the succeeding 77 years, no commercial amounts of oil or gas were discovered in the portion of the Chaco awarded to Paraguay. However, on 26 November 2012, Paraguayan President Federico Franco announced the discovery of oil in the area of the Pirity River. He claimed that "in the name of the 30,000 Paraguayans who died in the war," the Chaco would soon be "the richest oil zone in South America" and "the area with the largest amount of oil." In 2014, Paraguay made its first major oil discovery in the Chaco Basin, with the discovery of light oil in the Lapacho X-1 well.

Oil and gas resources extend also from the Villa Montes area and the portion of the Chaco awarded to Bolivia northward along the foothills of the Andes. Today, the fields give Bolivia the second-largest resources of natural gas in South America, after Venezuela.

Historiography
Professor Bret Gustafson describes popular memory of the Chaco War, still "intensely felt" among Bolivians today, as one in which Bolivians are the "heroes of the Chaco" mobilized to "'defend the oil' from foreign usurpers.'" Other versions of this narrative blame Standard Oil or Argentina for provoking the conflict to rob Bolivia of its oil deposits. Stephen Cote, however, convincingly argues that at the time of the conflict, no known oil deposits existed in the disputed Chaco region. Instead, landlocked Bolivia was hoping to gain control of a river port that might be navigable to the Atlantic.

The war has been widely ignored in the English-speaking world with the British historian Matthew Hughes noting that one bibliography of books and articles on the war listed some 450 publications, of which only 14 were in English and only 2 were military, as opposed to diplomatic, histories of the war. In contrast, there is an enormous historical literature on the war in Spanish with the subject of the conflict being of lively interest in both Bolivia and Paraguay. Almost all of the historical work done in both nations is dominated by the "heroic" interpretation with the war being presented simply as a matter of willpower, with neither Bolivian nor Paraguayan historians having any interest in other aspects of the war like logistics as a determinate factor. Very typical of the Spanish language histories was Marshal Estigarribia's remark in his memoirs: "But to this organized and arrogant power we intended to oppose the virile tradition of our people and the discipline of our courage" That for him was a sufficient explanation of Paraguay's victory. Paraguayan historians tend to take the view that their nation won because the Paraguayan will to win was stronger, and likewise, Bolivian historians tend to argue that if only the Bolivian Army had fought harder, their nation somehow would have been victorious. Hughes stated that most of the historical work on the Chaco War was not of the highest quality: "It is difficult in the Spanish language literature to discern any clear trends in terms of a conceptual, analytical or theoretical framework with a critical, objective core that unpacks the main military aspects of the conflict, precisely the sort of approach that is becoming commonplace for military studies of other major wars of the contemporary period".

As part of the "heroic" interpretation, writing on the war in both Bolivia and Paraguay tends to be taken up with reminiscences of veterans, with little attempt to link up the experiences of the ordinary soldiers to the broader story of the war and in a way that many outsiders find off-putting to be obsessively making their nations' case for ownership of the Chaco.

Cultural references
Augusto Céspedes, the Bolivian ambassador to UNESCO, and one of the most important Bolivian writers of the 20th century, wrote several books describing different aspects of the conflict. As a war reporter for the newspaper El Universal, Céspedes witnessed the penuries of the war, which he described in Crónicas heroicas de una guerra estúpida ("Heroic Chronicles of a Stupid War") among other books. Several of his fiction works, which are considered masterworks of the genre, used the Chaco War as a setting. Another diplomat and important figure of Bolivian literature, Adolfo Costa du Rels, wrote about the conflict, and his novel Laguna H3, published in 1938, was also set during the Chaco War.

One of the masterpieces of the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, the 1960 novel Hijo de hombre, described in one of its chapters the carnage and harsh war conditions during the Siege of Boquerón. The author himself took part in the conflict by joining the Paraguayan Navy's medical service on board the transport ship Holanda at the age of 17. The Argentine film Hijo de Hombre or Thirst, directed by Lucas Demare in 1961, was based on this part of the novel.

In Pablo Neruda's poem, "Standard Oil Company," he referred to the Chaco War in the context of the role that oil companies had played in the war.

The Chaco War, particularly the brutal Battle of Nanawa, played an important role in the adventure novel Wings of Fury, by R. N. Vick.

The Paraguayan polka, "Regimiento 13 Tuyutí," composed by Ramón Vargas Colman and written in Guaraní by Emiliano R. Fernández, remembered the Paraguayan Fifth Division and its exploits in the battles around Nanawa in which Fernández fought and was injured. On the other side, the Siege of Boquerón inspired "Boquerón abandonado", a Bolivian tonada recorded by the Bolivian folk singer and politician Zulma Yugar in 1982.

The Broken Ear, one of The Adventures of Tintin series of comic stories by the Belgian author Hergé (Georges Rémi), is set during a fictionalized account of the war between the invented nations of San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico.

