I think Lewis would have knocked the hell out of Mike anytime after prison. I don't think LL was seasoned enough before that. Bowe quite possibly was.
"Because of some bull(you know what's next) lawsuit by Lennox Lewis, I had to relinquish my WBC belt right after the Seldon fight. Lewis was the mandatory challenger, but I wanted to unify the titles. So now I just had the WBA belt and my next opponent was Evander Holyfield."
Actually, Lewis was the WBC mandatory and was supposed to fight the winner of Tyson-Bruno II. Don King went to court to block Lennox's challenge because King wanted to stage the Tyson-Seldon fight. The court ruled in Lennox's favor. But King was determined to make the Seldon unification. So King paid Lewis $4 million to step-aside and Lewis was promised the first fight after Tyson-Seldon. If he didn't accept, they said they could just vacate the WBC belt and fight Seldon anyway. Lewis agreed because he wanted to fight Tyson. He didn't want to fight for a vacant belt. That said, at some point, everything got fuzzy. Tyson was announced as the WBC Heavyweight Champion before the fight but he was also announced as the challenger. The WBC belt supposedly wasn't on the line but the WBC honored Don King the day of the fight for promoting "some crazy number" of WBC title fights. The fight was billed as only for the WBA belt but it was also billed as Champion vs. Champion. So they could bill it as a unification but at the same time technically say it wasn't ... I don't know. And then, almost immediately after Tyson-Seldon, Tyson gave up the WBC belt. So Lewis got paid to step aside and then Tyson gave up the belt anyway to defend his WBA belt (he won against Seldon) against Holyfield. None of it made much sense. I don't know why Tyson-King paid Lewis if they were just going to give up the belt anyway. But it allowed them to hype the Seldon fight as Champion vs. Champion. So most people had the impression it was a unification, even though it wasn't. Weird. So, was that a duck?
As part of that stepaside deal, Lewis was also supposed to get the chance to finally face Riddick Bowe in addition to receiving the $4 million. But Bowe had that riot fight against Golota, and that was the 4th time a wouldbe match between Bowe and Lewis fell apart. But as for the thread title, I don't EVER recall hearing anyone claim that Tyson ducked Lewis between 89-92. I believe that was because Bowe-Lewis was canned. If Lewis wasn't gonna get the chance to fight Bowe, he wanted that title shot. So Bowe's showing against Golota in July 1996 probably factored into all of that. Golota screwed up King's plan
This is 100% on point. Tyson was the #1 ranked contender by all 3 alphabet bodies, and Ruddock was the #2 contender according to all 3, as well.
I guess from the Tyson detractors they say "Tyson was scared of Foreman , because his trainer told him the style was all wrong" and as far as Lennox ,, it probably has to do with all the side-aside confusion along with Tyson vacating the belt ----- Do you believe Tyson ducked Lennox after he was released from prison?
