Reason for Michael Spinks getting stripped of his IBF title

It's hard to believe the IBF would strip him for refusing to meet Tyson, the WBC and WBA Champion. I think according to the HBO agreement, the titlists were supposed to fight each other as part of the HBO unification tournament. So, it's possible the IBF stripped him for failing to honor that agreement. It could be have been a combination of him not honoring the unification tournament agreement and refusing to fight Tuker. Instead, he fought ****ey. Then, he fought Tyson later anyway. It was a brilliant move as he pocketed huge money to beat up ****ey, avoided Tucker and got a huge payday to fight Tyson.

 

That was just the opening for the ABC rebroadcast showcasing Tyson-Thomas and Spinks-C00ney.

It was explained in greater detail by Jim Lampley here. It is at the 4 minute mark or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNLVUz78LI

Spinks wanted an optional IBF title defense against C00ney. The IBF agreed as long as both fighters (Spinks and C00ney) agreed that the winner would remain in the heavyweight tournament and fight their mandatory Tucker. (Because Spinks hadn't fought his mandatory after winning against Holmes.)

The tournament was bogged down on occasion as different guys had to defend against their mandatories before they could fight another champ.

C00ney refused to agree to face anyone if he beat Spinks.

So the IBF refused to give Spinks an optional defense and insisted he fight his mandatory Tucker. Spinks was going to make a lot more fighting C00ney than Tucker, so he chose to fight C00ney instead.

Then the IBF staged a vacant title fight between Tucker-Douglas on the Tyson-Thomas undercard. And Spinks and C00ney were out of the tournament. (Although, C00ney was never officially in it.)

 

Here's another article from the LA Times.

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-02-27/sports/sp-3881_1_first-title-defense

The winner of Tucker-Douglas was supposed to fight Carl Williams next. Instead, Tucker fought Tyson in a unification bout ... and then Tyson ended up defending against Williams (by then his IBF mandatory) down the road.

Spinks was supposed to get $500,000 to defend against Tony Tucker. Instead, he made anywhere from $5 million to $7 million fighting C00ney, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Yeah, Spinks did the smart thing. He made more $$ and avoided the riskier opponent.