Federico Funes, an Argentine aviator and writer, published "Chaco: Sudor y Sangre" ("Chaco: Sweat and Blood"), a fictionalized story about an Argentine volunteer pilot fighting for Paraguay in the 1930s.

Barrage of Fire by the Bolivian novelist Oscar Cerruto narrated the cruel realities of life in Bolivia during the war through the experiences of a young protagonist.

Lester Dent, as Kenneth Robeson, wrote Dust of Death (1935), one of his Doc Savage pulp fiction novels. In it, Doc Savage finds himself caught in the middle of two embattled South American republics (obviously Bolivia and Paraguay) that have found a new and deadly foe in the form of an evil hooded figure, known as The Inca in Gray. When The Inca deploys a deadly "Dust of Death" to slaughter citizens on both sides of the fighting, Doc Savage and his team rush into the battle to try to save the day and to avoid the firing line.

The film Chaco (2020), directed by Diego Mondaca, follows a company of Bolivian soldiers wandering around the bush during the Chaco War in 1934.

title: Chaco War


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Lennox Lewis

Lennox Claudius Lewis  (born 2 September 1965) is a boxing commentator and former professional boxer who competed from 1989 to 2003. He is a three-time world heavyweight champion, a two-time lineal champion, and held the undisputed championship. Holding dual British and Canadian citizenship, Lewis represented Canada as an amateur at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics; in the latter, he won a gold medal in the super-heavyweight division.

In his first three years as a professional, Lewis won several regional heavyweight championships, including the European, British, and Commonwealth titles. After winning his first 21 fights, he defeated Donovan Ruddock in 1992 to take over the number one position in the World Boxing Council (WBC) rankings. He was declared WBC heavyweight champion later that year after Riddick Bowe gave up the title refusing to defend it against Lewis. He defended the title three times before an upset knockout loss to Oliver McCall in 1994. Lewis avenged the loss in a 1997 rematch to regain the vacant WBC title.

Two fights against Evander Holyfield in 1999 (the first ending in a controversial draw) saw Lewis become undisputed heavyweight champion by unifying his WBC title with Holyfield's World Boxing Association (WBA) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titles. He also won the vacant International Boxing Organization (IBO) title. In 2000, the WBA stripped Lewis of his title when he chose to face Michael Grant instead of mandatory challenger John Ruiz. Similarly, the IBF stripped Lewis of their title in 2002 when he chose not to face their mandatory challenger Chris Byrd.

Lewis was knocked out by Hasim Rahman in an upset in 2001, but this defeat was avenged later in the year. In 2002, Lewis defeated Mike Tyson in one of the most highly anticipated fights in boxing history. Prior to the event, Lewis was awarded the Ring magazine heavyweight title, which had been discontinued in the late 1980s. In what would be his final fight, Lewis defeated Vitali Klitschko in a brutal and bloody encounter in 2003. He vacated his remaining titles and retired from boxing in 2004.

Lewis often refers to himself as "the pugilist specialist". He is 6 ft tall, with an 84 in reach, and weighed about 245 lb during his boxing prime. He is regarded by many as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and one of the greatest British fighters of all time.

Early life
Lewis was born on 2 September 1965 in West Ham, London, to Jamaican parents and according to his mother, he would often fight with other children growing up. At birth he weighed 4.8 kg (10 lb 10 oz), and was given the name Lennox by the doctor, who said "he looked like a Lennox." Lewis moved to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada with his mother in 1977 at the age of 12. He attended Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute for high school, where he excelled in Canadian football, soccer, and basketball. In the 1982–83 school year, he helped the school's AAA basketball team win the Ontario provincial championship.

Amateur career
Lewis eventually decided that his favourite sport was boxing. He took up boxing circa 1978. He became a dominant amateur boxer and won the gold medal at the Junior World Championships in 1983. At age 18, Lewis represented Canada in the super-heavyweight division at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. By that time he was ranked #6 in the world by the AIBA. He advanced to the quarter-finals, where he lost by decision to Tyrell Biggs of the US, who went on to win the gold medal. Despite being 6'5" tall, and having a very strong punch, his coaches admitted they had to pressure him to convert size and raw talent into aggression. His amateur boxing coaches were Arnie Boehm and Adrian Teodorescu, who guided Lewis to the Olympic title in 1988.

Lewis chose not to turn professional after the Olympics, and instead fought four more years as an amateur, hoping for a second chance to win a gold medal. At the 1986 World Championships, he lost in the preliminary round to Petar Stoimenov of Bulgaria. Later that year, Lewis won gold at the Commonwealth Games. He had a close fight against Cuban Jorge Luis González at the 1987 Pan American Games super-heavyweight finals: the American judge scored the bout in favour of Lewis 60–57, while the judges from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Uruguay scored the bout 59–58 for González. He avenged the loss shortly thereafter, boxing for the North American amateur title eight days later.

