Excellent round, Lennox took many punches here, but landed big shots as well. Mavrovic was so unbelievably skinny compared to Lennox, yet he somehow took his power shots.
He retired because he got deathly ill right after this fight, and maybe even before it. He had a muscle eating disease and lost like 100 pounds in six months. He recovered and even tried to make a comeback in 2012, but was injured in training. I believe he has a successful winery. It's been years since I read his story, but it was intention to keep fighting after a better than expected performance against Lennox.
Interesting that Lewis said Mavrovic had the best footwork among all his opponents and it was the main factor that enabled him to have more success against him compared to a lot much more accomplished fighters. If that's the case, Usyk movement would present a lot of troubles for Lewis cause he is on another level footwork-wise, overall skill-wise, IQ-wise while being the same height as Mavrovic and having much larger frame
Usyk also got hit with alot of uppercuts from Fury who's not a noted puncher if that was Lewis landing those type of uppercuts it would be a different story.
I have long argued that Lewis did not fight masterfully, but managed his career masterfully. That's why his CV is much more impressive than he himself was. Zejlko was a big cruiser in this fight, smaller than Usyk, worse than Usyk, weaker than Usyk and much easier to hit.
I agree completely with your comparison of Mavrovic and Usyk and I understand what you mean by saying Lewis managed his career masterfully. Yet, I consider him great, excellent fighter. Yes, he never beat a prime ATG opponent and two biggest names he has beaten were much smaller than him and one of them was past his prime while another one was downright shot. Still, Lennox had impressive run against good contenders like Ruddock, Golota, Tua and others. He could box and he could fight and - more importantly - knew when he had to box and when he had to fight. He could look impressive and could look boring but still dominant. He wasn't unbeatable even at his best but he was very, very good