NEWARK, N.J. -- Boxing promoter Cedric Kushner testified Wednesday that he paid IBF officials $100,000 for a rematch between Axel Schulz and then-heavyweight champion George Foreman.

Kushner told a federal jury in the racketeering trial of IBF founder Robert W. Lee that he was angered when Lee's longtime ratings chairman, C. Douglas Beavers, told him privately that a rematch would cost $100,000.

"I used some foul language and suggested that he was crazy, that all concerned was crazy, and that we were entitled to the rematch," Kushner told the jury during his third day on the stand. "I was totally outraged."

Kushner was asked to make the payment after arguing that the IBF executive board mandate a rematch of the controversial April 1995 bout that Foreman won in a split decision.

"I remember Mr. Lee telling me at ringside that my fighter was robbed, and then coming back 30 days later and telling me a rematch would cost $100,000," said the heavyset promoter, who was called "Fat Man" by Lee and Beavers in conversations covertly taped by the FBI with help from Beavers.

Beavers has already testified, with immunity, that he brought money from Kushner and other promoters to Lee, which was generally split among them, Lee's son, and longtime IBF championship committee chairman Bill Brennan.

Kushner disclosed Wednesday that he sought, but was not granted immunity from possible prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey. Prosecutors declined to say why the request was not granted.

Kushner is the fourth big-time promoter to testify against Lee. All have said payoffs were required to do business with the East Orange, N.J.-based IBF. As one of three major sanctioning bodies for boxing in the world, its rankings and decisions play a large role in the purses earned by boxers, of which managers and promoters get a cut.

Lee and other IBF officials are accused of taking $338,000 in a span of more than a decade in exchange for favors and rigged rankings, but the bulk of that money stems from the machinations regarding Foreman and Schulz.

By the time of the Foreman-Schulz fight, Lee's need for payoffs was routine, said Kushner, 51, who gained fame in the 1970s as a concert promoter before turning to boxing in 1982.

Three to four times a year, from 1987-1994, Beavers, a longtime Virginia boxing commissioner, would drive from his home in Portsmouth, Va., to Kushner's home in East Hampton, N.Y., and get cash ranging from $2,500 to $10,000, Kushner said.

Until the rematch demand, all but one of the payments to Lee were "preventive medicine:" efforts to ensure good treatment for his boxers, not for any specific action, Kushner said.

After discussing the $100,000 with his co-promoter, German-born Swiss businessman Wilfrid Sauerland, Kushner said they reluctantly agreed in late May 1995 at the IBF annual convention in Atlanta.

The IBF mandated the rematch on June 6, but Kushner said he was upset because it ranked Schulz No. 2 in the heavyweight division, making the top contender Frans Botha of South Africa.

"But I understood, because it was (Don) King's fighter," Kushner said. He and prosecutors maintain that King was the prime beneficiary of Lee's manipulations. King, who prosecutors call an unindicted coconspirator, has not been charged and denies ever making a payoff.

Sauerland testified earlier this month that he flew back to Switzerland, withdrew $100,000 in cash from a business account, and gave the money to Kushner in Las Vegas before a boxing show on June 17, 1995.

Soon after, Beavers drove to Kushner's home and got the money, which Kushner said he confirmed was shared with Lee: "He acknowledged that he knew I had met with Beavers."

Even so, the rematch never happened. Foreman relinquished the IBF belt, with many saying he did not want to risk defeat.

Kushner and Sauerland did not try to get their money back, they said.

"I didn't think in this kind of business there were refunds," Kushner said.

Schulz did get a title shot, but lost to Michael Moorer in June 1996.

Foreman promoter Bob Arum, of Top Rank Inc. in Las Vegas, testified early this month that he used a middleman to get $100,000 to the IBF to sanction the initial Foreman-Schulz title fight. An exception was needed because Schulz was unranked.

Lee, 66, of Fanwood, N.J., and his son, Robert Jr., 38, of Scotch Plains, N.J., are the only defendants on trial. They face multiyear prison terms if convicted of conspiracy, racketeering, fraud and tax charges.

Bill Brennan, 86, of Warsaw, Va., past president of the U.S. Boxing Association, a group that became the IBF, was severed from the trial because of ill health.

The IBF's South American representative, Francisco "Pacho" Fernandez of Colombia, remains at large.