After winning several more amateur titles in the following years, he travelled to Seoul, South Korea, for the 1988 Summer Olympics and achieved his goal. In the gold medal final, Lewis defeated Riddick Bowe with a second-round referee stopped contest (RSC). Lewis became the first super-heavyweight gold medallist to become world heavyweight champion as a professional. In the Games' closing ceremony, Lewis was Canada's flag bearer. Lewis became the first Canadian to win boxing gold in 56 years.

Lewis, upon turning professional, had registered an amateur record of 85–9. HBO Boxing credited him with a shorter amateur record of 75 wins (58 by knockout) and 7 losses. Of all losses on the record, Valeriy Abadzhyan of the Soviet Union was the only opponent to stop Lewis in amateurs, in October 1986.

After winning the Olympic gold, Lewis was approached immediately by big-time American boxing promoters, including Bob Arum. However, he was not overly impressed by their contract offers and thought about signing a professional contract with a Toronto-based promotion group. "I feel like a basketball player being scouted by scouts down in the States. I don't want anyone controlling me. These (offers) coming to me after the Olympics are mainly because I won the gold."

Early career
Having achieved his goal, Lewis declared himself a professional and moved back to his native England. He claimed he had always considered himself British, but one article reported that many British fans regarded him as "a Canadian at heart and a Briton for convenience." In 2015 Lewis explained "When I turned pro, I had to go to the United Kingdom in order to pursue my career. The infrastructure to develop boxers wasn't in Canada then."

Lewis signed with boxing promoter Frank Maloney and his early professional career was filled with knockouts of journeymen, as well as fighters such as Osvaldo Ocasio.

British, Commonwealth and European champion
After he signed with American promoter Main Events, he won the European heavyweight title in 1990 against Frenchman Jean Maurice Chanet. In his next fight in March 1991, Lewis won the British title against undefeated, world-ranked Gary Mason, and in April 1992 won the Commonwealth title against Derek Williams. Lewis was a top-five world heavyweight, and during this period he also defeated former WBA heavyweight champion Mike Weaver, 1984 Olympic Gold medalist Tyrell Biggs, former world cruiserweight title holders Glenn McCrory and trial horses Levi Billups and Mike Dixon.

On 31 October 1992, Lewis knocked out Canadian Donovan "Razor" Ruddock in two rounds for the number one contender's position in the WBC rankings. It was Lewis's most impressive win to date and established him as one of the world's best heavyweights. Sportscaster Larry Merchant declared, "We have a great new heavyweight."

First reign as WBC heavyweight champion
The win over Ruddock made Lewis the mandatory challenger for Riddick Bowe's heavyweight championship. Bowe held a press conference during which he threw his WBC title belt in a rubbish bin, relinquishing it to avoid a mandatory defence against Lewis. On 14 December 1992, the WBC declared Lewis its champion, making him the first world heavyweight titleholder from Britain in the 20th century.

Lewis defended the belt three times, defeating Tony Tucker, whom he knocked down for the first time in Tucker's career, and Frank Bruno and Phil Jackson by knockout. The Lennox Lewis vs. Frank Bruno fight was the first time two British-born boxers fought for a version of the world heavyweight title in the modern era.

Lewis vs. McCall
Lewis lost his WBC title to Oliver McCall on 24 September 1994 in a huge upset at the Wembley Arena in London. In the second round, McCall landed a powerful right cross, putting Lewis on his back. Lewis returned to his feet at the count of six, but stumbled forward into the referee in a daze. Referee Jose Guadalupe Garcia felt Lewis was unable to continue and ended the fight, giving McCall the title by technical knockout. Lewis and others argued the stoppage was premature and that a champion should be given the benefit of the doubt. In spite of the Lewis camp protests, Boxing Monthly editor Glynn Leach pointed out that Lewis "only seemed to recover his senses once the fight was waved off", and that "in the opinions of everyone I spoke to at ringside, the decision was correct."

After the fight, Lewis decided he needed a new trainer to replace Pepe Correa, who had become increasingly difficult to work with. Correa denounced Lewis in public after being fired. Renowned trainer Emanuel Steward, who had been McCall's trainer during their fight, was Lewis's choice. Even before the fight with McCall, Steward had seen much potential in Lewis and immediately expressed a desire to work with him. He corrected several of Lewis's technical flaws, which included maintaining a more balanced stance, less reliance on his cross, and a focus on using a strong, authoritative jab; the latter of which would become a hallmark of Lewis's style throughout the rest of his career. Their partnership lasted until Lewis's retirement.

Second reign as WBC heavyweight champion
In his first comeback fight, Lewis was given a chance to fight for the mandatory challenger position within the WBC and won it by knocking out American contender Lionel Butler. However, at the behest of promoter Don King, the WBC bypassed him and gave Mike Tyson the first chance at the title recently won by Briton Frank Bruno from Oliver McCall. Bruno had previously lost to both Lewis and Tyson.

