ATG possum plays.

What are the most inspiring displays of "hanging on" that actually paid off? IE someone was in serious trouble but they survived by hook or by crook because they spoiled, ran or just took it on the chin and kept their legs (whatever the case may be) - and they later pulled out the unlikely win after avoiding the big kibosh.

Of course we all know about the insanely ballsy/brilliant calculated gamble that was the first half of the RITJ, but I'd like to nominate Rd 2 of Lewis-Klitschko as being right up there with it.

Lennox had no business not being KTFO in the second. He was on cedar stilts for the better part of two minutes as the mad Ukrainian lumberjack kept chopping away with those right hands and gaining in confidence, throwing them first from a crouch and ultimately from a straight-up position while advancing boldly on the champion. The champ did make it, somehow...and dragged himself on splinters back to his stool where Emanuel Steward looked almost beyond hope and at a rare loss for words.

Then lo and behold, Lewis came back and rallied to win the third (on my card, anyway - given in full below). More importantly, he opened up that fateful cut that would spare him a third loss and permit him to retire from the sport on his own terms - while "on top".

That is pretty damn amazing.

Watch that second round again, if it's been a while. Pay attention to every shot that Vitali lands. Now in the back of your mind, recall "He wins. No matter how close to gone he looks at several points during this eternity of just over two minutes...in the end he wins." There was no attempt by Lewis to win the round, but neither did he exactly get on his bike. It was jab, hold, shove, move away, take a few clipping blows on the chin while trying to tilt back at the neck to make them wash ashore like low tide...a little bit of everything except outright fleeing. Clearly Lewis couldn't have known he was about to open one of boxing's all time nastiest facial craters mere minutes later, but he certainly made an on-the-spot executive decision to give away the 2nd round. Well played, sir.

It was almost over in the 2nd. It's baffling that it wasn't. His KO losses had been from single blasts. He had never been knocked around like that for that long and looked that badly abused. Just by virtue of surviving (itself a feat of greatness), Lennox created the opportunity to open that cut at the very next toll of the bell and in turn the opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The official scorecards were against him and given his level of exhaustion it's unlikely they would have become any kinder. Incidentally, all three judges arrived at exactly the same score as me and therefore the correct one.

1st, 2nd (nearly 10-8 in all honesty), 4th, and 6th to Klitschko due to his constant pestering on the front foot without squaring up to attract counters, and his surgical precision with the big right.

3rd and 5th to Lewis, based respectively on his long skin-ripping right hands and then his short uppercuts and hooks - better than any of the still-considerable power punches VK managed in those rounds.

The closest he'd ever been to getting knocked out cold other than his actual knockout losses, and he comes back to win two rounds and force a stoppage by shredding the flesh of his tormentor.

That is one badass possum.




Any others? :think