Monday, June 23, 2003 | 9:43 a.m.
LOS ANGELES -- The fight was supposed to be a breeze for Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight champion. Didn't he have the superior skills to the challenger, Vitali Klitschko? Didn't he have the polished resume? Didn't he have the extra helping of guts?
Or was that an extra helping of gut?
If there was ever a classic portrait of one fighter taking another for granted, Lewis was it. A somewhat paunchy Lewis struggled Saturdaynight against Klitschko, a fighter not known for great skill or toughness. But it was Lewis who stumbled, floundered and gasped in the early rounds, allowing Klitschko to believe he could actually beat him.
At some point, Lewis realized he was in trouble and he began to fight like a champion. Lewis caught his breath, found his right hook -- as well as Klitschko's cranium -- and retaliated by brutalizing his challenger to retain his World Boxing Council title belt.
A strong right hand to Klitschko's head in the third round, cutting and bloodying his left eyelid, saved an already chaotic heavyweight division from falling further into disarray. In fact, the fight may have added a little more pizzazz to the heavyweight ranks, as it seems Lewis and Klitschko are headed for a rematch. If Lewis beats Klitschko a second time, he will most likely face Roy Jones Jr., a light heavyweight who moved up to win the World Boxing Association heavyweight title.
On Saturday, Lewis won, but it was not pretty as he fought one of the least-strategic bouts of his career. The 15,939 fans at Staples Center let Lewis (41-2-1) know his performance was mediocre by booing heavily after his sixth-round technical knockout. Judges Pat Russell, James Jen-Kin and Tom Kaszmarek each had Klitschko leading the fight, 58-56, when it was stopped.
Afterward, Klitschko (32-2) pulled himself up on the ropes and raised his arms as the crowd cheered. Lewis, meanwhile, chafed at suggestions that he did not deserve to win the bout.
"I was getting to him," Lewis said. "Look at his face. Just look at the state of his face. It was only a matter of time. It was deteriorating. The referee saved his face."
Klitschko said he was cut over his eye by a Lewis head butt. Lewis disagreed. "The fact that he said it was a head butt disappointed me," Lewis said. "There were five separate cuts on his face. You don't get that from one head butt."
Neither boxer dazzled the other with footwork or punching skill. Each powerful, lumbering fighter feared the other's punches, so there was little emphasis on combinations or counterpunches, just ducking and swinging.
One thing was clear: Lewis did not train hard for the fight. He looked exhausted after several rounds and the rust from a yearlong layoff was evident. "Lewis was heavy," Klitschko said. "He was tired."
Klitschko was scheduled to fight on the undercard but moved up when Lewis' original challenger, Kirk Johnson, was hurt and pulled out June 6.
"I do give him credit," Lewis said. "I gave him a chance to fight. He has an unusual European style. I was just getting my second wind."
Klitschko's goal was to go after Lewis early, shock him and try to last into the seventh or eighth round, where he thought it could be either fighter's bout to win. It almost worked. Klitschko's jabs stunned Lewis, and in the second round a surprisingly quick right hand almost buckled Lewis.
The fight turned in the third, when Lewis' right hand connected with the left side of Klitschko's face. The swelling and bleeding were almost immediate, and eventually a long, ugly gash across Klitschko's eyelid practically swelled the eye shut. Later, Lewis opened a second cut under the same eye.
When Paul Wallace, the ringside doctor, first examined Klitschko's eye between the third and fourth rounds, he did not think the damage was so severe, and the fight continued. But later, when Wallace looked at the injury again, he noticed that Klitschko could barely see him. Wallace told the referee, Lou Moret, to stop the bout.
"There was a significant difference from the first time I had examined him," Wallace said. "Because of the laceration, the lid was hanging in such a way that he was not able to protect himself."
"I asked him to look at me and, when he lifted his head, his eyelid covered his field of vision," Wallace added. "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. If he got hit with an overhand right, he might not be able to see it. It was a dangerous situation."
If there is a rematch, it will most likely be broadcast on pay-per-view television. More important, it may provide the heavyweight division with what it needs most: buzz.
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