Lewis had the number 1 contender's slot in the WBC rankings when he knocked out Australian Justin Fortune, then defeated former WBO Champion Tommy Morrison in October 1995, winning the minor IBC title. This was followed by a close majority decision win over Olympic gold medallist and former WBO champion Ray Mercer in May 1996. Lewis successfully sued to force Tyson to make a mandatory defence of the WBC title against him. Lewis was offered a $13.5 million guarantee to fight Tyson to settle the lawsuit, but turned it down. This would have been Lewis's highest fight purse to date. Lewis accepted $4 million from Don King to step aside and allow Tyson to fight Bruce Seldon instead, with a guarantee that if Tyson defeated Seldon, he would fight Lewis next. After winning the WBA title from Seldon, Tyson relinquished the WBC title to fight Evander Holyfield instead. The WBC title was declared vacant. This set up a rematch between Lewis and McCall, who met on 7 February 1997 in Las Vegas for the WBC title.

In one of the strangest fights in boxing history, McCall, who had lost the first three rounds, refused to box in the fourth and fifth rounds. He then began crying in the ring, forcing the referee to stop the fight and award Lewis the victory and the title. As newly recrowned WBC champion, Lewis successfully defended the title in 1997 against fellow Briton and former WBO world champion Henry Akinwande, who was disqualified after five rounds for excessive clinching. Lewis then met Poland's Andrew Golota, whom he knocked out in the first round. Lewis retained the WBC world title in 1998 when he knocked out lineal champion Shannon Briggs, who had recently outpointed George Foreman in a controversial fight to win the lineal title in five rounds, and beat formerly undefeated European champion Željko Mavrović from Croatia in a 12-round unanimous decision. Lewis stated in 2006 that his fight with Mavrovic was the most awkward win of his career.

Lewis vs. Holyfield
On 13 March 1999, Lewis faced WBA and IBF title holder Evander Holyfield in New York City in what was supposed to be a heavyweight unification bout. Lewis fought a tactical fight, keeping Holyfield off balance with a long jab and peppering him with combinations almost at will. Although most observers believed Lewis had clearly won the fight, the bout was declared a draw, to much controversy. The raw statistics of the fight suggested the bout belonged to Lewis, who landed 348 punches compared to Holyfield's 130. Lewis also out-jabbed Holyfield 137 to 52. Judge Eugenia Williams, who scored the fight in Holyfield's favour, said she saw Lewis land fewer punches than Holyfield.

Lewis vs. Holyfield II
The sanctioning bodies ordered a rematch. Eight months later in Las Vegas (13 November 1999), the two men fought again in a more open and entertaining contest than the original fight, with the two boxers having some heavy exchanges from rounds six to nine. The punch stats however still clearly favoured Lewis, who landed 195 punches to Holyfield's 137, although Lewis landed 119 power shots and 76 jabs, showing a definite shift in his tactics from the first fight, when he focused more on the jab. This time the three judges scored the fight unanimously (115–113, 116–112 & 117–111) in favour of Lewis, who became undisputed heavyweight champion of the World. The British public voted Lewis the 1999 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Lewis did not view either bout with Evander Holyfield as among his most difficult, but conceded Holyfield tested his limits more than any other boxer. "'People seem to be genuinely surprised when I tell them Holyfield was my toughest opponent, not to be confused with my toughest fight, which was Ray Mercer, but when you really dive into why that is, it actually makes a lot of sense.'"

First reign as unified heavyweight champion
After Lewis defeated Holyfield the WBA ordered Lewis to defend the title against John Ruiz of Chelsea, Massachusetts, who was then an obscure Don King fighter who had been made the WBA's number one-ranked contender. The WBA gave permission for Lewis to fight his WBC mandatory Michael Grant first if he would fight Ruiz next, to which Lewis agreed. Opposed to this, King challenged this decision in court on the basis of a clause in the Lewis-Holyfield rematch contract that said Lewis's first bout as undisputed champion would be against the WBA's number one contender. Lewis was therefore to be stripped of his WBA belt if he fought Grant first. It was because of this that the WBA instated its "Super Champion" title, giving unified titleholders who also hold a WBA belt more time to defend against mandatory challengers.

Lewis proceeded to fight the 203 cm (6 foot 7 inch) American Michael Grant, whom he considered the best contender available. He successfully defended his WBC, IBO and IBF titles against Grant with a second-round knockout victory in Madison Square Garden in April 2000.

Later that same year, Lewis knocked out South African Francois Botha in two rounds in London, before winning a 12-round decision against New Zealander and IBF mandatory opponent, David Tua in Las Vegas.

Lewis vs. Rahman
On 21 April 2001, Lewis was knocked out by 20-to-1 underdog Hasim Rahman in a bout at Carnival City Casino in South Africa. The main event actually took place on Sunday 22 April 2001 at 05:00 local time in order to accommodate HBOs significant United States-based audience at a reasonable hour on the Saturday night. Before the bout, Lewis had a role in the film Ocean's Eleven in which he "boxed" against Wladimir Klitschko.

