Tom Loeffler told how he organized the fight between Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko in 2003

Famous promoter Tom Leffler told the full story of organizing the legendary fight between Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko, which took place on June 21, 2003.

"Vitali Klitschko had been a mandatory challenger for a long time, and the WBC said, 'OK, Lennox, you can make another voluntary defense, against Kirk Johnson.' Mind you, we brought Vitali in, Mike Tyson had to fight in the co-main event to sell tickets, and Lennox was the champion in the main event. We told Wladimir and Vitali, who were in Los Angeles: Let's go to the press conference.

Lennox Lewis had just talked to the media, told them that Klitschko was the mandatory challenger, and as soon as you got out of the car, Steve Kim, my friend and journalist, came to the car and said, Tom, Mike Tyson turned down the show. You've got to put Vitali in the co-main event of the show with Lennox Lewis. And all of a sudden I was like, "Yeah, that's a good idea.

We go there, we give interviews, and all the media want to talk to the Klitschko brothers as well. Wladimir is an Olympic gold medalist ... and then I asked promoter Gary Shaw if he would put Vitali on HBO. Gary didn't want to put Vitali on, he wanted to put one of his fighters on. But then we had a good relationship with Tim Leiweke from AEG, who managed the Staples Center (the arena where the fight was to take place - ed.). They decided to put Vitali because they needed someone who people would go to. There were a lot of Russian-speaking people in Los Angeles, and it was supposed to look like if Vitali wins his fight and Lennox Lewis wins his fight, they will fight each other as a mandatory title defense. And, of course, we put it in the co-main event. Then what happened happened: Kirk Johnson got injured and pulled out of the fight.

HBO had a little over two weeks before the fight, Johnson got injured while sparring. And they told Vitali and Lennox, "If you want to fight, the only way to save this show is if you guys fight each other. Lennox, if you don't fight Vitali, we're going to have to postpone the show." Then the WBC said, OK, since Kirk Johnson got injured, now the next person you have to fight is Vitali Klitschko.

So we knew we had to fight him one way or another, and he agreed to fight Vitali. We were sitting in our lawyer's office, we discussed everything with Vitali and we asked: Do you agree to this fight? And he was like, I've been waiting my whole life to fight for the WBC world title. I'm going to fight Lennox Lewis.

It was one of the most exciting heavyweight fights I've seen. Vitali was winning the fight four rounds to two, but suffered a big dissection. Unfortunately, the doctor stopped the fight and Vitali definitely wanted to keep it going. Starting that fight, everyone knew what kind of champion Lennox Lewis was. Eighty percent of the fans were rooting for Lennox because they didn't know who the big Ukrainian was. Then, when Vitali showed so much courage and desire to continue, he jumped into the ropes and I could swear that 80 percent of the fans were rooting for Vitali. Literally in one night he won over all those fans. Unfortunately, Lennox never came out for the rematch. Instead, he gave up the title. Then Vitali actually became the champion in his next fight, against Corrie Sanders," Leffler said.