By Terence Dooley
Vitali Klitschko is still finding it hard to let go, the WBC heavyweight champion has been talking about Lennox Lewis once again and is now claiming that Lewis's mother, Violet, is the sole reason there wasn't a rematch between the two men.
“Lennox promised me (a rematch) but his mum decided he wasn't going to fight,” said Klitschko when talking to Sky Sports. “He invited me to London, without managers, he said he wanted to talk just together. I came to the room and his mum is there.
“We talked for two hours and his mum was looking at me and scanning me. After that I went away and he called me a couple of hours later and said 'Sorry, but no'. I felt it wasn't his decision, his mum decided. I tried to change his decision, but it's difficult. But I was appreciative to Lennox Lewis that I got the chance to prove my skills against the toughest fighter in the world. But he was lucky, because I was ahead but the doctor stopped the fight with the cut.”
Vitali is a keen chess player, a scholar also and recently had a run at politics, so he is a clever chap; however the 38-year-old is clearly still struggling to get his head around the basic rules of boxing, as well as the notion of ‘luck’. Sure, Vitali was ahead on points at the conclusion of their 2003 showdown but, crucially, Lewis landed what is commonly known within the sport as a 'punch to the face of his opponent' and this punch, and others, opened up tears on Vitali's face, which are known as 'cuts' within the trade.
Lewis made Vitali look a Hannibal Lecter victim and was correctly awarded a sixth-round TKO win. One can only hope that Vitali, who fights Albert Sosnowski in May, manages to get his head around the rules of the sport and comes to terms with the fact that he lost fairly and squarely to Lewis. As it stands the talk of Lewis is a nice way of distracting people from the fact that Sosnowski, who was set to contest the EBU title against Audley Harrison, is hardly the type of opponent needed to validate Vitali’s legacy.
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