Vitali Klitschko lost to the worst version of Lennox

Johnson fought for the WBA a year earlier and had beat Savarese in the meantime.

 

i personally prefer fighters who face the challange and also take a loss with honor instead of fighters who avoid to fight when they only can or fight only carefully cherrypicked opponents turning pro boxing into a wrestling event .

So i give wlad respect here

 

While Lewis was actively trying to set up another fight with a different opponent and retired when the WBC enforced the ruling to fight Vitali.

 

Vitali did the same thing when Rahman was a mandatory. He wanted to fight Brewster, but the WBC enforced him to fight Hasim.

 

Sure - and it's not like he was totally shot, he could still have beaten most of the division when he finally did call it a day... And would've had a good chance of winning the rematch with Fury, IMHO.

I guess it's sad in some ways to see previously dominant champs declined to the point that they're losing fights they'd have breezed in the past... In that sense, they've gone on just slightly too long.

At the same time, without a changing of the guard passing the flame on, new eras don't feel right for a while... And of course the concept of lineal champions (as silly as it sometimes is already) would be completely redundant if champs retired at the right time.