Yeah, he opened a lot of eyes by continuing to fight pretty well in the next two rounds after his "third eye" was opened in the third. Between that and coming back to stop Sanders after being stunned in the first, he's done enough to earn the status, imo.
Yes, Vitali took his lashing like a man after the Lion seized control from him and opened a can of whoop-ass (and then ran the jagged edges of the can lid over his face). Too bad he ruined it with the little tantrum display, departing from reality and believing he indeed won the event, thumping his chest and saluting the crowd and soaking in all the "you were the better man!" adulation and flakes of ego-chow being sprinkled into the tank. Sore loser, playing up the whole "Yeah! Preach it! I took it to him and was up on the cards!" angle and going through his little mock celebration. Warrior during the action. Punk in the aftermath.
It's pretty sad that someone thinks they won the match when the entire crowd that was cheering you at the beginning ends up booing you at the end.
Boxers don't train to cut up their opponents faces. Winning on cuts is pretty illegitimate especially when getting outboxed the entire fight. It's something called luck, and that's the problem. Lennox Lewis lucked out to have the doctor end the fight. Out of 10 fights, Vitali wins 9. The fight proved that Vitali is much better technically and just look at the compubox stats. Vitali dominated every single statistical factor, landing many more power shots along with many more punches. Vitali almost put down Lewis 2x in the first 6, imagine what he'd do after that where he always does better in the 2nd half of the fight? There's a thing called luck in sports: Lewis was lucky, but he isn't more skilled than Vitali. If you think so, you're an idiot and you never watched the bout. Vitali did win the event, because he showed that he was better and Lewis was simply lucky.