Lewis vs. Rahman II
Lewis immediately sought a rematch with the new champion; Rahman, however, now being promoted by Don King, tried to secure another opponent for his inaugural title defence. Lewis took Rahman to court to honour the rematch clause in their contract. Rahman was ordered to honour the clause and give Lewis a rematch in his first title defence. While promoting the rematch with Rahman on ESPN's Up Close, the fighters got into a brawl similar to the one between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in front of Howard Cosell on Wide World of Sports. Lewis regained the title on 17 November by outclassing and then knocking out Hasim Rahman in the fourth round of their rematch.

Lewis vs. Tyson
On 8 June 2002, Lewis defended his title against Mike Tyson. Ticket sales were slow because they were priced as high as US$2,400, but a crowd of 15,327 turned up to see boxing's then biggest event at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis, Tennessee. Tyson also had to pay Lewis $335,000 out of his purse for biting him at the news conference announcing the fight, which was originally scheduled for 6 April 2002 in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, however, rejected the fight because of Tyson's licensing problems and several other states refused Tyson a licence before Memphis finally bid US$12 million to land it.

By the end of the seventh round Tyson was tired and sluggish, his face swollen and his eyes cut. He was knocked out in the eighth by a right cross. After the fight, George Foreman declared, "He [Lewis] is, no doubt, the best heavyweight of all time. What he's done clearly puts him on top of the heap." This was the highest-grossing event in pay-per-view history, generating US$106.9 million from 1.95 million buys in the US, until it was surpassed by De La Hoya-Mayweather in 2007. Both fighters were guaranteed US$17.5 million.

Lewis vs. Klitschko
Lewis was forced to vacate the IBF title in 2002 after refusing to face mandatory challenger Chris Byrd. In May 2003, Lewis sued boxing promoter Don King for US$385 million, claiming that King used threats and bribery to have Tyson pull out of a rematch with Lewis and a fight on the card of a Lewis title defence.

Lewis scheduled a fight with Kirk Johnson for June, but when Johnson suffered an injury in training, Lewis fought Vitali Klitschko, the WBC's No. 1 contender and former WBO champion. Lewis had planned to fight him in December, but since Klitschko had been on the undercard of the Johnson fight anyway, they agreed to square off on 21 June. Lewis entered the ring at a career high 116 kg (256$1/2$ pounds). Lewis was dominated in the early rounds and was wobbled in round two by solid Klitschko punches. Lewis opened a cut above Klitschko's eye with a right cross in the third round and gave a better showing from the fourth round onwards. With both fighters looking tired before the start of round seven, the doctor advised that the fight should be stopped because of a severe cut above Klitschko's left eye, awarding Lewis victory by TKO. Klitschko was leading 58–56 on all three judges' scorecards when the fight was stopped. Lewis was guaranteed US$7 million and Klitschko US$1.4 million. The gate was US$2,523,384 from an attendance of 15,939 at the Staples Center in California. The fight aired live on HBO's World Championship Boxing with approximately 7 million viewers.

Interviewed about the fight by HBO, doctor Paul Wallace explained his decision: When he raised his head up, his upper eyelid covered his field of vision. At that point I had no other option but to stop the fight. If he had to move his head to see me, there was no way he could defend his way against a punch. Klitschko's face required sixty stitches.

Because Klitschko had fought so bravely against Lewis, boxing fans soon began calling for a rematch. The WBC agreed, and kept the Ukrainian as its No. 1 contender. Lewis initially was in favour of a rematch: I want the rematch, I enjoyed that fight. It was just a fight. We went at it. You have to play dollars and cents but I'm opting more for the rematch. Negotiations for the rematch followed but Lewis changed his mind. Instead, Klitschko fought and defeated Kirk Johnson on 6 December in WBC Eliminator, setting up a mandatory rematch with Lewis. Lewis announced his retirement shortly thereafter in February 2004, to pursue other interests, including sports management and music promotion, and vacated the title. Lewis said he would not return to the ring. At his retirement, Lewis's record was 41 wins, two losses and one draw, with 32 wins by knockout.

Retirement
In 2008 when asked about a potential bout after being antagonised by Riddick Bowe, Lewis quipped "'He waits until I am in retirement to call out my name, I will come out of retirement to beat up that guy. I'll beat him up for free.'"

In 2011, Bowe again confronted Lewis, this time over Twitter, demanding he "put [his] gold medal on and let's fight for that!!", where Lewis remarked "I thought we already did."

Lewis worked as a boxing analyst for HBO on Boxing After Dark from 2006 until 2010.

Fighting style
Lewis was a classic upright boxer, who beat opponents from the outside with his dominant 84" reach. His jab, which was often a pawing shot early in his career, became a formidable weapon under the tutelage of Emmanuel Steward, which Lewis used to set up his signature punch, the straight right hand. Under Steward, Lewis became less reliant on his right hand and displayed a more complete skill-set. Criticised at times for being too patient and for his lack of in-fighting skills, Lewis was at his most effective when boxing from range. Known for his physical strength, Lewis was able to manoeuvre opponents into punching range and was especially effective against taller opponents. Lewis eventually developed into one of the most complete heavyweights in history: able to box at range or fight aggressively when necessary, as well as being considered one of the hardest punchers of all time.

