Klitschko angry as doctor saves lethargic Lewis
Referee Lou Moret stopped the bloody bout on the advice of ringside doctor Paul Wallace with Klitschko leading 58-56 on all three judges' cards.
Klitschko, bleeding from a cut that had worsened since the third round, protested angrily as the crowd at Staples Center jeered.
"Right now I feel like I am the people's champion," Klitschko said.
"I did not want them to stop the fight under any circumstances. It wasn't easy, but I felt like I was winning. I know I was hurting him with my punches."
Klitschko, the top-ranked WBC challenger who took the fight on 12 days' notice when Canadian Kirk Johnson pulled out, punished Lewis in the first two rounds, staggering him in the second as the champion struggled with an apparent lack of energy as well as Klitschko's unorthodox style.
"It definitely woke me up," Lewis said. "We're big guys. When we land punches it hurts. I hurt him more times than he hurt me."
Lewis responded the third with a couple of big right hands, opening the ugly cut in the crease of Klitschko's eyelid.
In the fourth both looked tired, and when Lewis missed with a big hook the momentum toppled him over on top of Klitschko.
"Lennox Lewis don't have good condition. He was very heavy," Klitschko said of Lewis, who weighed in for the bout at 256 pounds, the heaviest of his career.
His previous heaviest was 253, when he was stunned by Hasim Rahman in the fifth round in April 2001.
"I saw every punch," Klitschko said. "He never punched me hard with his right hand because I saw every punch.
"It was my strategy to make him tired. You saw him. He clinched more and more."
"I wasn't the one out of shape," Lewis countered. "He was the one doing all the holding, so I do not know what he's talking about."
Lewis was also irritated when Klitschko said after the fight that the cut started with a headbutt.
"The fact that he said I headbutted him disappointed me," Lewis said. "He had five separate cuts. You can't get that from a headbutt."
Although Klitschko, who suffered his second defeat in 34 fights, was leading, Lewis had rocked him with an uppercut in the sixth.
"I was getting to him," insisted Lewis, who improved to 41-2-1 with 32 victories inside the distance. "There's no way he could have finished the fight.
"He was just deteriorating. He would have gotten knocked out in the next couple of rounds. It was just a matter of time.
"He's lucky the referee stopped the fight. Look at the state of his face."
Doctor Paul Wallace said it wasn't bleeding but swelling of the eyelid that forced him to stop the fight.
"I thought the corner did a fairly good job of controlling the blood," Wallace said. "He was able to defend himself at all times.
"When I went into ring the second time, I asked him to look at me. When he raised his head up, his upper eyelid covered his field of vision. He had to move his head to see me.
"If he had to move his head to see me, there was no way he could defend himself, so I had no choice. I had to stop the fight."
Klitschko said: "I see very well. I don't know why doctors stopped the fight. I feel very well. I can fight.
"I want rematch," Klitschko said. "I beat him. I beat Lewis. I know that."
Both fighters gave up money to make the fight on short notice. Their original appearance on the same card Lewis against Johnson and Klitschko against Cedric Boswell had been meant to pave the way for a lucrative pay-per-view title clash later in the year.
Lewis, who at 37 became the third-oldest fighter to defend a heavyweight title, after George Foreman and Jersey Joe Walcott, said he'd consider it.
"If it calls for it, if the money is right, definitely," he said.
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