Saturday To Be A Historic Night In Boxing World Two Major Heavyweight Fights Vie For Fans, Bucks

Nobody blinked, though there were a few squints and grimaces along the way.

Nobody surrendered, though there were plenty of chances to fold and walk away.

As a result, Saturday promises to provide a rare night of boxing history and histrionics, an overflowing mix of pride, power, corporate cash and personal antipathy.

Don King and Viacom vs. Time Warner … the MGM Grand vs. Caesars Palace … the public’s fascination with Mike Tyson vs. the draw of another good Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield bout.

Why did this have to happen?

“I guess boxing breeds idiots,” sneered Bob Arum, the one major promoter not involved in either event.

Along the Las Vegas Strip, Caesars Palace and the MGM Grand are a 15-minute walk apart, but a few days from now, they will represent separate sides of the boxing universe.

Tyson leads off the evening against Buster Mathis Jr. at the indoor MGM Grand Garden arena, on the Fox Network, the first time in more than a decade a big heavyweight fight will be on free television.

When the Tyson bout is over, pay-per-view network TVKO will usher Bowe and Holyfield, after Tyson, the sport’s two most marketable figures, into the Caesars Palace outdoor arena for their second rematch.

Because of Fox’s involvement, more people will watch boxing Saturday night than on any other single night of boxing in history. But that will happen as an accident, and each fight is cutting dramatically into the other’s earning power.

Nobody planned this, but Saturday, the crash happens.

The Tyson Factor

Tyson makes boxing people behave in strange ways. Days after he ended his three-year prison term for a rape conviction, he signed exclusive deals with King, the MGM Grand and Showtime (owned by the conglomerate Viacom) guaranteeing him a package that could be worth more than $100 million.

Now, instead of the usual method of planning on a fight-by-fight basis, looking ahead, at most, three or four months down the road, King, the MGM and Showtime had to look years into Tyson’s future to try to recoup their huge investments.

“Because of the way we’ve negotiated the deals, for the first time what you have is real continuity in the scheduling of boxing,” says John Horne, Tyson’s co-manager.

“It’s almost like you do with the Super Bowl - you don’t know who’s going to be in the Super Bowl, but you know when it is.”

But the advance planning also prevents flexibility, and tempts competitors to think about sabotage. There are only a handful of sure-fire pay-per-view dates, and fewer weekends when the MGM Grand could lock a Tyson mega-event into its busy schedule.

King, on trial in New York federal court for wire-fraud, already has announced plans for a March 16 Showtime pay-per-view Tyson fight, against an opponent as yet undetermined.

“Don King tried to do something that was ridiculous and reserve dates for the next year to try to block anyone out from scheduling any pay-per-view events,” says Dino Duva, an executive at Main Events, Holyfield’s promoter.

The first Saturday in November - after the World Series, before people begin planning for the holidays, between dates for several huge conventions and the popular national rodeo in Las Vegas - is the prime date for boxing.

And, despite, or maybe because of, the sour public reaction (and $90 million gross) to the circus ending to Tyson’s 89-second comeback bout over Peter McNeeley on Showtime pay-per-view, it became all-important for Tyson to keep Nov. 4 as his.

When Seth Abraham, the chief of Time Warner Sports, tried to seize Nov. 4 for his fight, believing the public had a proven appetite for Bowe-Holyfield, it became a game of chicken.

King had to find a way to appease Tyson, and, realizing that the expected Tyson-Mathis blowout probably wasn’t as strong a pay-per-view event as Time Warner’s match, had to find a way out of going head-to-head for the PPV dollar.

“It became a power play,” manager Butch Lewis says after observing the developments. “There were several factions vying for the power: ‘I’m not going to blink,’ that kind of thing. Because if anyone had to blink, it would have been Don, to go head to head pay-per-view with Mike and that opponent. Rupert Murdoch (of Fox) came in and saved him.

“For DK to have had to be the one to pull back, it would’ve also had a rippling effect in his relationship with Tyson. Because I was told Mike was saying, ‘Hey, I’m not backing down.’ He started to take it personally, as an affront to him.”

The answer for King was to get $10 million from Murdoch (potentially $20 million to $30 million less than the fight could have earned on pay-per-view) for the free TV rights to Tyson-Mathis.