Legacy
Lewis was the seventh Olympic gold medallist to become world heavyweight champion after Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Leon Spinks, and Michael Spinks. He holds the distinction of being the first professional heavyweight champion to win a gold medal in the super-heavyweight category, which was not created until the 1984 Summer Olympics. He is also the only boxer to represent Canada at the Summer Olympics and subsequently win a professional world title. Lewis was the first boxer to hold the British heavyweight title and subsequently win a world title. Although three fighters have since repeated this feat (Herbie Hide, Tyson Fury, and Anthony Joshua), only Lewis also won the Lonsdale belt outright.

While struggling to achieve popularity and respect earlier in his professional career, Lewis's standing has increased since his retirement in 2003, and he is now considered one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Struggling to win the affection of the British public and facing indifference from an American audience, Lewis's body of work eventually established him as the dominant heavyweight of his time. He was the last undisputed heavyweight champion, until May 2024, when Oleksandr Usyk defeated Tyson Fury.

Lewis became one of only two boxers in history, and the first since Ken Norton in 1978, to have been awarded the heavyweight championship without actually winning a championship bout when the WBC awarded him their title in 1992. This was due to Riddick Bowe relinquishing the title after failing to agree to defend the title against Lewis, who had become the mandatory challenger by defeating Donovan Ruddock a few weeks earlier. In 2001, Lewis became the fourth boxer (after Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield and Michael Moorer) to have held the world heavyweight championship on three occasions.

Lewis defeated 15 boxers for the world heavyweight title, the fifth-most in history. His combined three reigns tally 3,086 days (8 years, 5 months and 13 days), which ranks as the fourth-longest cumulative time spent as world heavyweight champion. His total of fourteen successful defences ranks as the fifth-highest in heavyweight history. At four years, two months and fifteen days, Lewis has the twelfth-longest reign in heavyweight championship history. As of May 2023, BoxRec ranks Lennox as the fifth greatest European fighter of all time.

In 2018, Boxing News ranked Lewis as the third-greatest heavyweight of all time, behind Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis. While acknowledging that he could occasionally be vulnerable, the magazine stated that at his best, Lewis was as unbeatable as any heavyweight in history. In 2017, Boxing News also ranked Lewis as the second best British fighter of all time, after Jimmy Wilde. In the same year, The Ring magazine ranked Lewis as both the greatest heavyweight of the last thirty years and the joint-eleventh greatest heavyweight of all time (alongside Evander Holyfield), describing him as "a giant who fought with finesse" who beat every available contender. Thomas Hauser stated that the idea of Lewis having no chin was a myth, citing his rising from the powerful punch from Oliver McCall which floored Lewis for the first knockdown of his career, and suggesting that he was perhaps stopped prematurely. He also contended that the knockout punch from Hasim Rahman in their first fight would have knocked out anyone. In 2003, The Ring ranked Lewis 33rd in their list of greatest punchers of all time.

Along with Ingemar Johansson and Rocky Marciano, Lewis is one of three world heavyweight champions to have retired with victories over every opponent he faced as a professional. Unlike Johansson, who lost twice to Floyd Patterson after winning their first bout, Lewis is the only heavyweight to have avenged all his in-ring defeats. He is also, along with Gene Tunney, Marciano and Vitali Klitschko, one of four heavyweight champions to have ended his career as world champion, and with a world title fight victory in his final fight.

In 1999, he was named Fighter of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America, as well as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. In 2008, Lewis was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. In 2009, in his first year of eligibility, Lewis was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.

Life outside boxing
In 2000, Lewis appeared on Reflection Eternal's debut album Train of Thought, giving a shout out on the track "Down for the Count."

In 2001, Lewis had a role in the film Ocean's Eleven in which he "boxed" against Wladimir Klitschko.

In 2002, Lewis was reportedly offered £5m by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) chairman Vince McMahon to take up professional wrestling in his industry. His camp held discussions over a possible match with Brock Lesnar in February 2003, at the No Way Out pay-per-view event. Prior to the offer Lewis was familiar with wrestling; he was part of the famous match held in the old Wembley Stadium between The British Bulldog and Bret "The Hitman" Hart for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam in 1992, representing the Bulldog during his entrance while bearing a Union Flag.

In 2002, Lewis played himself on an episode of The Jersey called "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Jersey".

In 2003, Lewis made a brief cameo appearance in the Jennifer Lopez and LL Cool J video "All I Have".

In 2006, he appeared in the movie Johnny Was with Vinnie Jones.

Lewis played in the World Series of Poker in both 2006 and 2007, and was knocked out without winning any money.

Lewis appeared on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice in 2008. He came in fourth place (out of 14).

Lewis made a public service announcement against domestic violence for Do Something.

