Why did Lennox take step-aside money to avoid Tyson?

Well maybe if Tyson didn't spend his best years in prison for **** or getting beat up by Evander Holyfield and then banned for biting Evander Holyfield, then the fight with Lewis may have happened sooner...

 

'Fraid

 

Huh? Tyson paid Lewis the step aside money. It was Tyson avoiding Lewis. If the dude's gonna pay him 4 mil to step aside and not beat his ass, of course he's gonna take it.

 

Exactly. atsch at this thread

 

He took it because he wanted to fight holyfield for more money. It had nothing to do with lewis.

 

Lewis would have pushed Tysons **** in, Tyson knew it, Lewis knew it, everybody knew it. 4 million dollars, damn that is one hell of a duck

 

100%. End of thread.

 

Because he was offered $4m to postpone his mandatory shot for one fight, like every mandatory?

A fight vs Tyson or a fight vs Tyson + $4m - hard decision. Tyson then ducked Lennox.

 

King offered Lewis $4 million step aside money to let Tyson unify vs Seldon, or $13 million to fight Tyson for the title. Lewis took the $4 million and walked away.

 

At that point in time, it was easier to schedule unification matches with other champions than it was to schedule a fight on a different television network.

Lennox Lewis had signed a deal with HBO. Mike Tyson, upon returning to the ring after prison, had agreed to a big contract with the MGM Grand and with Showtime.

The WBC rated Lewis number-one, but BOTH CAMPS knew the fight wasn't going to happen, because Lewis had a deal with HBO and Tyson with Showtime and the networks weren't going to let either boxer fight on the other channel.

(Same thing happened at that time with Roy Jones and James Toney, who fought on HBO, and Gerald McClellan and Nigel Benn on Showtime. The networks wouldn't let them cross over and fight on the other channels, either.)

Since the WBC mandated a step-aside fee if Tyson wasn't going to fight Lewis, Tyson paid one to Lewis to fight Seldon. The goal from Tyson's side was just to get another belt, because once Tyson had the WBA title, he could dump the WBC belt and not have to pay Lewis a step-aside fee again.

So, that's what happened. Tyson beat Seldon and then dumped the WBC belt.

And Lewis fought for the vacant belt on HBO.

When Tyson and Lewis eventually fought, they were both still under contracts with HBO and Showtime. And that was the primary reason they could never reach an agreement.

But, in the end, when the networks felt they'd sucked every last dollar out of both guys, they agreed to a JOINT PPV. Each network got one broadcaster - Showtime sent Bobby Czyz, HBO sent Jim Lampley. Both networks sent a separate crew to call the fight for their network, HBO had Merchant and Roy Jones, I believe. Showtime had Steve Albert and maybe Ferdie Pacheco.

If Tyson won, the replay would ONLY be shown on Showtime. If Lewis won, the fight would only be shown on HBO (with Merchant calling it). And that's what happened. HBO got the rebroadcast rights. (Sort of a winner take all.)

The only other time that happened was with the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight this year. But both channels showed the rebroadcast. (Since neither side wanted to lose the winner-takes-all this time.)

But the Lewis-Tyson step-aside fee was basically a television network fight, not anything to do with the fighters.