Boxing: Yankee Stadium favoured for rematch

NEW YORK'S 65,000-capacity Yankee Stadium has emerged as the favourite venue to stage Lennox Lewis's world heavyweight title rematch with Evander Holyfield following promoter Don King's announcement that a return unification fight will take place in the autumn.

Holyfield has agreed to the fight, Lewis's manager, Frank Maloney, confirmed last night. It will take place in September or October.

King is keen on the Yankee Stadium because it could at least double the gate receipts of the first fight, which ended in a controversial draw at Madison Square Garden, New York. Maloney confirmed the fight will almost certainly take place in America, with an "outside chance" of it being staged in Britain.

King, who will promote the fight, has confirmed Holyfield's agreement for a rematch against Lewis which is set to earn the fighters up to $20m (pounds 12.5m) each in an even split of the purse. Maloney said: "It will be parity purse money. I think the rematch will break every record in boxing history. The [previous] result was a travesty but in another way it's made everybody in the world aware of boxing."

Meanwhile, the British-based World Boxing Union yesterday revealed that it had sacked the judge Eugenia Williams a year before she adjudicated in the Holyfield v Lewis fight. Williams, the Independent Boxing Federation's nominee from New Jersey, was the only one of the three judges to score the fight in Holyfield's favour.

Now Jon Robinson, president of the WBU organisation in Norfolk, has revealed that Williams was removed from his judges' panel for being "a loner" last spring. But he stressed that the WBU had no problems with Williams' scoring and confirmed that on the last two occasions she worked for the body she was in accord with her two colleagues.

The WBU has also announced a new scoring system, designed to avoid similar controversies. It involves awarding 20 points to the winner and between 19 and 16 to the loser of each round.