In 2011, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He also has his own charitable foundation called the Lennox Lewis foundation which helps disadvantaged children in Canada, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Lewis is a supporter of his home town football club, West Ham United.

On 24 May 2018, Lewis was part of an Oval Office ceremony to announce the pardon of boxer Jack Johnson.

Personal life
Lewis is a Christian. He is an avid amateur chess player, and funded an after-school chess programme for disadvantaged youths, one of whom earned a university chess scholarship at Tennessee Tech. He holds both British and Canadian citizenship. He married Violet Chang in 2005 after his retirement from boxing and has four children.

Amateur bouts and tournaments
Ontario Junior Championships (75 kg), Toronto, Ontario, March 1980: Canadian Junior Championships (91 kg), Montreal, Quebec, May 1982: British Columbia Golden Gloves (91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, May 1982: Invitation tournament (91 kg), Kitchener, Ontario, June 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Brantford, Ontario, July 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Sarnia, Ontario, July 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Sudbury, Ontario, July 1982: Commonwealth Games Eliminator (+91 kg), Winnipeg, Manitoba, July 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, August 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, September 1982: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, October 1982: USA–Canada Duals (+91 kg), Chicago, Illinois, January 1983: Canada Winter Games (+81 kg), Chicoutimi, Quebec, February 1983: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Waterloo, Ontario, March 1983: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Hamilton, Ontario, June 1983: II Junior World Championships (+91 kg), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, June 1983: Canada–Finland Junior Duals (+91 kg), Oulu, Finland, September 1983: Canada–Sweden Junior Duals (+91 kg), Uppsala, Sweden, September 1983: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Waterloo, Ontario, October 1983: Stockholm Open Tournament (+91 kg), Stockholm, Sweden, January 1984: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Waterloo, Ontario, January 1984:
 * Lost to Donovan Ruddock (Canada) by split decision, 2–3
 * Lost to H. Thompson (Canada) by split decision, 2–3
 * Defeated K. Hataway (Canada) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * Defeated D. Walls (Canada) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * Defeated J. Mathiasen (Canada) RSC 1
 * Defeated G. Lamblon (Canada) RSC 1
 * Defeated I. Lewis (Canada) RSC 1
 * Defeated Barry Forbes (Canada) by majority decision, 4–1
 * Defeated I. Lewis (Canada) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * Defeated M. Rome (Canada) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * Defeated B. Allan (Canada) RSC 2
 * Defeated J. Corrigan (Canada) RSCH 3
 * Defeated J. Valleyfield (United States) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * Finals: Defeated Claude Courchesne (Canada) RSCH 1
 * Defeated B. Drift (Canada) by decision
 * Defeated Larry Evans (Canada) by decision
 * 1/4: Defeated Vincent Jones (United States) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * 1/2: Defeated Durin Răcaru (Romania) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Finals: Defeated Pedro Quesada (Cuba) by walkover
 * Defeated Jouni Kopola (Finland) by walkover
 * Defeated Tommy Börzsei (Sweden) RSC 3
 * Defeated Larry Evans (Canada) RSC 2
 * Defeated Bengt Cederquist (Sweden) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Defeated D. Mills (Canada) by unanimous decision, 3–0

USA–Canada Duals (+91 kg), Edmonton, Alberta, February 1984: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, February 1984: Canadian Senior Championships (+91 kg), Trois Rivieres, Quebec, April 1984: Olympic Box-offs (+91 kg), Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 1984: XXIII Summer Olympics (+91 kg), Los Angeles, California, August 1984: Britain–Canada Duals (+91 kg), Milton Keynes, England, October 1984: USA–Canada Duals (+91 kg), Orlando, Florida, December 1984: Canadian Senior Championships (+91 kg), Medicine Hat, Alberta, March 1985: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Kitchener, Ontario, April 1985: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), London, Ontario, May 1985: XI Albena Open Tournament (+91 kg), Albena, Bulgaria, June 1985: North American Championships (+91 kg), Beaumont, Texas, August 1985: III World Cup (+91 kg), Seoul, South Korea, November 1985: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, January 1986: Canadian Senior Championships (+91 kg), Cornwall, Ontario, March 1986: World Champ Box-Offs (+91 kg), Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, April 1986: World Championships (+91 kg), Reno, Nevada, May 1986: Invitation tournament (+91 kg), Bay City, USA, July 1986:
 * Defeated Craig Payne (United States) by split decision, 2–1
 * Defeated J. Singletary (Canada) RSC 2
 * 1/4: Defeated Don Stevenson (Canada) RSCH 1
 * 1/2: Defeated Barry Forbes (Canada) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Finals: Defeated Vernon Linklater (Canada) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Defeated Vernon Linklater (Canada) by walkover
 * 1/8: Defeated Mohammad Yousuf (Pakistan) RSCH 3 (1:17)
 * 1/4: Lost to Tyrell Biggs (United States) by unanimous decision, 0–5
 * Defeated Robert Wells (England) KO 3
 * Defeated Nathaniel Fitch (United States) by unanimous decision, 3–0
 * 1/4: Defeated Joe Stack (Canada) RET 1
 * 1/2: Defeated J. Horton (Canada) RET 2
 * Finals: Defeated Brian Lansing (Canada) RSCH 1
 * Defeated M. Jarvin (United States) RET 2
 * Defeated R. Garrison (United States) RSC 2
 * Finals: Defeated Milan Turek (Czech Republic) RET 1
 * 1/2: Defeated Kimmuel Odum (United States) by decision
 * Finals: Defeated Isaac Barrientos (Puerto Rico) by majority decision, 4–1
 * 1/2: Defeated Juan Antonio Díaz Nieves (Argentina) RET 1
 * Finals: Lost to Vyacheslav Yakovlev (Soviet Union) by unanimous decision, 0–5
 * Defeated A. White (United States) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * 1/2: Defeated Sandy Hervieux (Canada) RET 2
 * Finals: Defeated Wade Parsons (Canada) DQ 2 (for holding)
 * Defeated Wade Parsons (Canada) by walkover
 * 1/8: Lost to Petar Stoimenov (Bulgaria) by split decision, 2–3
 * Lost to Jonathan Littles (United States) by split decision, 1–2
 * Defeated J. Davidson (United States) RSC 2

