Concerns About the Referee in Lewis-McCall I

The referee did him a favor in the long run.

 

How can it be a hometown ref. For McCall? The fight happened in UK !Lewis hometurf.

 

Well it was both justified and not justified.
Lennox was clearly badly hurt and was on unsteady legs when he got up and you've seen worse stoppages.
On the other hand his gloves were up and he was indicating he was ok, he was after all the heavyweight champion and going off other similar knock downs of champions in the past the champion was allowed to continue.
In my opinion Don King was at work to take the opportunity to grab back the heavyweight title.

 

Count the number of times Lewis staggered/ wobbled after getting up before making up your mind about the stoppage.

 

Lewis leaned on the ref, and likely would've fallen again if the ref wasn't there. I've seen worse stoppages, I think it was the right call. Part of me says heavyweight championship fight, let it continue don't pull the plug so quickly but truth be told the stoppage was fair.

 

The fact that there are so many contrasting opinions debating the merits of the validity of the stoppage more than 20 years later would appear to confirm it was dubious/borderline/questionable.

 

Its debated because Lewis is an ATG and the nature of this defeat for some weakens his position as Top 3 or 5 heavyweight.

 

Do you really think so? I can't see many references in this thread as to how this fight affects LL's ATG rating, what I am reading is people debating the fairness/validity of the stoppage.