Spinks and Cooney Will Fight June 15 at Atlantic City

Butch Lewis Productions, promoter of the Michael Spinks-Gerry Cooney heavyweight fight, set a time and place for that controversial bout Thursday, selling the live gate to New York developer Donald Trump for $5 million.

The fight, which just recently beat a court injunction filed by promoters of a so-called heavyweight title unification series, is now scheduled for June 15 at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.

According to Lewis, he received the offer from Trump officials late Wednesday, contingent on an immediate agreement. “I was still caught between Caesars Palace (in Las Vegas) and Trump’s,” he said. “But they gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Five million, no kibitzing, no getting back to Caesars, no nothing. I stopped kibitzing.”

According to Lewis, Caesars had made an earlier, lesser offer. He said he didn’t want to risk losing a guaranteed $5 million to see whether Caesars would be willing to match it.

The fight had been signed for several months but ran into legal trouble when HBO and Don King Productions, who are promoting a tournament among the heavyweight champions, insisted that they had the rights to promote a Spinks-Mike Tyson fight for the undisputed heavyweight title.

Spinks was stripped of his International Boxing Federation title, however, when he refused to fight the IBF’s No. 1 challenger. A New York superior court judge subsequently ruled that Spinks, no longer a champion, did not have to fight in the tournament of champions.

Lewis said he has guaranteed Spinks a purse of $7 million and longtime contender Cooney $5 million for a closed-circuit TV fight. Cooney has fought only intermittently since a much-ballyhooed fight with--and loss to--then champion Larry Holmes in 1982.