NEW YORK - Evander Holyfield has a date in mind to fight rival champion Lennox Lewis in a heavyweight title unification bout. Hopefully it will happen this November. November is a good month, Holyfield said Friday of a fight against the WBC champion Lewis. If it is November, then it could be my next fight, added Holyfield, 35-3 with 25 knockouts, who defends his WBA and IBF titles against Englishman Henry Akinwande at Madison Square Garden on June 6.

Then I can hold the title for a whole year and not fight and then just retire in the year 2000, and that's the year I would like to retire in. Negotiations for a Holyfield-Lewis fight fell through earlier this year in a dispute over money. Holyfield, 35, was demanding Dlrs 20 million and would not take the Dlrs 16 million offered.

He insisted then - and still does - that Lewis will have to give up some purse money to make the fight happen. To get the opportunity to fight the best you got to make sacrifices. I had to, said Holyfield, who accepted only Dlrs 8 million for his first fight against Mike Tyson in 1986. What makes him not have to? Why should I take a cut? He gets a raise and to fight him I got to take a cut? said Holyfield, who made purses of Dlrs 35 million and dlrs 20 million for his last two fights, against Tyson and Michael Moorer. He is not the man.

He wants to be the man. He is not the man. I'm the man. I'm not saying that he doesn't have the potential to be the best, but he just hasn't fought anybody. Lewis is expected to fight Zeljko Mavrovic in the summer. (AP)