Vitaly Klitschko vs Lennox Lewis, a very underrated fight

I just watched the fight again. I have never seen a heavyweight fight with so much intense action and violence. It looked like a life and death fight. Both were ready to die in the ring that night. Both fighters took a huge load of punishment. This is one of my favorite fights of all time. What do you think? Will this fight become more relevant as time passes?

 

Lemmon beat up vitali

 

Pick the cotton out of this one.

 

Good question.......Fights, as well as fighters, tend to be subject to revisionist assaults or ex-post-facto adulation. We've seen it here with Duran, being downgraded, or Leonard, who ran from Duran but had his victory, until recently, regarded as an unassailable feat of brilliance, which now is regarded in a more skeptical manner.

Regarding the fight itself, and not its background or aftermath, yes, it was a good fight whose relevance may be that it was the last great fight at 200+ between two guys both of whose reputations will pass the test of time despite both men suffering from under-appreciation, for different reasons, for large parts of their careers.

In short....both guys regard the fight as relevant, irrespective of what we think.

 

I am not really interested in who beat up who. I find the quality of the fight much more interesting.

 

Good post Irish. I agree completely. Some fights indeed gain importance as time passes. I believe the Vitaly-Lewis fight belongs in that category.

 

It was a very good fight, and stands on its own merits. It wasn't some slugfest between two guys, neither of whom knew what they were doing, there was quite a lot of skill involved. Some of the punches Vitali landed were just stupid....you would never even ask a guy to throw them in the gym, much less believe that he was capable of it. He also slipped quite a few shots. Lewis showed traditional big reach-and-punch skills too, my only complaints about "quality" would be Lewis being allowed to hold and hit Vitali in the kidneys and his lacing/hand-off's in the clinches. Apart from that...very little wrong with the quality on display.

 

People weren't really clamoring or excited about the Lewis/Vitali fight at the time as most thought Vitali would just quit once push came to shove. But he really showed a lot of toughness, taking some pretty good shots. It seemed his robotic style bothered Lewis in the early rounds. Lewis sliced him up pretty good in the later rounds and began catching him more frequently, including that monster uppercut which opened up a hole in Vitali's bottom lip.
The fans were really into it. It's too bad the fight didn't continue as I still think Lewis had another round or two left in him while Vitali was holding on a lot in that 6th round before the fight ended.
Definitely one of the most talked about fights back on BT. That fight really had guys excited on the forums for a while after. I wish we could still have big fights like that today between heavyweights instead of midget motherf*cking faggots like Fraud F*ckweather Jr who's about as big as Mills Lane. LOL!

 

Never seen a heavyweight fight with so much intense action and violence????

What a fuckin disgrace to Ali-Frazier, and the Holy-Bowe trilogy that statement is.

 

What under-appreciation?:dunno:
Lennox is a consensus ATG, and Vitaly is......I'd put him in top-200 heavyweight of the last 30 years.

 

Actually, to clarify: if Vitaly beats his next opponent, Manuel Char, he'd definitely move up in my rankings.

 

The most violent thing about Bowe-Holyfield II was the assault on Fan-Man by Bowes contingent of thugs.

 

The Ali-Frazier and Holy-Bowe fights were great fights. But none of them had the brutal INSANE violence of the Vitaly-Lewis fight.

 

Rainmaker is talking about SUPER sized heavyweights at 6'5+ and 250+

 

The cut on Vitali's eyelid was caused by a LEGAL punch from Lewis. Opening of round 3, Lewis caught him clean with a right overhand and opened up his eye. Nothing to do with rubbing cornrows or glove laces.

 

::

The right uppercut Lewis landed on a bloody Vitali was pretty savage.... Lewis hit him so hard that the fans got popped out of their seats. It's still compelling viewing. In any event, a fighter can be getting brain damaged to bits, and its not violent, but you get JC Chavez Sr bleeding like a stuck pig from a few paper cuts on his face and the crowd are going nuts. Boxing is strange. Nothing brings the fans out of their shell and makes them forget how expensive their finishing-school was quite like the sight of a bit of claret.

