The planned heavyweight unification bout between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield has been cancelled.

The dispute with Evander Holyfield about what television profits he would receive has led television executives in the United States to pull the plug on the fight.

Frank Maloney says they are now looking for another contender (0' 55")

Lewis' manager, Frank Maloney, says it is extremely unlikely the fight will now go ahead.

"I'm disappointed for the boxing fans that it's not going to happen," he said.

"When you've been in this business for this long you never build up your hopes until you actually, to quote Lennox, see the man coming out of the other corner."

The American cable company, HBO, owns the rights to Lewis's fights and hopes had been high that the fight would go ahead in April in Las Vegas after the Lewis camp said it had secured a $50m deal with Holyfield's team.

The TV company had promised Holyfield the money from 650,000 pay-per-view buys and all of the profits above that mark.

Doubts over Holyfield's purse has stopped negotiations.

But talks between Holyfield and HBO broke down when Holyfield demanded a one-million-buy guarantee, said Lou DiBella, the senior vice president for programming at Time Warner Sports - the pay-per-view arm of HBO.

DiBella said: "We obviously had a great difference of opinion on what the appropriate guarantee for the fight was."

Just hours before the breakdown in negotiations Evander Holyfield declared that he was on the verge of signing a deal to fight Lennox Lewis in a world title unification fight next year.

Holyfield's lawyer, Jim Thomas, wanted Holyfield to be guaranteed at least as much money as he made for his fight against Michael Moorer. According to Nevada boxing records, Holyfield made $20m for the November fight.

Mr Thomas said: "It came down to HBO's unwillingness to assure the fighters of an appropriate purse. We tried very hard every day for a month to get this fight together."

The heavyweight title has not been unified since Riddick Bowe was stripped of the WBC title in 1992 for refusing to fight Lewis.
 

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