The Hindu : Lewis wins fight, Klitschko the hearts

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 23, 2003

Sport

Sport - Boxing

Lewis wins fight, Klitschko the hearts

Lennox Lewis (right) rocks his challenger Vitali Klitschko with a punch in their WBC heavyweight championship bout in Los Angeles on Saturday. — AP

Los Angeles June 22. Britain's Lennox Lewis escaped with his World Boxing Council heavyweight crown here on Saturday when his fight with Vitali Klitschko was stopped after six rounds because of a severe cut over the challenger's left eye.

Referee Lou Moret stopped the fight on the advice of ringside doctor Paul Wallace with Klitschko leading 58-56 on all three judges' cards.

Klitschko, bleeding from an ugly cut that had worsened since the third round, protested angrily as the crowd at Staples Center jeered the decision.

"Right now I feel like I am the people's champion," Klitschko said. "I did not want them to stop the fight under any circumstances. My strategy was to take it into the seventh or eighth round. It wasn't easy, but I felt like I was winning. I know I was hurting him with my punches."

Indeed, the WBC's top-ranked challenger, who took the fight on 12 days' notice when Canadian Kirk Johnson pulled out, drew the often cautious champion into a brawl.

The 6-foot-7 inch (1.98 meter) Klitschko came out and traded punches from the opening bell, rocking Lewis in the second and third rounds and hitting him with almost every left jab he threw.

Lewis looked tired and old, but did enough to come back and land uppercuts and right hands.

One big right hand appeared to open a cut in the third round that proved to be the undoing of Klitschko.

"Lennox Lewis don't have good condition. He was very heavy," Klitschko said of Lewis, who weighed in for the bout at 256 pounds, the heaviest of his career. His previous heaviest was 253, when he was stunned by Hasim Rahman in the fifth in April of 2001.

"It was my strategy to make him tired. You saw him. He clinched more and more."

Doctor Paul Wallace said it wasn't bleeding but swelling of the eyelid that forced him to stop the fight.

"I thought the corner did a fairly good job of controlling the blood," Wallace said. "He was able to defend himself at all times.

"When I went into ring second time I asked him to look at me. When he raise head up, his upper eyelid covered his field of vision. He had to move his head to see me.

"If he had to move his head to see me, there was no way he could defend himself, so I had no choice. I had to stop the fight."

"He's a legitimate No. 1 contender,'' said Lewis later.

Lewis, who earned a reported $10 million, improved to 41-2-1, 32 knockouts. Klitschko is 32-2 with 31 knockouts. — AFP & AP

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