The truth is, DK did have an effect on Tyson s career. What ever happened between Tyson, Cayton and Rooney, King came along at that moment and brought him in to the fold. Now, we know what happened between Rooney going and Tyson going off with Don. His career started going down hill. Douglas followed by jail. Now if no Don, do we see Tyson maybe hooking back up with Kevin? I's it to simple to claim that Tysons life is better with out Donny?
Don King was a parasite. He stole from the fighters and anyone he came across in boxing. He is longevity was due to the protection provided by the Mob. He stomped on a man to death for owning him six hundred dollars and a dirtbag politician pardoned him. Federal prosecutors don't want to risk an L in court because Don King can afford top-notch lawyers. Don King has led a long life because his enemies are afraid of giving him some of his own medicine. May the SOB burn in hell.
I used to hate King for how he robbed fighters but damn at least he got them in the ring. A lot of fights probably never would have happened
Too much to even wrap your head around, not even all of it in the ring. Ali never fights Wepner. (King signed Wepner and overpaid Ali to make his first defense against Chuck in King's hometown of Cleveland.) Sylvester Stallone isn't inspired by Ali-Wepner and doesn't write the screenplay for Rocky. Stallone remains an anonymous TV actor and 70s porn extra. There are no Rocky movies. No Rocky theme song. No "Eye of the Tiger" song or saying. No Apollo Creed. No Creed movies. No Ivan Drago. Mr. T. never becomes an actor and remains a body guard. Every kid in the late 70s and early 80s who ever watched Rocky and was inspired to take up boxing (like Vinny Pazienza) DON'T take up boxing. Earnie Shavers (who King managed at the time) doesn't fight Jimmy Ellis, never scores the one-round knockout. Never gets rated. (Shavers hadn't amounted to much in his 46 fights before that.) Ali never fights Foreman in Zaire. Ali likely doesn't regain the title if he takes on George in the US. and the fight is held in an air conditioned building and not in an overheated outdoor jungle. Ali and Foreman don't make the biggest purses in history to that point. I believe George was making $800,000 a defense before that (against Norton). Not $5 million, like he did against Ali. There's no Thrilla in Manila. Ali and Frazier conclude with two fights, the second being kind of uneventful. No one asks for a third. Nobody wouuld've ever heard of Jimmy Young. Young never fights Ali on TV. (King just picked young for a quickie TV defense for Ali on ABC before Ali fought Dunn on NBC.) If Young never impressed people against Ali, Young never fights Foreman on TV. Young never fights Norton on TV. There's no Foreman-Lyle. No Toronto Five. If George doesn't lose to Ali, Ken Norton probably never comes back after initially retiring after the Foreman fight. Norton just continues to make movies. Larry Holmes probably remains a sparring partner for Ali for the remainder of Ali's career and Larry's career ends up looking like his fellow 1972 amateur peers Randy Stephens and Nick Wells. (King began promoting Holmes against Kevin Isaac and King gave Holmes every major fight on his way to a title shot with Norton, and promoted nearly all his title defenses after that.) There's no Holmes-Isaac. No Holmes-Young Sanford and no night of the Heavyweights card on NBC. No Holmes-Tiger Williams. (No "legend" of Jeff Merritt.) There's no Holmes-Norton, No Holmes-Shavers 1 & 2. No Holmes-Weaver. Without Weaver's big performance against Holmes to get him notice, there's no Weaver-Tate 15th round knockout. Tim Witherspoon isn't plucked from obscurity, given a fight with Snipes and an immediate title fight with Holmes. Doesn't qualify to fight Page for the vacant WBC belt. Witherspoon's career grinds away unnoticed. Pinklon Thomas doesn't get to fight Witherspoon for that belt. There's no Duran-DeJesus III. No Duran-Palomino. No Duran-Leonard 1 & 2. No Duran-Benitez. No Benitez-Hearns. No Gomez-Pintor. Salvador Sanchez doesn't destroy Wilfredo Gomez. Sanchez never fights Azumah Nelson. Nelson doesn't immediately get thrust in the title picture after Sanchez dies. Nelson toils away in obscurity in Ghana boxing rings. Not to mention the 35 years or so after that. King was an integral part of the sport during for nearly a half century. At