Evander Holyfield vs. Michael Moorer II victory, rumors of the long-awaited unification match between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. After the Holyfield–Moorer II fight, Lewis would also pick up the "Lineal" Heavyweight championship by defeating Shannon Briggs, the man who had dethroned George Foreman to win the title. With both Holyfield and Lewis now holding all of the major titles, the highly anticipated unification bout looked like it might finally take place. Holyfield would make his mandatory defense against Vaughn Bean, defeating him via unanimous decision, while Lewis faced mandatory challenger Željko Mavrović, also winning his fight via unanimous decision. After these victories, the Holyfield–Lewis fight
Boxing in the 1950s many television networks began to feature fights live during the weekends, and the "Gillette Friday Night Fights" proved to be one of the most popular boxing television series in American history. The dawn of the jet airplane era in 1958 also helped boxing expand worldwide: with airplanes flying faster and more frequently between cities far away from each other, more and more world title fights began to be fought outside the United States. Vic Toweel became South Africa's first world boxing champion, Jimmy Carruthers did the same for Australia, Pascual Pérez was the first from Argentina, Yoshio Shirai (who was