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

I’m afraid you don’t get it. Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield (for much of his heavyweight prime) and George Foreman and many others were successful both financially and in the ring results-wise without King.

Lewis fought for that vacant title. King didn’t promote it. Lewis was a former champ with one loss, same as Tyson was until he collected a couple of belts post-prison. Was Tyson a bigger draw? Of course. But that only makes a Lewis fight more makable — if Lewis was a ‘nobody,’ what were Peter McNeely and Buster Mathis Jr and Frank Bruno (Tyson had already KO’d him) and Bruce Seldon, lol? Yet those fights got made.

As did, after Evander had tucked Mikey into bed and put him to sleep a couple of times, fights between Tyson and Botha, Orlin Norris, Lou Savarese, Brian Nielsen to name a few all got made. None of those nor the four mentioned above were any more marketable than Lewis and in all cases but possibly Bruno (because of UK money/fans behind him), and he wasn’t exactly a star attraction.

Don King wasn’t the only promoter in the world nor the only successful one. Tyson-Lewis could have been made, but only if Tyson wasn’t playing duck-duck-goose (or in this case duck-duck-duck). Tyson gave up a world championship rather than fight him. That’s a fact you can’t get around.

 

Lewis did exactly the same but more times - after the fight with Holyfield, first he escaped from Ruiz, then Byrd, at the same time he was forgiven by Mercer who gave him a draw fight and finally gave the title to Klitschko, although at the beginning of the 20th century there was no bigger and more necessary fight. to do than the Lewis-Klitschko rematch. But this is business... Foreman did the same by not wanting to give the fight to Tucker and the rematch with Schulz, and Bowe did the same by not wanting to fight Lewis, who was not interested in anyone at that time. It was because of such pseudo-champions as Lewis, Bowe, Tyson, Foreman that the 1990s did not gain the same prestige as the 1970s. I think that there were a few fights missing: Holy-Tyson in 1991, Bowe-Lewis 1993, but above all, Tyson's fall and his going to prison.

 

Not much to add to this. Sums it up quite perfectly.

 

If fighters called all the shots then what the hell do you think managers and promoters do? If Tyson had decided to go independent of King to make the Lewis fight it might have been in direct violation of their contract and hence legal and financial problems. When you say Tyson “ ducked “ Lewis it completely circumvents any reality of the business and circumstances under which he was operating.

 

They were a close second but the 70s was it

 

It was the introduction of the Super Heavyweight
Lewis, Bowe were 6’5
Klitchkos 6’6 and 6’7
And the average heavyweight is getting bigger
Time to introduce a Super Heavyweight division
They are taking the shine off histories great heavyweight
Marciano 186lb and 5’10
Louis 203lb and 6’3
Holmes 208lb and 6’4
Ali 212lb and 6’3
The lump Tyson Fury is 270lb and 6’9
Rest my case

 

Then nobody ducked anybody ever, right?

Tyson was the biggest individual draw in all of sport. A cash cow. Don King had literally hundreds of millions of reasons to keep Mike happy. If Mike said ‘I’m not giving the WBC belt up, you make it happen,’ Don isn’t going to let him go .. he’s going to do business to keep Mike on his roster.

 

You have a habit of making assumptions

 

You have a habit of giving Tyson a pass.

He gave up a belt to not fight Lennox Lewis. That’s fact. You can ‘Don King this’ and ‘Don King that’ all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact.

 

I used to think of Lennox Lewis as T-Rex...

 

You’re right, Pat !! It is indeed a fact!! He relinquished the WBC belt to face another belt holder then an all time great at the direction of his promoter whom he was in a contract with and who controlled nearly all of boxing !! Facts are awesome to make your case but it’s a b!tch when someone throws a little context in there !!

 

Gotcha.
PPV killed Boxing as a mass sport.

Back in the 70s and 80s you could get all the big fights in public TV; thus there was a general awareness and a huge following of casuals supporting the ranks of the hardcore fans.

Come the 90s and promoters realized how much money they could get from hardcores with PPV, killing free access.

And that was it.

Nowadays boxing is just another niche sport, as tennis or golf.
Gone forever is the cultural trascendence and popular status boxing achieved in the 70s - 80s.
A pity.

 

In 1988 you could walk up to a 10 year old girl on the street and ask her who the heavyweight champion of the world was and she’d say “ Mike Tyson. “ Today you could walk into a sports bar with grown men who follow the latest in sports and most of them wouldn’t know who Usyk is