Bowe vs. Lewis, late 92' or 93'?

You say this, then proceed to quote a bunch of crap that Rock Newman said at one time or another.

The $32million HBO offer was widely reported. That was the fight they wanted. Bowe/Newman offered Lewis $3m. That's not the 25% Lewis was guaranteed. So Lewis/Maloney understandably said no. The Mayweather approach, offer a ridiculous purse split and then blame the other guy when he refuses. Then they came up with a different offer, whereby Lewis would fight on a Bowe undercard, then at a later date fight Bowe for $9m. But why should Lewis fight on a Bowe undercard against someone else when he already earned his title shot?

And Lewis did eventually accept the $3m offer, even though Maloney was against it. Newman still said no.

December 11, 1992
NEW YORK -- Rock Newman's holiday shopping list took him to the Manhattan offices of Fox-TV and HBO Thursday in search of lucrative stocking stuffers for new heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe. But one gift Bowe's manager likely will reject came from No. 1 contender Lennox Lewis, who is offering to fight Bowe next for an "insulting" $3 million, the boxing equivalent of coal in the stocking.

According to Lewis' manager, Frank Maloney, the British heavyweight is willing to settle for one-tenth of an expected $30-million purse to be Bowe's first challenger, over Maloney's strenuous objections. "The offer is an absolute insult," Maloney said. "I have told Lennox not to accept it. But (he) is adamant that he wants to fight Bowe and, at the end of the day, if he insists... We will have to talk again with Bowe's people. The fight will be in April and we will demand that Bowe has no warmup fight beforehand."

But Newman said Lewis' change of heart -- he and Maloney rejected the same offer last week -- is too late to sway him from a course that likely will have Bowe defend his title either on Fox Jan. 31, during halftime of NBC's Super Bowl telecast, or in February on HBO. "If I make a deal, then Lennox Lewis goes to the back of the line, and chances are slim Bowe would fight him in 1993," Newman said.

So yeah, after all that you can hardly blame Lewis for taking the Tucker fight for more money instead. By the way, the $11m offer came later, when Lewis was already committed to others fights (Bruno and Morrison).

While Bowe's next opponents were... Dokes and Ferguson? What would you call them if not pushovers? And how much was Bowe paid for those fights, $7million apiece or thereabouts? How much would he have made from any reasonable split of the HBO offer? Great management from Newman there.

In any case, you can just ignore the words and watch what they do and draw your own conclusions. Besides all the Lewis stuff, when Bowe makes back to back joke defences against Dokes and Ferguson, and Newman is mentioning the likes of Francesco Damiani and Alex Garcia as potential title opponents, and tries to renege on the rematch clause with Holyfield, and talks about fighting a 40-something George Foreman, it's pretty obvious they're looking for as many soft touches as they can get away with.

 

Mandatory challenger usually gets 40% on purse bids. Of course he turned it down. Bowe vacated when compelled to fight Lewis. That's all we need to know.

 

Agreed, Lewis won't be there for Bowe like Holyfield was

 

Bowe fought Ferguson because he upset top ranked Ray Mercer.. Who did 93 Tucker beat? Who did Phil Jackson beat?
Frank Bruno was Lewis first defence after he beat the ghost of Paul Williams and went life n death with Coetzer.
So what who Bowe fought??..Look who Lewis fought... Bowe was meant to fight Lewis , but Lewis did not want it.

One again ,

The 90/10 split was based off a proposed $32 million deal from HBO which spanned two fights.. That never materialized and was just talk.
But even when it was just talk , Lewis camp still were negative in negotiations , calling the split 'absurd ' , despite it earning Lewis far more than his 25% mandatory split

That was still after the Lewis camp turned down every fair and standard offer to make the fight.

$3 million was Lewis mandatory split. The exact same Bowe received when he challenged Holyfield. Bowe never demanded a higher split from Holyfield. He accepted without any complaints , unlike Lewis.

Lewis camp rejected the obligatory 25% as a mandatory challenger. Thats not my version of events. Thats exactly what happened.

If that wasn't bad enough , Maloney was black mailing team Bowe using the offer they got from King to fight Tony Tucker for $9M.

Maloney is on record saying they wouldn't fight Bowe for less than 9 million.

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The ducking of Bowe by Lewis is one of the worst ducks and cover-ups in the history of the sport. The situation was complicated and went on for years. A singe link on wkipedia has never told the full story.

 

Sure he would. He was there for past prime Burno. He was there for Olly McCall.. Lewis was not prime during those years. He peaked late , Bowe peaked early.
Bowe was the complete package , Lewis clearly wasn't. The ego of Lewis prevented him of taking the fight as he knew Bowe had a real chance of ironing him out.
The is the Lewis we're talking about.

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Ferguson was 2-4 in his last six fights, 19-9 overall. If Lewis fought him, I'm sure you wouldn't give him a pass. It was considered such a joke the IBF wouldn't even sanction it as a title fight. Bruno was mentioned as a potential Bowe opponent as well, by the way.

Tucker was Lewis' mandatory, you know like Lewis was Bowe's mandatory. He was also 49-1 going in, unbeaten in six years, and the only loss was to some fella named Tyson. And frankly he gave a far better account of himself than Dokes or Ferguson did.

90/10 is absurd. You've also ignored that all of Newman's offers came with conditions that were never likely to be accepted, like Lewis had to fight someone else on a Bowe undercard first, or Lewis had to vacate the WBC belt, or he wanted options on Lewis' first defence if he should beat Bowe. Newman tried exactly the same with Holyfield and the Duvas by the way, and went to court to try and wriggle out of the rematch clause.

