DALLAS, 9 June 2003 — Canadian Kirk Johnson has pulled out of his world heavyweight title fight against champion Lennox Lewis in Los Angeles on June 21 because of injury, organizers said on Saturday.
Johnson sustained a torn chest muscle in sparring at his Dallas-Fort Worth training camp on Wednesday and doctors ruled him out of the fight on Friday. The 30-year-old first felt a twinge after throwing a left uppercut. Dr Alan Stockard of Fort Worth took an MRI scan on Friday and diagnosed a torn left pectoral muscle.
Stockard said Johnson would need four to six weeks of complete rest but would not need surgery since it was only partially torn. The fight was to be Lewis’s first in more than a year since he knocked out former champion Mike Tyson in Memphis last June. Their fight contract had stipulated a rematch, but Lewis said this week he would not fight Tyson again.
“I won’t ever fight Tyson again,” said Lewis. “That’s over. He’s seriously scared of me and his time has passed. He (Tyson) must have had bad dreams about the beating I gave him in Memphis last June.”
