There’s never a dull moment in the heavyweight division

By Steve Bunce

It would be hard to invent the heavyweight boxing mess we left behind many years ago.

During just two days in January 1998, I wrote two separate but ridiculous stories in the Daily Telegraph (the paper once took a story each day, which is mad) that read now like comedy. They were at the time, deadly serious.

In the first, I wrote about Don King being back in court in New York with his back against the wall, in trouble, facing exposure and then he somehow found a way to freedom. That was Don’s special trick.

In the second article, published the very next day, I wrote about WBO heavyweight champion Herbie Hide and his planned fight in June in Las Vegas against Roy Jones. As I said, pure comedy.

The King compromise was lunatic and nothing that was discussed – nothing that I wrote – ever happened.

King had been in court in late, late 1997 trying to settle a dispute with Frans Botha and his manager, Sterling McPherson. It was the usual stuff, the ugliness that ruined just about every heavyweight relationship back then. King was being asked to produce potentially damaging documents, which could have been costly. Instead, the master of survival put together a compromise deal, a deal to get him out of trouble and out of court. It was always said about King that the moment you sign a contract, is the moment the negotiations start. He found a rabbit in a hat in that Manhattan court.

King promised Botha a crack at Evander Holyfield for the IBF heavyweight championship of the world by the start of August. Botha, it seems, agreed. However, at the very same time, King was also negotiating and offering Lennox Lewis and Henry Akinwande the same fight. King had his options open and was juggling like a master. Also at the same time, the IBF ordered Holyfield to defend his title against Vaughn Bean. I had to report this soap opera on a daily basis.

“He [King] called me on Christmas Day,” confirmed Kellie Maloney, Lewis’s manager at the time. Lewis and Maloney decided to ignore the offer and fought Shannon Briggs in Atlantic City in March of 1998. The Lewis and Briggs fight is one of the great lost heavyweight fights. It is savage, quite extraordinary.

The Bean dilemma was perhaps summed up best by McPherson, who at the time was Frank Warren’s American partner. Warren and King had fallen out spectacularly in September of 1997. Nastiness was everywhere at that time, a backdrop to just about every fight that was made.

“I know that the only fight Holyfield can take [to avoid being stripped] is the Bean fight,” McPherson said. “And I also know that there is not a hotel or casino in the world that will pay the right money for the fight.” He was absolutely correct, and the same stupidity still exists.

The following the day, the carnival continued with my scoop on Hide fighting Jones in Las Vegas in June. Hide was meeting with Warren to agree the deal; a week later, John Fashanu was in the Hide game, and they picked an alternative route. As I said, it was comedy daily in the heavyweight business.

Jones, I wrote with confidence, had looked at Michael Moorer, but Moorer had then lost to Holyfield. Jones then switched his attention to Hide. Jones was following other former middleweight fighters at the time, Iran Barkley and James Toney, to the heavyweight division. Barkley had briefly held the splendid World Boxing Board heavyweight title and Toney was due to fight Larry Holmes on January 21, less than three weeks after my column.

All this nonsense was treated like it was real.

In the end this is what happened. And I wrote about every crazy detail, twist, turn, punch and non-event. Some are in the new book

So, no Holmes and Toney or Akinwande and Holyfield or Holyfield and Lewis in 1998, but there was Bean against Holyfield. It was not a great spectacle. Jones never moved to heavyweight and fought 12 more times at light-heavyweight and eventually moved up and beat John Ruiz for the WBA heavyweight title in Las Vegas in 2003. That was the same year that Toney, who never fought in 1998, stopped Holyfield.

Akinwande and Holyfield were close to fighting in the summer of 1998 at Madison Square Garden in front of about 15,000 empty seats. However, with about 48-hours before the first bell it was discovered that Akinwande had Hepatitis B and the fight was off. That was a relief. King, incidentally, was not in New York all week – he was in court somewhere fighting allegations. The man is Teflon.

10 April 2010: Frans Botha appears at the post fight press conference following a heavyweight fight at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Evander Holyfield scored an eighth round TKO to win Botha’s WBF heavyweight title. (Photo by Daniel Gluskoter/Icon SMI/Icon Sport Media via Getty Images)

And Botha, who was once at the centre of this mayhem? Well, in 1998 he fought and won twice, and Holyfield was nowhere to be seen. Big Frans, who was a nice guy, beat Stan Johnson and Dave Cherry in a total of 185 seconds in his 1998 fights. Cherry and Johnson had a combined record of nine wins and 50 losses; in January of 1999, Botha was stopped by Mike Tyson in January in Las Vegas. Their foul-filled fight finished in the fifth.

In 1999, Lewis and Holyfield did meet.

That was then and now, well, it’s ridiculous. The emotional homecoming of Martin Bakole was off the scale, the promise of Moses Itauma and his shopping list is fun, the danger of Daniel Dubois and Anthony Joshua is very real, the rematch of Frazer Clarke and Fabio Wardley, the Joseph Parker experience. And then in December, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury two. Anybody want to throw Bean in there or Botha or Barkley? Two very different worlds. Remember, it’s dangerous to live in history. But it is fun to look back without the rose-tinted goggles.

Steve Bunce. Around the World in 80 Fights: A Lifetime’s Journey to the Heart of Boxing. Headline Publishing. Came out September 12.