It’s surprising in light of the recent promotional “reunion” between usually bitter rivals Bob Arum and Don King for the Ricardo Mayorga-Miguel Cotto card that no one has harkened back to the brief interlude when adversaries Ronald “Butch” Lewis and King teamed up.
Lewis, a former car salesman whose sartorial trademark was sitting ringside with “a chocolate tuxedo shirt” (no shirt covered by a penguin suit), merged with King as the high octane, loud volume, two headed promotional outfit known billed as “Dynamic Duo.”
It wasn’t too long before the bickering promoters split and reverted back to their former “Dyanmic Uno” personas. Which brings me to a sidelight about boxing barrister Milton Chwasky, who died Sunday at age 80 after a lengthy fight against cancer.
No one ever called the aggressive Chwasky “Uncle Miltie” and one of his enduring clients was Lewis, who made a fortune handling light heavyweight and then heavyweight champ Michael Spinks.
I spoke Tuesday with Lewis, who now concentrates on the music business, and he recalled how he and the lawyer got together.
“I was a VP for Bob Arum at Top Rank for about three years,” Lewis said. “I kept seeing Milt as he came to Arum’s law office because he knew Bob’s partner, Ted Friedman.
“I had both Leon and Michael Spinks and I rolled out on my own. Milt mainly did real estate closings and said he knew nothing about boxing. I said, ‘Roll with me and I can teach you boxing along the way.’ Leon went his merry and crazy way but Mike stuck with me and I stuck with Milt and the three of us made a formidable team.”
Which gets us, inevitably, to Mike Tyson before he steamrolled Spinks in 91 seconds in their 1988 Atlantic City super fight. Things began to unravel for Tyson first when his mentor and “White Father” Cus D’Amato died.
Unbeknownst to Tyson, co-managers Bill Cayton and Jimmy Jacobs made out wills transferring their respective rights to Iron Mike to their wives in case of death.
Tyson blindly signed off on the arrangement and was never informed that Jacobs, maybe the greatest handball player ever and a huge comic book and fight film collector, was slowly wasting away from what was labeled lymphotic leukemia. (He died, after nine years of fighting the diseasem in March of 1988.
Spinks-Tyson was held in June of that year and, Lewis and lawyer Chwasky, wrangled an amazing $13.5 million purse for their man out of PPV TV revenue and a big site fee forked over by host Donald J. Trump.
King, meanwhile, was sticking verbal needles and pins into the embattled and overmatched Cayton while simultaneously trying to get around Tyson’s wife, the actress Robin Givens and “Mommy Dearest” mother in law Ruth(less) Roper to gain control over the fighter’s career.
So one afternoon I was at a Plaza Hotel presser for Spinks-Tyson and UPI’s Dave Raffo and I joined some other “boss scribes” in listening to interloper King.
King heaped sarcastic praise on Chwasky and Lewis while ripping Cayton’s financial failure.
King, describing Cayton as “a despicable cad,” said we needed to learn and to study a new science which had emerged in boxing.
“You guys know about the new science of Butchology?” King shouted.
Pray tell, Don, what be that?
“It is amazing, extraordinary and truly SKD [something kinda different]. It’s when you got the fighter who got no heayweight title belts and you match him against the guy who got all three belts and the guy who got no belts gets $13.5 million dollars,” King said.
“That is … amazing science. You must study it. I heard Harvard and MIT are studying it.”
As King spoke, it was indeed true that Tyson held the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight straps and Mr. Spinks had none of the above.
And, as history tells us, when Rocking Robin and mother abandoned the Tyson Hermitage in swanky Bernardsville, NJ, King sunk his teeth into Tyson’s career.
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Thrillgiver (Mike) Tyson: No socks, no robe and no mercy – National Boxing | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/boxing-in-national/thrillgiver-mike-tyson-no-soc…
