{"id":3114,"date":"2018-10-01T18:35:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T18:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wbcboxing.com\/dos-grandes-se-reencuentran-15-anos-despues\/"},"modified":"2018-10-25T21:40:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T21:40:20","slug":"sixty-stitches-fifteen-years-two-greats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wbcboxing.com\/en\/sixty-stitches-fifteen-years-two-greats\/","title":{"rendered":"Sixty stitches fifteen years two greats!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

By James Blears<\/p>\n

Fifteen years have elapsed since their extraordinary\u00a0 fight, which Vitali dubs, as a small piece of boxing history.<\/p>\n

Yet the classic match\u00a0 against WBC Champion Lennox Lewis seems to improve with age, like a vintage port or a fine claret. The seeping hues involved were strikingly similar.<\/p>\n

Delegates at the WBC Convention in Kiev, held their breath, as Lennox, somberly donned white boxing gloves.\u00a0 While Vitali pulled on\u00a0 black.<\/p>\n

Then a collective and audible sigh of relief, as the pair of them, decided to swop clusters of humorous, wry, occasionally piquent and slightly barbed references referring to their battle of the Titans.<\/p>\n

Punctuated by\u00a0 a hand on the shoulder tongue in cheek observations, Lennox suggested that if Vitali had made some unpleasant comment about his family, following their first fist fight, then\u00a0 he just might have been inflamed enough to not have hung up his gloves. But…Vitali was far too much a gentleman.\u00a0 Originally supposed to be fighting\u00a0 Kirk Johnson, until Vitali came up into the frame’ Lennox ruefully reflected:\u00a0 “Never take a fight on sixteen days notice!”<\/p>\n

Vitali hotly contests that even a baseball couldn’t have\u00a0 knocked him down or out, that night saying: ” You know you were so lucky in that fight.” To which Lennox laconically countered: “you couldn’t finish me with one eye.\u00a0 You needed two.”<\/p>\n

A wicked right cross from Lennox opened a divot of a cut on Vitali’s right eyelid in round three, which worsened.\u00a0 And the fight was stopped before the seventh. Vitali talked about his combos,\u00a0 while Lennox lauded landed\u00a0 right uppercuts.<\/p>\n

Dr Paul Wallace who’s head of the WBC’s Medical Committee was the Ring Doctor that now long ago night. Wisely suggesting the gash\u00a0 was too severe to repair ringside.\u00a0 Saving a great fighter to fight on another day.<\/p>\n

Lennox joked\u00a0 to Vitali:\u00a0 “You could have been mayor and president….but not on that night.\u00a0 Yet it was my hardest fight!”<\/p>\n

Vitali replied: “with heavyweights, just one punch can change everything!”<\/p>\n

Great exchanges!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n