Did Tyson really duck Lewis in 96?

Nah, it was the other way around. Ruiz and King ducked Lewis. WBA agreed for Lewis to face Grant and take on Ruiz next. That was the initial plan. But after the Grant fight was already signed, King went to court to enforce mandatory, which at that time was basically to strip Lewis off of the belt. So Ruiz chose to fight for a paper title, instead of taking on the champion.

You can make this case for every fighter who retired on top, lol.

 

Don't know, but it's from the same source that claims Lewis was offered 13.5 million

 

What? You can’t duck someone you just beat by stoppage, lol. Retiring isn’t a duck, it’s hanging them up. He beat Vitali and thus by definition did not duck him.

Credit to Lennox for facing his No. 1 contender on his way out the door.

Mike, however, ducked Lennox. Too bad he couldn’t duck Buster’s jab … or his right, or his hook, etc.

 

Well, purse bids would show if he was worth more or not.

 

No, you let it go to purse bids. If Lennox isn’t worth that in a purse bid split, he gets his share of the bid and you fight him.

They gave Tyson’s team an either/or: Pay us this or take it to purse bids.

Tyson took Door No. 3: Duck and run.

As mandatory challenger, he is by definition worth (for a title shot) exactly what the percentage of the winning bid says he’s worth — that’s literally the open market. If you can bid less than that and win the bid, he gets less. Why didn’t Tyson’s team just put up a winning bid? Because it would have added up to more.

 

It’s pretty simple: Take the purse bid and you’re free and clear.

Take an offer from Don King and:

1) King surely wants options to promote your future defenses — you’re tying yourself to King. Purse bids by rule cannot demand options. King ALWAYS wanted options.

2) How the heck is he going to trust Don King to pay him the $13.5M? Mike Tyson himself would later sue King because King didn’t live up to his contracts. King screwed every fighter he ever dealt with out of money he was supposed to pay them according to their contracts. Why should Lennox bend over for that?

And none of this matters. He’s the mandatory challenger. If he’s not worth all that, surely Tyson’s team could put up a winning purse bid and come out ahead if what you say is true. Wonder why they didn’t do that? Because it would have cost them even more.

(Plus, King wouldn’t be able to rip off Tyson in a purse bid situation — when you win a purse bid, you have a certain number of days to deposit the entirety of both purses into escrow. Then the fighters get paid their guaranteed splits out of that escrow account — King doesn’t control it at that point. No wonder he didn’t want to allow that to happen.)

No matter how you try to justify what Lennox is worth, the purse bids would have settled his value for the fight on the free market. There’s no reason if what you say is true that King wouldn’t have jumped on the chance to put in a lower bid.

Tyson ducked him.

 

Then you’re ducking the guy. He earned that split by becoming the mandatory challenger. That’s the rules.

The fair market sets the price for the fight and the split is predetermined — the entire system is set up to assure the mandatory challenger gets to fight for the title and that the champion’s promoter doesn’t get to dictate the price (unless he wins the bid).

 

Well, I don't believe the 13.5 million offer was legit either.

 

There was a thread few months ago specifically made to discuss about this and after countless pages of debate it was never proven