Gather round, brothers and sisters, and let us bid goodbye to our great departed friend, for as magnificent as he was upon this earth, he has surely left us now. And so, dust to dust, amen.

Rest in peace, heavyweight champion of the world.

Oh, to be technical, there is one. Excuse me, there's two -- and another's on the way. But, in fact, they're only pretenders. The heavyweight champion of the world no more exists today than does the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire or the Queen of Sheba.

Until he retired a couple of weeks ago, Lennox Lewis was tacitly accepted as da champ. But even that was misleading, because to most people, the real heavyweight champ, the true heavyweight champ, the only heavyweight champ, remained Muhammad Ali. Ali, in fact, has become nearly beatified, even more beloved than George Burns was in his dotage. And once Ali attained that position of eternal eminence, the existing heavyweight division was finished. In sports, you can't live that much in the past. You must believe in: the king is dead, long live the king.

It's bad enough for heavyweights that Ali's always hanging around, like a friendly ghost, but the chummier ubiquity of another old champ has made it even harder for people to take the current titleholder seriously. For there, everywhere, was George Foreman, minister of the lord, raconteur, gourmand, ring commentator, and salesman extraordinaire. Foreman has never been in competition with Ali, because Ali is adored. Foreman had another role, that of the best pal in sport. Joe Garagiola used to be that.

Odd, isn't it, that the face of the brutal sport of boxing is of one saintly figure and one happy-go-lucky one.

Anyway, at the same time Lewis is retiring from the ring, Foreman is stepping down as a commentator. Since Ali can barely speak, but only hovers above, there simply isn't a reigning champ anymore. Nor, probably, will there ever be. Boxing's problem is that boxers can only fight ever so often. Maybe it didn't matter when Jack Dempsey took two or three years off between defenses of his crown, but today there's too much competition. You forget the fighters. It became easier to continue to associate ourselves with Ali and Foreman than with Lewis or any actual current boxer.

Well, at least Mike Tyson stays in our consciousness -- but not because he fights. Just because he gets in trouble regularly.

Boxing also outsmarted itself by having so many competing organizations, with so many champions, that there really are none. Somebody named Chris Byrd is reported to be heavyweight champion of the IBF. A stranger named John Ruiz is champion of the WB ... A. The WB ... O will crown yet another champ next month. But, in practical fact, Ali will simply remain the boxing champion in perpetuity. It's like no matter how many guys can put on patent leather shoes, Fred Astaire is forever the dancing master -- and never mind that he's dead.

The heavyweight champion of the world used to be the king of all sport. That fellow will always be around, only now his name is Tiger Woods or Michael Schumacher or Alex Rodriguez or Tom Brady. Whoever he is, the heavyweight champion of the world is no longer a boxer.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.