 

It was a very entertaining fight... comparing it to Ali-Frazier I and especially III and literally another dozen or so more violent heavyweight battles is a bit over the top and an obvious troll.

 

Lewis and Vitali were giants in the sport of boxing. It's obvious why people taking a liking to this fight as you don't normally see constant action between two huge guys.
And compared to Lewis and Vitali, Frazier was a midget. I don't think Lennox would've needed to land 500 punches over 15 rounds to get the job done against little Joe.

 

The right uppercut Lewis hit Vitali with would have taken Frazier clean out of the fight. Clean out.

Rainmaker, albeit perhaps trolling, has a point: that uppercut, landed as it was on a supposedly exhausted and finished opponent......was a fight-ender...it was like something out of a cheesy Rocky movie, how Vitali took it and fought on. It was shocking when you get down to it because that same punch would have probably have taken Bowe, Frazier or Holyfield out. In fact Lewis landed far less significant looking shots on Holyfield and had him more buzzed.

It was epically violent.



Watch Lewis heels/feet...he came UP off the canvas. That was a 258lb Lewis, whose right uppercut was a bomb, it was Foreman++ , and it didn't stop him. It's ridiculous, when you break it down to its components. If Bolt is the Gold Standard of 100m's, then Lewis right uppercut is the Gold Standard of big punches.

These threads usually degenerate into a pissing match over fights being stopped too soon etc so....I try to stick to the admittedly narrow rubric of the fight being underrated or not......unfortunately my writing skills aren't what they could be.

Even Chisora paused to commend Vitali on that. It was like drowning a fly in ink and seeing the bastard not just survive but try to shake it off and fly. Vitali actually wanted some more. :scratcher:

 

That same uppercut put an end to Tyson's night in the 2nd round. Tyson stopped attacking when he felt that. Vitali also hung on like mad after that uppercut.

 

"Would" being a keyword here. If one's observant enough, the word "would" is used quite often, when describing Vitaly.

He "would" beat Lennox, and Oleg, and Chris, and Rahman, and McCline, and Ruiz. Would.
Never did, though.

He would achieve this and that, etc. Would.
Never did, though.

 

We can guarantee that uppercut would've ended Vitali's brother's night.

 

Talk about missing the point

In the pantheon of most violent heavyweight fights of all time, Lewis/Klit doesn't crack the top 20

I couldn't give a shit who beats who, that's immaterial.

Julian Letterlough and Julio Gonzalez both would have knocked Wilfredo Gomez and Lupe Pintor through a wall, but their good fight is a pale comparison to Gomez and Pintor's al-time-great battle

 

It's all about opinion. People liked Lewis/Vitali because giants don't fight the way these guys did.

Larry Merchant said during the Lewis/Vitali fight:

"This is Gatti/Ward at the highest level on the scale!"

"There has never been a heavyweight championship fight between two big men with this kind of intense action!"

 

Well....to be fair here.....any decent punch landed clean is all, but guaranteed to put the younger sister on the queer street.
The guy tasted canvas in almost every ring in Europe and good, ol' USA.....
Knocked down/out by Purrity, Wiliamson, Peter, Sanders, Brewster and a slew of other bums from his younger days.
But getting back to that uppercut that "would've" killed Frazier.
Holy and Mercer didn't seem to have much problems eating much harder shots from a much better Lewis.

 

True but I don't think Lewis was quite as seasoned against Mercer in 1996 where he was still a little wet behind the ears under his new trainer Steward. Against Holyfield, Lewis showed far too much respect. He didn't show anywhere near that type of respect against Vitali. Probably thinking "White Boy will quit as soon as I touch him" as most were expecting. LOL!

 

Well, Lewis wasn't too far off in his assesment, but he managed to beat the living shit out of Vitaly, before Vitaly had a chance to quit, as was Vitaly's habit in all of his earlier fights, where he encountered a bit of resistance....

 

::

 

:mut:

 

yes, I agree, but we both know the circle that boxing is currently moving in doesn't involve any degree of knowledge of these things...these days nobody would appreciate Basilio vs Fullmer.......people wanna seeeeee bllooooooooood brah.