No deal set for Rahman-Lewis bout

Promoters for world heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman and the boxer he dethroned, Briton Lennox Lewis, both cast cold water on Friday on reports that a tentative deal had been reached for a rematch.

Don King, promoter for Rahman, said Lion Productions, representing Lewis, had sent a letter purporting to agree to his $12.5 million offer to promote the fight but actually setting out conditions they knew he could not accept.

"They opted to let me put it on but then they're going to turn around and tell me how to put it on," King told Reuters in a telephone interview. "They can't do that. That's totally unacceptable."

On the other side, when asked about the report of a tentative deal, a spokesman for Lion's U.S. promotion partners, Main Events, said "There's no truth to that."

Spokesman Donald Tremblay added: "Lennox's team does not believe King is serious about a $12.5 million offer. So what they did was send him a contract which says basically, 'OK, here's a contract, if you're serious show us you're serious.'"

Main Events lawyer Pat English said: "We weren't about to let Don pretend he was making a real offer. We called his bluff. Now he's looking for ways out."

Rahman scored a stunning upset by knocking out 35-year-old Lewis in the fifth round of their April 22 bout in South Africa to take away the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation heavyweight titles.

With all the court battles and verbal sniping from both sides, could a rematch ever happen? "Yes, it's going to happen," said King.

"It's going to happen when they (Lewis's promoters) come to their senses that they can't just run over and use a judge's decision to manipulate and manoeuvre the courts to do some strong-arm tactics for their selfish interests."

COURT VICTORY FOR LEWIS

Lewis scored a victory in a New York court last month when Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum ruled that his contract with Rahman for a second fight was valid.

That contract was with promoter Cedric Kushner, whom Rahman left for King. English, the Main Events lawyer, said that when King signed Rahman, he indemnified the boxer from damages -- which meant that King would likely have to pay a quarter of Rahman's purse to Kushner if there were a fight.

"That's going to be at least a million dollars and King doesn't want to do it," said English. "He has every incentive not to make the fight, not the least of which is that Rahman will likely lose."

King said the Lewis camp was refusing to sit down with him and hammer out a deal in good faith. "They act like they're afraid and that's why they're playing a charade.

"They're trying to build a paper trail so they can go back before the judge. Since they hoodwinked her once they think they can go do it again.

"I heard a long time ago you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time," the colorful promoter said, quoting Abraham Lincoln.

King gave a copy of a letter sent on July 5 by Lewis business manager Adrian Ogun of Lion Promotions accepting $12.5 million subject to conditions including a Las Vegas site, a broadcast by TVKO and/or HBO, "a firm date of October 6 for the bout," and Lewis having the choice of gloves.

King said that being locked in to these terms would make it impossible for him to make a profit.

If it is known the fight must be in Las Vegas, he said, "You have no leverage to negotiate from one casino to another. They could low-ball you. You'd have no chance of getting your money back."

BOUT IN BRITAIN?

King suggested he had contacts in Malaysia, China, Istanbul and Saudi Arabia -- or even Lewis's home country. "I may want to go to the UK, Lennox's home, go to Wimbledon there," he said, but if the date were set, he would be hamstrung.

But English said: "The full story is he doesn't have an offer from Saudi Arabia, he doesn't have a real offer from Malaysia.

"Rahman isn't going to England. In the (Kushner) contract he specifically says he ain't going to England. That's the one place he can't go."

King said he would be happy to deal with HBO but again would run the risk of being "low-balled" if he was locked in.

"Instead of putting all these conditions in a written document and circulating it all around the world, come to me and say, 'look, we take your offer,' then we sit down and amicably work out how we're going to do it."

But English said King had declined just such a meeting three days ago.

King, however, maintained: "This whole thing has been a facetious. charlatan type of experience. They're not negotiating in good faith. They really don't want me to have this promotion."

King said Lewis's people were counting on a public negative perception of him and claimed the Briton had made $44 million in fights he had promoted.

"That takes him up to 56 million that he would have made from me if he accepted this offer from me clean and unconditionally."