Promoter Don King’s greatest events and controversies

BY GRAHAM HOUSTON

The Rumble in the Jungle was one. The Thrilla in Manila was another. Two of the most memorable fights in boxing history. And the promoter behind them and many other unforgettable events, Don King, is still in business, still plugging away. He turned 93 on Tuesday but was looking ahead to yet another title-fight promotion, with Noel Gevor Mikaelyan (aka Norair Mikaeljan) defending his WBC cruiser championship against Ryan Rozicki in Miami on September 28 [the bout was subsequently cancelled due to King’s recent decline in health – Ed].

Mention of King’s name elicits various responses. There are those who dislike, even despise, him. Others will argue that he is the greatest promoter of all time.

Disputes? There were a few of those. Former heavyweight champion Tim Witherspoon was involved in bitter litigation with King, ending in an out-of-court settlement. Witherspoon was promised $550,000 for his 1986 title bout with Frank Bruno but ended up with a little over $90,000. King contended that he had funnelled numerous purse advances to Witherspoon and that, in fact, the fighter got everything that was due to him.

The US championships tournament that King promoted in conjunction with the US TV network ABC in the 1970s foundered amid stories of boxers’ records being falsified and kickbacks. To observers such as author Jack Newfield it just didn’t seem right that King’s stepson, Carl, acted as manager to the fighters King promoted.

But despite court cases and controversy, King’s ship sailed on, with the US TV network Showtime backing him when the promoter sought to sign Mike Tyson to a contract on Tyson’s release from prison in 1995.

The term “larger than life” could be applied to King. His rise from Cleveland street hustler and former convict who served time on a manslaughter conviction, to promotional deal-maker at the highest level, was truly extraordinary. “Only in America,” to use King’s catch-phrase.

Author Jack Newfield wrote damningly of King’s business practices in his biography Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King. But Newfield had to admit that King was “a brilliant showman” who “outnegotiated corporate titans” (among them Donald Trump, when the future US president hosted King promotions at Trump’s Atlantic City properties).

And despite all the finger pointing, King was able to secure the services of some of boxing’s biggest names: Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Julio Cesar Chavez, Felix Trinidad and Hector Camacho among them.

King’s way of doing things was often unconventional. I was present in the dressing room after one of King’s fighters had just pulled off a big win. King came in to congratulate the fighter and told a functionary: “Cut him a cheque for $60,000.” Out came the chequebook. (I took it that this was in the nature of a bonus.)

But a less attractive side of King’s nature manifested itself in the media room at the Mandalay Bay casino resort in Las Vegas when King confronted lawyer Jeff Fried, who represented King’s fighter Sharmba Mitchell. King wanted Fried to agree to a purse cut for his client; the lawyer refused.

King got angry. As I reported in Frontline Diary for the March 2001 issue of Boxing Monthly: “As King’s voice rose, heads turned.” 

An aide, somewhat alarmed, suggested the promoter might like to tone things down: “Don — the room!” But King was in full flow. “F*** the room!”

Security ushered out anyone who didn’t have a media credential.

Reporter Fiona Manning, who had her back to King and Fried, was typing her story of the incident into her laptop. “I didn’t want to turn around because I didn’t want them to see what I was doing,” she said.

Fried was not an imposing man physically, but he didn’t back down. “It’s on you,” he told King. The promoter stormed out. Mitchell lost the fight but, Fried later told me, he got his full purse.

So, I was present when two sides to King’s personality were revealed: a generous side and one that was a lot less attractive.

As a promoter, though, King’s genius is undeniable. He got governments to get behind promotions such as Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman in what was then Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and again for Ali vs Joe Frazier in the Philippines. He promoted Foreman vs Ken Norton in Venezuela. King’s promotion of Julio Cesar Chavez vs Greg Haugen attracted a record crowd estimated at more than 132,000 to the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

This is what made King different from great promoters of the past such as Tex Rickard and Mike Jacobs. These promotional powerhouses concentrated on the US; King went international.

“I brought like a refreshing approach,” King said when explaining his success to New York Times columnist Red Smith in a 1975 interview. “I feel that there are in life only guys that are endowed with the talent by their Creator that can do things that will really make people respect what is being done.

“So I might say there’s only been three giant promoters in our lifetime. There’s Michael Todd and P.T. Barnum and yours truly.”

He also stressed that he saw himself as a man of the people. “People are my most important asset,” he told Smith. “I am a black and my strength comes from blacks, but this is not a strength or a commitment that means polarisation, isolation or alienation.”

The collapse of the 1977 US Championships tournament was a blow to King’s reputation but not a fatal one. “It did me immeasurable harm image-wise but it strengthened me morally and spiritually,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

King has told reporters that he spent his time in prison reading Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Voltaire. He took correspondence courses in economics. His greying hair stood on end, as if pulled upwards by a magnetic force (as one reporter noted).

The boxing world had never seen anyone like him and surely never will again.

