NOPE! Vitali was preparing to fight on the same bill ,against Cedric Boswell and actually started camp earlier than Lewis. Vitali had been made the number one contender after beating Donald and was due to be the next challenger for Lewis.Lewis had been on his radar for over a year.Boswell is 6'3," so only 2 inches shorter than Lewis,Lewis was due to fight Johnson who is 6'2" so Lewis had only 2 weeks to make the adjustment to fight the 5 inches taller Vitali.
Lewis beat every fighter he faced, Vitali never re-matched Byrd and he was in his prime when he quit against him. Change the record, it's boring!
Lewis and Klitishko were negotiating a fight from as far back as Nov-Dec 2002 so the theory that Lewis did not have Vitali on his radar at all and knew nothing about the Klitshko brothers and was not following them is rubbish.
Lewis btw chose to dump his belt in the trash rather than facing Chris Byrd. This thread is about Lewis and the facts are he ran away from Vitali in a highly demanded rematch. The entire world knows Lewis got extremely lucky with the cut caused by his glove strapping, worsened then with the clash of heads and Lewis's punch afterwards. The fight should have been ruled in Vitali's favor as he was ahead on the scorecards. Lewis also lost the fight to Ray Mercer as well who got robbed.
I am quite shocked that this thread is being allowed to continue as, aside from the entertainment value of seeing a couple of trolls making themselves look stupid, it is a total waste of bandwidth and server space. Ffs people, UFC is trolling you, stop rising to the bait and ignore the child.
Kirk Johnson was intended as tune-up fight for Lewis just as Cedric Boswell was intended as tune up fight for Vitali. Both were training for what they thought would be an easy night against opponent far below their level when everything changed with Johnson's injury. So I still dont see any legitimacy to the argument that Vitali was disadvantaged.
Vitali Boswell was a 12 round fight , not 10 rounds. Who had the edge?? It was past-prime , out of shape , reigning champion vs prime , youthful , hungry challenger. A hungry challenger who had set his sights on Lewis since he turned pro. It was a highly motivated and prepared Vitali against unmotivated Lewis who saw his challenger as a push over who lost and ducked a rematch to Chris Byrd. Who had the edge and the advantage? Beyond any shadow of a doubt the fight favored Vitali. What the fight also proved is that prime 90's era Lenny would've beaten Vits from pillar to post in a fight that would have looked identical to Bowe's trashing of Louis Gonzalez