XIII Commonwealth Games (+91 kg), Edinburgh, Scotland, July 1986: TSC Tournament (+91 kg), East Berlin, East Germany, September 1986: Quebec Cup (+91 kg), Montreal, Quebec, December 1986: Stockholm Open (+91 kg), Stockholm, Sweden, January 1987: Canadian Senior Championships (+91 kg), Oromocto, New Brunswick, April 1987: French Open (+91 kg), Saint-Nazaire, France, April 1987: Pan Am Box-Offs (+91 kg), Ottawa, Ontario, May 1987: Pan American Games (+91 kg), Indianapolis, Indiana, August 1987: North American Championships (+91 kg), Toronto, Ontario, August 1987: IV World Cup (+91 kg), Belgrade, Yugoslavia, October 1987: Feliks Stamm Memorial (+91 kg), Warsaw, Poland, November 1987: Canadian Senior Championships (101 kg), Edmonton, Alberta, March 1988: Intercup (+91 kg), Karlsruhe, West Germany, April 1988: Canada Cup (+91 kg), Ottawa, Ontario, June 1988: XXIV Summer Olympics (+91 kg), Seoul, South Korea, September–October 1988:
 * 1/2: Defeated James Oyebola (England) RSCH 2
 * Finals: Defeated Aneurin Evans (Wales) RSC 2
 * 1/4: Lost to Valeriy Abadzhyan (Soviet Union) RSC 3
 * 3rd place bouts: Lost to Ladislav Husarik (Czechoslovakia) by walkover
 * Finals: Defeated Sandy Hervieux (Canada) RSC 2
 * 1/2: Defeated Håkan Brock (Sweden) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Finals: Defeated Aleksander Burmistrov (Bulgaria) KO 3
 * 1/2: Defeated Sandy Hervieux (Canada) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Finals: Defeated K. Russell (Canada) RET 2
 * Finals: Defeated István Szikora (Hungary) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * Defeated Sandy Hervieux (Canada) RSC 1
 * 1/2: Defeated Carlos Barcelete (Brazil) KO 2
 * Finals: Lost to Jorge Luis González (Cuba) by majority decision, 1–4 (both fighters had a point deducted in the 3rd rd for punching while holding)
 * Finals: Defeated Jorge Luis González (Cuba) by split decision, 2–1 (González knocked down in the 3rd rd)
 * 1/4: Lost to Ulli Kaden (East Germany) by split decision, 2–3
 * 1/2: Defeated Nathaniel Fitch (United States) KO 2
 * Finals: Defeated Marian Klepka (Poland) RET 2
 * Finals: Defeated Richard Ayotte (Canada) RET 1
 * 1/4: Defeated Crispine Odera (Kenya) by unanimous decision, 5–0
 * 1/2: Defeated Petar Stoimenov (Bulgaria) by split decision, 3–2
 * Finals: Lost to Aleksandr Miroshnichenko (Soviet Union) by unanimous decision, 0–5
 * Finals: Defeated Elton Wright (United States) RET 1 (1:08)
 * 1/8: Defeated Crispine Odera (Kenya) RSCH 2 (2:59)
 * 1/4: Defeated Ulli Kaden (East Germany) RSCH 1 (0:34)
 * 1/2: Defeated Janusz Zarenkiewicz (Poland) by walkover
 * Finals: Defeated Riddick Bowe (United States) RSC 2 (0:43)

Honours

 * Lennox Lewis, CM (1988–1998)
 * Lennox Lewis, CM, MBE (1998–2002)
 * Lennox Lewis, CBE, CM (2002–present)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Lennox Lewis