He never gave up you fools, he had a broken jaw. And it WAS Lewis who threw in the towel, not Tszyu. BLLG = genius of the year.
http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,15518492-32463,00.html
Tzsyu brought to his knees
By Grantlee Kieza
June 6, 2005
RICKY Hatton said he felt genuine sorrow for Kostya Tszyu after handing out a savage beating that claimed the IBF junior-welterweight title and may have ended his career.
Clean hit ... Tszyu gets a shot in on Hatton.
Pic: Associated Press
"Of course no one likes to see a great champion hurt and stopped," Hatton said, after forcing Tszyu to retire in his corner after 11 brutal rounds fought before 22,000 cheering Englishmen in the cauldron of Manchester's MEN Arena.
"But I'm sure Kostya would rather go out on his shield like he did tonight. He is a true legend and a great warrior and I think if he had to lose he would have wanted to lose in a real war like we turned on. He should have no regrets. If I can achieve half of what Kostya has done in his career I'll be a very proud man."
Tszyu was taken to hospital immediately after the fight with a suspected broken jaw.
Both sides of his face had turned a deep purple and his head had taken on the shape of a soccer ball with all the swelling.
Yet despite the beating he had suffered and the enormous disappointment he felt after 27 years in the fight game, his qualities as a gracious man rather than as a fighter earned him the crowd's respect.
"I am a proud man but I lost to the better fighter," Tszyu said.
"I planned lots of things but Ricky was better than me in every way tonight.
"It is still too early to say whether I will fight again."
After 11 rounds the judges' scores were 107-102, 106-103 and 105-104, all for Hatton.
Tszyu arrived at the MEN Arena last night in an enormous stretch limousine surrounded by 80 bodyguards, hired in case the crowd went berserk when Tszyu iced their hometown hero as most experts and bookies predicted.
But when Tszyu was being mugged in the 10th and 11th rounds and could feel his title being stolen away, none of the tattooed musclemen hired to protect him could offer any assistance.
Instead it was Tszyu's veteran trainer Johnny Lewis, who with tears in his eyes, surveyed the cut under Tszyu's left eye, the huge swelling on both cheekbones and the weariness in the legs of the 35-year-old war machine and told referee Dave Parris that his boy was done.
Tszyu's promoter Vlad Warton said the decision to end the fight was Lewis's alone.
"Johnny was very emotional at the end, because they've been very close for a long time," Warton said.
"Johnny felt perhaps it was best to pull the plug because we had lost.
"It wasn't Kostya's decision. Normally he wouldn't allow us ..."
Tszyu received $5.4million for the fight while Hatton, who made $3million, created a magic moment for British fight fans equivalent to Randolph Turpin's shock victory over middleweight great Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951.
Hatton, who had earned the nickname of Ricky Fatton because of his bloated appearance between fights, said he had lost more than 20kg to make the junior-welterweight limit of 63.5kg for last night's battle.
He said he couldn't wait to get reacquainted with two of his oldest friends, "Mr Guinness and Mr Dom Perignon" after shunning their company while training. He said his booze ban was just part of a rigorous preparation for the performance of his life.
"I always believed I could stop Kostya," Hatton said. "Kostya is 35 and he had peaked. I'm 26 and just hitting my best now."
Before the opening bell Johnny Lewis tipped Hatton's whirlwind style would make it the most exciting fight of Tszyu's career.
The fight lived up to its hype, a toe-to-toe brawl that featured several low blows by Tszyu in round nine, culminated by a blatant foul from Hatton that put Tszyu on his knees.
"Well it's a fight, it's not a tickling contest," said an unapologetic Hatton.
From the outset Hatton had elected to take the fight to the heavier hitting Tszyu and wear him down.
He had immediate success but the Tszyu camp believed Hatton would eventually run out of gas. He didn't.
"You have to have a lot of bottle and courage to fight Kostya Tszyu like that," Hatton said.
"To take him head on and try to get inside his powerful punches.
"The fight went pretty much as I expected. I knew Kostya would be especially dangerous for the first four or five rounds but I wanted to take the fight to him."
The Daily Telegraph
