Without Don Kings influence, would Tyson have been greater?

Don King didn't promote Joe Frazier until the Thrilla in Manila. Don King wasn't even a promoter in 1973. Don King flew on a plane with Joe Frazier's people and the story has morphed over the years. King was a nobody with no role at all in any part of that fight.

It's a story people like to trot out, because given the thousands of fighters Don King worked with over 30 years, the vast majority happily signed with him and don't have any stories about him doing anything wrong to them.

Instead people regurgitate the same handful of names. And they repeat this story like Don King screwed over Joe Frazier.

Don King never screwed over Joe Frazier or George Foreman. When he promoted Joe and George, he paid them millions. And the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila were epic events. Ali and Foreman received more money than any two fighters in history to that point.

But let's talk about that time King didn't work with either Foreman or Frazier in 73, instead, to try to make him look bad. Instead of when he paid them more money than anyone ever received to that point for a fight in the history of the sport ... because that screws up the negative picture.

And Don King paid Muhmammad Ali $7 Million and asked Ali's confidant Jeremiah Shabazz if Ali would take $100,000 in cash as a final payment. Ali took it rather than sue. He'd probably have ended up with that much anyway, after all the years of legal fees, taxes and after all his team took their cuts (his manager always took half).

Fighters took cash so they (THEY) could keep the money themselves and not pay taxes on it. Those were under the table payments. The guys who usually complained about King paying fighters cash were guys who complained because they didn't get their cut. The fighters got all the money.

And Muhammad Ali talked about finances, taxes and he talked about it extensively in interviews for YEARS. He'd say I can't get this much I need more because I have to pay this in taxes, and these guys take this much, and on and on. The stories that Ali was like a child and was confused by actual money in a briefcase is demeaning.

King treated these guys like grown ups. The people who bash King act like these guys were all children or complete simpletons.

Frankly, Ali is lucky to have gotten $7.1 million for the Holmes fight. People always leave out the second part about Ali taking PEDs, Ali admitting he blew his drug tests, and Ali volunteering to give up his Nevada boxing license because the entire boxing commission knew he was a drug cheat and they let the fight go on and their commission doctor didn't stop it and it was a way for them all to save face.

Today, Ali's entire purse would've been held up.

As for Don King murdering my whole family, I met Don King two different times and I never worried about him murdering my whole family on either occasion. (LOL)

So you can drop the hysteric rants. I met "the devil" twice. And it turned out he wasn't the devil at all.

 

Right, the question to ask for my money is if Cus had lived how great would Tyson have become? A corollary to this is, but for D'Amato would we ever have heard of Floyd Patterson, or even Mike Tyson for that matter?

 

I see two general questions here...

1. How great would Tyson have become:
   
   Cus was a protective manager to say the least. You need look no farther than Floyd Patterson’s career to see that. Cus protected his fighters as much as he could and I feel Tyson may have fought a few more easy type fights pushing his record to somewhere around 42-0 before Holyfield in 91. After Tyson beat Holyfield in 91 he would have fought elite journeymen but no threats retiring at 50-0 with a TON of money. His legacy however wouldn’t be much better than it is now. I don’t see D’Amato letting Bowe have a shot, or letting go of the idea of 50-0 better than Marciano.
   
2. 
   Had Cus not been born Tyson would most likely be dead somewhere at age 22, and no one would have heard much of Patterson.

 

I don’t feel like Bowe was perceived as being too dangerous before he beat Holyfield, and his lack of defense made him a good matchup for Tyson.

 

1 )I agree Tyson would have been more protected as far as who he was matched with, but he also would have been guided better in his personal habits and maybe would have avoided a lot of the personal entanglements in which he later became involved.

2) I pretty much agree, certainly about Patterson. Who knows how long Tyson would have lived, but it wouldn't have been pretty?!

 

It is not "hysteric" to calmly lay out a tiny fraction of the abuses & crimes of Don King.
You also did not get my point about King & murder, which must have been why you used such an overheated term.
I never claimed King would have any reason to hurt you or most anyone. I was describing how like other psychopaths he would have no conscious about doing it *if* he wanted to &/or it tangibly benefited him-& he could get away with it.

Ali cheating with a thyroid drug was sad but irrelevant to the humanity of King.
That drug harmed him & zombified his performance, he was better even at the end of 1981 against Berbick.
I do not know if Ali thought about this as an illegal enhancer, & it is not an insult to say Ali was among many boxers naive about money. Taking cash even considering taxes they got much less than they could have otherwise.
I do not know if it is true that after all expenses Ali was better taking 1/10th max of what he was owed.
But let us assume for the sake of argument it was true; it would not mean King did not owe Ali & ffigures, just that the difficulty of collecting & other's take meant King could essentially rob him.

You think stories like this in Hauser's biography are fiction?
Or that when King flew to the Bahamas for Ali's final fight demanding a stake in the affair, he was not badly beaten & screaming for mercy by Ali's bodyguards who could not abide by his attempted bullying & intimidation?
Or that Ali did not tell Holmes that when King was done with you you will have nothing?

Holmes was far from a simpleton & has succeeded in business after boxing, but when you come up hard & are still an athlete yeah you can be dazzled & irrational by a lot of cash. I believe he pulled the trick on Rahman too, in Holme's case he took the cash instead of not only the long money, but the extra couple months a long retired fighter needed to get back into shape & sharp.

King benefiting some due to holding big money making events does not justify his stealing for others.
You are the opposite of naive if you think that his bad image is just a media creation.
Or the exposes of him, such as by HBO I believe, are demonizations.
They could not have gotten away with it, been sued nine ways to Sunday, if he was not Monsterous.

Ali took an intelligence test for the army & scored around an 80. He was gifted in some ways but lacking in others, embarrassed, he said "I said I was the greatest, not the smartest".

King was with Frazier, I did not say he was working with him then.
It was still llousy behavior to abandon him & his corner while Frazier suffered a massive beating & suck up publicity with Foreman.
King had no defense to Letterman's critique.

Really, the vast majority of boxers are happy with him? I doubt that.

 

Interesting & I agree that most of what you speculate on is plausible.
Except while he had a much higher rate of mortality due to his starting off as a criminal, no cohort like that has most people die-presumably murdered-by 22.