one point in the 1980s, he controlled 8 or 9 of the top 10 heavyweights. Everyone's careers are different. You can't really gauge his impact because he was responsible for the majority of what we saw in the 80s and 90s. Without King, Julio Cesar Chavez doesn't get the coverage he received in the late 80s and 90s. Doesn't fight most of the names he faced. Doesn't set the record for the largest live gate in boxing history. Same with Terry Norris. Leonard was the first fighter not a heavyweight to make $1 million for a fight (against Benitez ... and Wilfred made slightly more as champ). In his next fight, against Duran, Leonard made $10 million. King was responsible for enormous leaps in fighter purses. The $5 million Ali and Foreman received was DOUBLE what anyone else had made prior. The $10 million Leonard made was 10 times what any fighter below heavyweight had ever made. And Duran got $8 million, I believe for the rematch. When Tyson got out of jail, Tyson signed a deal with the MGM Grand that paid him like $30 million a fight. Another huge leap in purse money. If King hadn't reached out to leaders of rogue nations to bankroll fights, would Barry Hearn and Eddie Hearn even KNOW to reach out to leaders in Saudi Arabia to bankroll Joshua fights? King made more than 100 boxers millionaires, so there probably would've been a 100 fewer millionaires in the world. Trevor Bryan certainly wouldn't have become one, that's for sure.
Mike Tyson was making between $1 million and $2 million as champ with Cayton and Jacobs. He made $30 million for each fight in the 90s with King after prison. Tyson got out of jail and signed a $100+ million deal with the MGM Grand, the biggest deal for a boxer in the sport's history. Mike Tyson WAS FLUSH with cash when he left Don King after the Botha fight. People who don't know any better, or who are just too lazy to look into it, blame Don King for Mike Tyson's problems. Mike Tyson filed for bankruptcy after the Lennox Lewis fight with Shelley Finkel in charge of his finances. And Cayton and Jacobs were bribing women not to press charges against Tyson before Don King ever came along.
Overall I do not think boxing would change that much, the big fights like Ali vs Foreman would still be made in some OTHER way. Money to be made the big fights will happen, just King's named will not be in it. I think Tyson still crashes and burns.
On the contrary. I think anyone who has watched boxing for any length of time knows the big fights don't get made OTHER ways. They don't. Someone has to have tremendous motivation, someone has to find backers to put up the money and someone has to convince those involved to fight. Otherwise, fights don't get made. And how many times have we seen someone put in the work, find backers, get the site, get the money, and one fighter or another still doesn't step up. As someone said, back then, King often had both fighters under contract so he could make big fights because he didn't care who won. It was against the rules at the time for someone to manage both fighters. King got around it. He was often bashed and villified for doing that (even though it's common practice now). Arum didn't break the rules in order to change them. King did. There was no HBO Unification tournament for Mike Tyson to win all the heavyweight belts without Don King. There was no middleweight unification tournament on HBO without Don King. Purses wouldn't have doubled or, in some cases, gone up TENFOLD, without someone pushing the envelope. He was the most influential promoter in the game for decades. You can't just assume fights would've gotten made without him. He made them. If someone else could've made them, they would've bested King and made them themselves. And, for the most part, they didn't. If having Don King around didn't motivate promoters back then to work harder, NOT having him around certainly wouldn't have made them work harder. Madison Square Garden was a big player at the time. They thought the purses King was offering and the site fees he was getting were insane. They wouldn't have stepped up if King wasn't around. They liked things the way they were.
I disagree. Don King didnt create the rankings or the fighters those two things existed on their own with or without Don King. The fights would have still been made only by another emerging promoter, maybe better or worse than King.