The Truth about Don King

Don King was the greatest boxing promoter ever. I miss the big events he would put on back in the day, with three or four superfights on one card. King got a really bad rap because he was a black boxing promoter who moved in on the "territory" of white promoters and took it over. They said he was bad for boxing, that he ripped off fighters and he was a crook. But if you look at the guys who fought for him, they made millions more than they would have made under any other promoter. ali, holmes, tyson, leonard, roy jones jr, sweetpea, chavez sr, all those guys made tens and hundreds of millions fighting for king. compare them with the likes of sugar ray robinson, joe louis, archie moore, etc, who all ended their careers flat BROKE. Fact is, despite all the bad press he got, fighters WANTED to fight for King...because he was where the money was.

Under king, the fans AND the fighters made out pretty damn good. back then, you would pay $20 and see a ppv fight headlined by tyson with a tito trinidad or terry norris or hopkins or michael nunn title fight on the undercard. These days, it's $70 for a pacman or floyd fight with a couple of unknown guys that nobody cares about on the undercard...

Looks to me like, despite all the lies we were told, king was actually one of the BEST things that ever happened to boxing and today's promoters GB, TR, etc pretty much suck and rip off the fans.

 

First of all, it was one guy...not two. secondly, what's the circumstances surrounding the homicide he went to jail for? Was it self-defense? Was there some other extenuating circumstance such as accidental manslaughter or something like that? Doesn't make any sense to judge the man until you know the facts.

The thing about Don King was that compared to other promoters, you got the feeling he was actually a big boxing fan. he loved the fighters and the atmosphere of the big events...he loved putting on a great show. A lotta promoters these days would look at the cards King put together and they would wonder why he had three huge fights on one card instead of breaking it up into three different cards and charging top dollar for the ppv and maximizing his profits. That's because the promoters today aren't really fight fans. They run the sport like a business ...and that's another reason why boxing is more dead than alive in most places in the world. Thing is even if king's ppv prices were comparable to todays, with inflation factored in, you still got a hell of a lot more bang for your buck than today.

 

OK, You're right. There were two guys. The first case was a guy trying to rob one of king's businesses. That was justifiable homicide. The second case was a FIGHT between king and an employee. The way it reads, Sam Garrett wasn't just a poor victim who just let himself be pistol whipped to death. Sam Garrett was a criminal who WANTED to kill King too and was TRYING to kill King. They had a hellacious fight between them. Fortunately for King, he won the fight which resulted in Garrett's death. This could be viewed as a "stand your ground" case. King was defending himself and had to kill garrett to stop garrett from killing him. But you never hear that side of it, right? All you hear is that King stomped and pistol whipped the guy to death then paid off the judges so he could get out of jail early. None of that even holds up to even a little research on the internet. That's what I'm talking about the racist bullsh8t that gets spread about Don King to make him seem like the bogey man. Especially when great champs of the past were getting sucked dry by their white managers and promoters and nobody ever said a damn word about it. If you ask me, a lot of the hate and smear campaign against king had to do with bitterness over the fact that he was paying black fighters what they were really worth and taking away business from white promoters who felt that they had a birthright to control the careers of black fighters.

You might also have a point that if those were white men, he may not have gotten off...but to tell a man that he should let himself be robbed or killed by another man just because the other guy is black, is fked up logic.