“All the rules went out the window when I arrived,” King told the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in a 1980 interview. “What promoter ever got a foreign government to guarantee a $10 million purse [Ali vs Foreman] before I arrived on the scene?”

A federal grand jury in Manhattan, with help from the FBI, tried to build a case against King in 1980. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, the grand jury was trying to substantiate rumours of conflict of interest “and generally curious business procedures”. 

King professed a lack of concern. “If conflict of interest means taking advantage of a client, there’s no way I’m guilty,” he told reporter Dan Coughlin. “I pay fighters more than any other promoter. I’m the fly in the ointment. I wrote my own economic rules.”

Nothing came of the grand jury probe. But King encountered trouble of a different nature when he travelled to the Bahamas in December 1981. A local promoter had made a fight between Muhammad Ali and Trevor Berbick; King contended that he had a contract with Berbick and deserved a “consideration”. What he got was a beating in his hotel room from what one newspaper described as “five toughs”. He flew out of the Bahamas that night and received hospital treatment in Miami for cuts and bruises.

But nothing could keep King down for very long. Setbacks, he’s had a few. But as he told reporter Mike Marley: “I’ve never dealt with failure in my life. Failure, really, is a word I’ve eradicated from my vocabulary. After my prison life, everything is a high, an upper and not a downer.”

One high was in January 1983 when Ohio Governor James Rhodes granted him a pardon for his manslaughter conviction in the 1966 slaying of Samuel Garrett. “The professionals we have on our board felt King’s case to be worthy of a pardon due to his exemplary conduct since his 1971 release and the many letters of support from the community,” Rhodes said.

That same year, Jack Newfield wrote a searing piece in the New York newspaper The Village Voice about what he called King’s “monopolising methods”, with a slew of top fighters under contract. But the next year King, ever the entrepreneur, branched out as promoter of Michael Jackson’s US farewell tour. 

There was well-documented friction with fighters when it came to perceived irregularities concerning finances. Long-reigning heavyweight champion Larry Holmes had a falling-out with King but rejoined the fold in the summer of 1984. “The prodigal child has come back to daddy,” a jubilant King told reporter Doug Krikorian.

And the Larry Holmes rift and reconciliation perhaps says a lot about King’s promotional expertise. Fighters such as Holmes simply felt they could make the most money working with King.

But King did admit to reporter Krikorian: “I just wish my public image would improve.”

The public image wasn’t helped when King was indicted on tax-evasion charges. But in 1985 a New York jury acquitted King after a seven-week trial. “Only in America could a man be saved from a potential fiscal catastrophe by the presumption of innocence,” King told reporters.

And through it all King continued to promote major events, including many of Mike Tyson’s biggest fights. The late Jim Jacobs, who co-managed Tyson, told the USA Today newspaper in 1987: “Don has been superb with us. He’s lived up to every paragraph in the contract, not just to the letter, but in spirit.”

After Jacobs’ passing, King wrested control of Tyson’s career from the fighter’s co-manager, Bill Cayton, who King once described as “Satan”. Never a dull moment.

King’s relationship with WBC president Jose Sulaiman was regarded by many as too cosy. The promoter and WBC head came under fire when King moved to have Buster Douglas’ upset victory over Tyson overturned due to Douglas receiving an alleged “long count”. That somewhat sordid affair didn’t do King’s reputation much good.

But there were acts of kindness along the way: Journalist Mike Marley reported that King had paid for the funeral of Muhammad Ali confidante and cheerleader Bundini Brown: “And King didn’t publicise it, either.”

Yet for all the bad press he has received over the years, King has undeniably produced thrilling events: The Rumble, The Thrilla, of course, but also Larry Holmes vs Gerry Cooney, Julio Cesar Chavez vs Pernell Whitaker (at The Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas in front of an estimated 65,000 crowd), The Crown Affair with two heavyweight title fights on the same show: Holmes meeting Tim Witherspoon and the Michael Dokes vs Mike Weaver rematch. King co-promoted Julio Cesar Chavez vs Oscar De La Hoya (first fight) and Felix Trinidad vs De La Hoya with Bob Arum. He promoted two championship unification tournaments, at heavyweight (when Mike Tyson became undisputed champion) and middleweight, when Bernard Hopkins outclassed Felix Trinidad in the tournament final.

My personal favourite Don King show took place at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, on Sept. 17, 1994. There were six world title fights on the bill, topped by the rematch between Julio Cesar Chavez and Meldrick Taylor. 

For the first and only time in all my years covering fights on site in Las Vegas I arrived late for a world title fight: The rematch between Vincent Pettway and Gianfranco Rosi for the IBF 154lbs title. I believe, from memory, that the fight started a little earlier than expected, about 2:30 p.m. I got there with the second round in progress. But with these typically stacked Don King shows, if you weren’t there from the moment the doors opened it was quite possible you’d miss something noteworthy.

And that, to me, is one of the hallmarks of a great promoter — one whose shows are so good from top to bottom that one doesn’t want to miss a thing.