Obviously you ignored the article I posted where Lewis accepted the $3million offer, against Maloney's advice, and Newman still said no.

According to Lewis' manager, Frank Maloney, the British heavyweight is willing to settle for one-tenth of an expected $30-million purse to be Bowe's first challenger, over Maloney's strenuous objections. "The offer is an absolute insult," Maloney said. "I have told Lennox not to accept it. But (he) is adamant that he wants to fight Bowe and, at the end of the day, if he insists... We will have to talk again with Bowe's people. The fight will be in April and we will demand that Bowe has no warmup fight beforehand."

The mandatory split is 25%, not a set figure. Holyfield's guarantee was $5m to Bowe's $3m, and taking account of fight revenues Holyfield ended up with around $15m and Bowe $7m. That's definitely not exactly the same as what Newman/Bowe were offering Lewis.

It's your version of events. The two parties were given time by the WBC to come to an agreement amongst themselves, or it would go to purse bids, where Lewis was guaranteed 25%. Bowe/Newman pulled the plug and dumped the belt before it went to purse bids.

That's not blackmail, it's a pretty bog standard negotiating tactic. "Why should I accept X if I can make Y somewhere else?" No wonder Bowe/Newman preferred to face Jesse Ferguson and Michael Dokes, guys on the fringes who would take whatever crappy share of the purse they were offered. Ferguson made $500k to Bowe's $7m, a 93/7 split.

The ducking of Lewis by Bowe remains one of the most infamous ducks in boxing history. Your spinning and selective quotes from scattered news articles without context doesn't change anything.

 

No , its standard that the mandatory challenger receives a fraction of what the champion makes. There's no room for negotiation. You either want the fight or you don't , Lewis didn't , hence why he made demands and rejected offers.
If he had just signed the papers like every other mandatory challenger , they fight would have been made easily.

As you said yourself , why fight Bowe , when he could fight Tucker for more. Most guys want to beat the man , rather than acquiring a title out of the dustbin.

 

And yet the guy dumping the belt so that he didn't have to face Lewis was Bowe.

 

Those figures are incorrect. Holy made $17m , Bowe made $5.5.

Lewis never received an offer lower than the same guarantee of $3M.

It would have been a career high payday and a shot at all the belts against the undisputed Champ. Lewis made negotiations extremely difficult because he knew he could get the vacant belt for better money. AND without taking a loss.

 

25% is the minimum a mandatory can expect to receive, it's not set in stone and if he thinks he can negotiate a better deal, he can. In any case, that's for the purse bids, which Bowe/Lewis never got to. Tyson was Lewis' mandatory in 2002. Think that purse split was 75-25 in Lewis' favour?

Why fight Lewis when you can fight Jesse Ferguson who will take $500k and you get $7million? Most champions want to defend against the best, not trash their belts and blatantly avoid their #1 contender.

 

Holyfield was guaranteed $5 million and Bowe $3 million, but with their percentage of revenues Holyfield figures to earn around $15 million and Bowe $7 million. (NYT, November 14, 1992)

Bowe's guarantee for Lewis wasn't $5m. And Lewis eventually accepted the $3m offer. And Newman still said no. By then he was on about staging a fight at half-time during the Superbowl, or something.

It would have been a career high payday for Bowe too, a huge fight against his unbeaten #1 contender (that he'd already agreed to by signing up to the four man tourney) and to actually have a single fight as undisputed champion. Why risk a loss to your old amateur nemesis when you can just dump the belt and beat up Dokes and Ferguson instead.

Bowe/Newman never wanted Lewis. Immediately after beating Holyfield, Bowe's camp were evasive about fighting Lewis and seemed more interested in talking up a fight with George Foreman, who was coming off a poor showing against Alex Stewart. So they employed what became the standard Mayweather tactic, offer an opponent absurd terms he'll never accept and then blame him when the negotiations fail.

 

Bowe already fought his unbeaten #1 contender for a career high payday against Holyfield. He didn't reject offers or make demands. He signed that papers and that was that.

Lewis is on video calling the same payday - slap in the face money. On the same video he claims he'll take the fight for free and send all the profits to Africa.. But behind the scenes he was putting up roadblock after roadblock.

His actions prove he wasn't enthusiastic about doing whatever had to be done to make the fight... The fight was already on the table. All he had to do was accept the EXACT same terms Bowe accepted for Holyfield.

This is a good unbiased re-telling of the situation. A lot of factors were involved. Its not as simple as Bowe throwing the belt in the bin to avoid Lewis.

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But prime vs prime lewis destroys bowe, he was better at any department

 

Regardless of who you are backing here, we can all agree on this point!

 

That video is really just an overview of their careers and rivalry. It doesn't go into much detail about the negotiations.

Holyfield was the champion, not Bowe's #1 contender. Holyfield's guarantee was only $2m more than Bowe's. And the Duvas didn't insert a bunch of other conditions that Newman was demanding of Lewis. It was not the same terms that were offered to Lewis.

Lewis wanted the fight. He signed up to the tournament. All he wanted was the shot and the 25% split he was entitled to as mandatory challenger, not the 90/10 split originally offered or the "fight on a Bowe undercard first" second offer. He later accepted the $3m offer anyway. And Newman/Bowe still rejected it.