BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : The Best Fight Not on TV, but Over It

War or peace? On one side is Time Warner and its lucrative stable of fighters. On the other, Don King, Mike Tyson and Showtime.

And the line has been drawn.

With millions of dollars and several tremendous egos on the line, it’s up to Seth Abraham, the powerful Time Warner sports chief and newest King archrival, to seek retribution or common ground.

Friday, as the boxing world waited, Abraham wasn’t saying anything.

In the aftermath of King’s stunning (and money-losing) decision to move his Nov. 4 Tyson bout from pay-per-view to free television’s Fox network--opposite Time Warner’s Nov. 4 pay broadcast of Riddick Bowe vs. Evander Holyfield--there was only silence, and, presumably, the planning of a countermove.

Days before the King-Fox deal, Abraham threatened King with a drawn-out battle over control of boxing’s TV schedule--which basically means control of boxing’s purse strings, which basically means control of boxing--if King did not reverse his decision to put the pay-per-view Tyson event head to head with Bowe-Holyfield on Nov. 4.

“If we cannot solve this problem, Time Warner has signed contracts with Riddick Bowe, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr., Pernell Whitaker and Oscar De La Hoya,” Abraham said then, “and I regard them all as missiles. If we continue to get into battles with them over dates, I will fire these missiles at King on his dates.

“Don is trying to embarrass me, he is trying to embarrass Time Warner, and he doesn’t even care about the financial repercussions. Because the financial repercussions all affect Mike Tyson more than anybody on their side.”

At the news conference Thursday to announce the Fox deal, King could afford to play statesman, saying he didn’t want to get into a “spitting contest” with Time Warner.

And several principals involved in the Bowe-Holyfield promotion indicated it was possible, and very easy, to move their fight up to Friday, Nov. 3, (a less attractive pay-per-view date) to avoid direct conflict with the Tyson bout, which Fox estimates could reach 90 million homes during the 8-11 p.m. prime-time window.

Beyond Nov. 4, what happens March 16, when King has already said he will stage a Tyson pay-per-view world title fight?

Time Warner has the Foreman-Michael Moorer bout, which it wants to hold in March, and Abraham, if this is war, could easily drop that onto March 16 and see who survives. And then do it again, say, with a Jones HBO bout for the next Tyson date, and then again with a Whitaker bout, and again. . . . Time Warner has the fighters and deep pockets for a long campaign. King has a federal wire-fraud trial due to start this month.

The result? Utter chaos in boxing’s upper reaches.

“I know [Abraham] has said he is going to counter-program us,” said Mac Lipscomb, the general manager of Showtime’s pay-per-view arm, SET, “but we have talked to a number of cable operators, and they know that we are going to be on March 16, and I believe they will be the cooler heads who will not let it occur.

“My sense is that we’ve taken ourselves to the brink of one-upmanship, and neither of us likes the taste of it. I don’t believe that we will ever do this again. We are, in effect, making a commitment that it is never our intention to do any counter-programming or any scheduling on top of pay-per-view events. We are making a commitment in our market not to let Nov. 4 occur again.”

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Promoter Bob Arum, not exactly an unbiased observer (Foreman and De La Hoya are his fighters), says that King is baiting Time Warner into a struggle neither can win.

King, by most estimates, is sacrificing about $20 million in potential cash by moving the fight to free TV (most of that is expected to come out of Tyson’s purse), and Time Warner could be looking at a drop of hundreds of thousands PPV buys if it stays on Nov. 4 against a free Tyson fight.

Holyfield is guaranteed $9 million no matter what happens with TV, and much of Bowe’s $9 million is guaranteed, which means Abraham cannot switch the fight to Time Warner’s cable arm, HBO.

“Everybody now is going to go after everybody else,” Arum said. “The next pay-per-view show that King or Showtime puts on, HBO is going to do a live show against it.

“It’s the end of pay per view as we know it. Once you start nuclear war. . . .”

But Dan Duva, Holyfield’s promoter, was less sure that this situation will escalate beyond control.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Duva said. “My interest is in maximizing revenues, and I’m certainly not going to get caught up in a power struggle between multi-zillion-dollar corporations that don’t care about the business or the fighters or the promoters and are trying to prove something way beyond the boxing business.”

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Part of King’s move was made in reaction to the sour public reaction over the $90-million Tyson-Peter McNeeley mismatch-surrender, and part of it was an imaginative response to the pleas of cable operators who did not want to broadcast dueling pay-per-view cards.

But most of it was about spite, and about trumping Time Warner.

“King’s always out trying to prove something, that’s what fuels him, keeps him going,” Duva said.

Also, Fox apparently has tentatively agreed to broadcast a series of King fights. But don’t look for any more Tyson fights on free TV. Showtime still has its long-term deal with the prodigal heavyweight, and though the network did not get any money from King to give away Tyson-Mathis, it won’t be giving any more away.

“My sense is this is a one-time-only opportunity,” Lipscomb said. “I don’t anticipate any future Mike Tyson fights on the Fox network because simply, Mike Tyson after this Nov. 4 date is going to be more than $100 million worldwide revenue generator on a fight-by-fight business.”

Boxing Notes

Oscar De La Hoya had a sprained left shoulder this week after last Saturday’s sixth-round technical knockout over Genaro Hernandez and said he’ll take about a month off before training for his Dec. 16 bout at Madison Square Garden against Jesse James Leija, another former junior-lightweight climbing to 140 pounds. De La Hoya, pointing out that he weighed 145 pounds after the Hernandez fight, said the sooner he moves to junior-welterweight, the better.

Sugar Ray Leonard, tracked down at the Forum fights last Monday, is impressed by De La Hoya’s progress. “I think Oscar has been exceeding expectations,” Leonard said. “I think for a while he had kind of a lackadaisical attitude, but now he’s motivated, he’s fighting more. I’ll tell you what bothers me about him. He’s apologizing too much. He should just concentrate on fighting his fights. He’s apologizing to his community, for saying this and that. . . . You don’t need to be apologizing to anybody if you’re as good as he is.”

The eye injury suffered by International Boxing Federation flyweight champion Danny Romero last Friday in a nontitle loss to Willy Salazar apparently is not career-threatening, his father, Danny Romero Sr., said from Albuquerque, N.M., on Thursday. Romero suffered what doctors describe as an “orbital blowout” below his left eye, causing pieces of the bone to splinter. But, according to his father, Romero, though experiencing double vision, has been told he has no permanent damage and expects to return to the gym as early as next month to prepare for a scheduled Dec. 1 title defense. . . . Frank Bruno’s handlers turned down a $5.1-million offer for a WBC heavyweight title defense against former champion Lennox Lewis, calling it insufficient.

Calendar

Wednesday: Randy Smith vs. Kenny Pratt, middleweights; P.J. Goossen vs. Eric McNair, junior-middleweights; Warner Center Marriott, 7:30 p.m.