Wanted: Sugar Daddy

Controversial rap star Sean Combs has emerged as a possible saviour of plans for a summer showdown in Washington between world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and arch-rival Mike Tyson.

Combs, who became famous under the name Puff Daddy but is now billed as P Diddy, has been asked to take a financial stake in a fight pencilled in for Washington's 20,000-seat MCI Centre on Saturday 8 June.

It is understood that Combs' representatives are having urgent talks with the promoters of Lewis and Tyson after a deadline for negotiations to be finalised was extended from last Friday to next Monday.

The crunch issue is the loss of a so-called 'site fee' worth £10 million following the Nevada State Athletic Commission's decision to refuse Tyson a licence to box Lewis in Las Vegas next month.

It is the custom of casinos and hotels in Las Vegas to pay for a fight to be brought to the desert city in order to boost the local gambling and tourist economies.

But no such site fee is available in Washington, where the state's boxing authority recently went against the precedent set by its Nevada counterparts and licensed Tyson despite his conviction for rape and a litany of other offences perpetrated inside and outside the ring.

So the fight's promoters need to find money for the fight elsewhere. Harlem-born Combs could invest as much as £10m in the fight, possibly in return for a share of lucrative pay-per-view television revenues. He can afford it. Fortune Magazine in the United States recently estimated the 31-year-old's earnings from music, movie, clothing and restaurant businesses to be worth more than £160m.

The singer and producer enjoys the company of boxers.

Tyson last year made a cameo appearance in a video made to promote Combs' new single, appropriately titled Bad Boy for Life. He is also a close friend of Britain's former world featherweight champion Naseem Hamed.

Like Tyson, Combs has had brushes with the law. Most notably in December 1999 he and his then girlfriend, singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, were involved in a police chase through the streets of Manhattan after shots were fired at a nightclub they were at.

Combs was later acquitted of charges involving the possession of weapons and bribery.

He has since been seen arm-in-arm with supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Regarding the negotiations for the Lewis fight, Tyson's manager Shelly Finkel confirmed: "We have some things in place. We're still working on some others."