Why the 90s aren't the golden HW era?

Don wasn’t champion. Mike was. If Mike didn’t want to give up the title, he could have insisted on defending against Lewis … and Don could have either promoted it or given up his options. (Trust me, he’d have promoted it.) Mike got paid handsomely no matter who he faced so I don’t see that as an issue.

 

And if Lewis really wanted to face Tyson he would've gone with King. I don' think it was Mike's choice as much as Lewis not wanting to sign with King. To get to Tyson you have to go through Don King. Hell, Holyfield did it! Why couldn't Lewis?

 

Because Lewis didn’t want to sign with a criminal who would rob him blind, as Don did with Tyson and many others.

He was the mandatory challenger. He didn’t have to sign with King. It would go to purse bids and those don’t come with options or mandatory rematch clauses or anything of the sort.

If Don wanted to promote Tyson-Lewis, he would have had to win the bid. And if his guy lost, then he still has the biggest attraction in the sport (Tyson) under his promotional banner, but he doesn’t have the heavyweight champ.

If Mike “The Baddest Man on the Planet” Tyson chose to hide behind Don King’s skirt and give up a title to avoid Lennox, shame on him.

 

You're still stuck on surface level basic boxing used to manipulate the public. Mainstream media and boxing magazine nonsense.

Purse bids? Why would King go to purse bids when he made more money fighting Holyfield than 3 fights with Lewis?

I don't think you understand even a rudimentary sense of what goes on behind the scenes. It's more thinly veiled now but back then?

 

King wouldn’t have any choice but to go to purse bids or make Lewis an offer too attractive to refuse.

I have quite a good idea what goes on behind the scenes.

But what went on behind the scenes in this particular case is very transparent:

1) Lewis was the mandatory

2) Tyson had to either defend vs. him or give up the title

3) He gave up the title

Tyson had the power to make it happen. He tells Don King he’s going to defend his title against the mandatory and if Don wants to promote it he needs to sort out a deal with Lewis or win the purse bid.

You’re the one playing fantasy land: A mandatory contender should sign with Don King if he wants a shot at the title? LOL. He didn’t sign with King and he won that title. And later he got to fight Tyson for tons of money … and Don King wasn’t the promoter.

 

Thank you.

 

Yet it is inescapable that Tyson ducked him … he gave up a world championship in order not to face him.

He only fought him later because he was broke (from Don King, who you say Lewis should have signed with, bleeding him dry) and he had to take the beating to make the money (iirc it all went to pay off delinquent tax bills, or a big chunk of it did).

 

The short answer?

Freaking Bowe dumping his belt in the trash. That was the first domino, the canon event that set in motion a chain of nonsense tainting the division for years.

Imagine if we had gotten Lewis vs Bowe for all the belts. Two big, strong, skilled undefeated heavies with bad blood from their amateur days. Murica vs the U.K. The fight sells itself...! But because we didn't get it, that whole decade always felt like it was lacking some sort of luster. A trilogy between Lewis and Bowe could've been the greatest series of fights in the history of HW boxing had they both been in shape and focused. Simply having those 2 fighting could've made the decade surpass the 70's.

 

That isn’t how the sport works and certainly not under Don King productions

 

Explain it to me.

If Mike Tyson informs the WBC he’s fighting the mandatory, it goes up for bid. Don either bids or he does not. If he bids, he either wins or he does not (and it’s well in his interest to win the bid rather than lose Tyson).

What exactly does Don do if the biggest cash cow in all of boxing tells him he wants to go through with his mandatory and if King isn’t interested he’ll find another promoter who will promote it?

 

Tyson probably winds up in prison again for the "R" word...

 

So In your little world a multi million dollar business is the equivalent of freshman year in high school where one kid says to the other “ fight me or your chicken shlt ? “ Interesting…. You’re entitled to your perspective of course, though I think you’d be in the minority. Don King not only had complete control over Tyson but also many of the top contenders of the day. It was complicated. Evander Holyfield vs Mike Tyson was the fight the boxing world had been waiting to see since 1990 and here it finally was. Both of them considered the other as his chief rival and there was both plenty of money and respect to be gained from the meeting. And I don’t think Lennox was too unhappy about getting 4 million for doing nothing but sitting back and waiting his turn for the super pay days which came later against both men.

 

Or he could have fought Lewis and then fought Evander. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

I’m not saying Tyson SHOULD have fought Lewis instead of Holyfield. I’m saying he could have and he gave a belt rather than do so.

A thing is what it is. It is not something else. If it’s a duck when other champions give up belts rather than fight their top-ranked mandatory contender, then it’s a duck when Tyson does it. Which he did.

He doesn’t get to hide behind Don King’s skirt. He gave up a world championship belt rather than fight Lennox Lewis. That’s absolute fact.

I understand that for many (perhaps even most) on this forum, Tyson is the most special of all special snowflakes and nothing applies to him (he gets an asterisk for literally every loss from some, he cries about rules when he tried to break people’s arms, he admits to cheating drug tests but oh no Mike would never use PEDs and if he did, he’d admit it right way lol and more, etc) … but in the final analysis, he ducked Lewis whatever reason you want to put on it.

 

Money or business aint your thing....................

Boxing IS a BUSINESS.....with huge money involved.

Lewis was a nobody when he was stopped quickly by a B level fighter, End of.

There was zero $$$, zero public demand and zero juice with Lewis to push it thru

Don King was Boxing, no ifs or buts, HBO and Showtime sang his tune not the other way around, you wanted to make big fights with mega purses you H A D to go thru King.Fact.

Steve Wynn tried challenging King with the Douglas/Holyfield disaster and never ever did a Major event again because he lost his azz.

Maybe you ask Witherspoon who ran the show in the 80's and 90's.

One more time, Don King was literally Don Corleone at those times with almost everybody in his pocket.

There is no "Honor" in Boxing or Business, just the bottom line, Fact,

 

I loved the era but yes, a lot of fights were there that just didn't happen.