Editing Lennox Lewis (section)

====Lewis vs. Tyson====
{{Main|Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson}}
On 8 June 2002, Lewis defended his title against [[Mike Tyson]]. Ticket sales were slow because they were priced as high as US$2,400, but a crowd of 15,327 turned up to see boxing's then biggest event at the [[Pyramid Arena]] in [[Memphis, Tennessee]]. Tyson also had to pay Lewis $335,000 out of his [[Prize money|purse]] for biting him at the news conference announcing the fight, which was originally scheduled for 6 April 2002 in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, however, rejected the fight because of Tyson's licensing problems and several other states refused Tyson a licence before Memphis finally bid US$12&nbsp;million to land it.

By the end of the seventh round Tyson was tired and sluggish, his face swollen and his eyes cut. He was knocked out in the eighth by a right cross. After the fight, George Foreman declared, "He [Lewis] is, no doubt, the best heavyweight of all time. What he's done clearly puts him on top of the heap."<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECeIdlWBFfg Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson – Part 5/5]. YouTube. Retrieved on 25 November 2011.</ref>
This was the highest-grossing event in pay-per-view history, generating US$106.9&nbsp;million from 1.95&nbsp;million buys in the US, until it was surpassed by [[Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr.|De La Hoya-Mayweather]] in 2007.<ref name="Multichannel News 2007-05-14">{{cite news | first=R. Thomas | last=Umstead | title=HBO Rings in a PPV Knockout | date=14 May 2007 | publisher=Variety Group | url =http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6441534.html | work =Multichannel News | access-date = 21 December 2023 | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071208222942/http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6441534.html | archivedate=8 December 2007}}</ref> Both fighters were guaranteed US$17.5 million.