Have we finally seen the last of Don King Promotions?

It has been 416 days since Jaime Munguía fought Liam Smith, with King's most recent unbeaten exploitation victim Rafael Mensah fed to Alberto Machado in a losing effort. Don't jump for joy yet, however. That isn't even halfway to being the record for gaps between DKP events. 903 days passed between "his" earlier 2018 show (in truth a Big Drama Show™ featuring GGG; it would be generous to even call this a co-promotion with Tom Loeffler's 360° Promotions in which King was very much the B-side promoter and his fighter Vanes Martirosyan an 11/1 underdog) on Cinco de Mayo and his previous effort, Stiverne vs. Rossy (with Hurd vs. Galarza in chief support, and Derevyanchenko vs. Nicklow rounding out the broadcast) on Showtime in November 2015. However, with the pepper all turned into salt in spikes of the now octogenarian crook's hair, at 88, it may be a little far-fetched to believe he can pull together all the resources to scout yet another gullible fighter (it would have to be one from a third world country, because what person with an internet connection - regardless of their intimacy with boxing, even - isn't well familiar with the boogeyman stories whispered about DK?) to guide toward a premature title opportunity, cashing out their zero and leaving them ruined.

 

I find it very fitting that his "legendary" promoting career went out with a whimper instead of a bang. Munguía vs. Smith isn't even all that great a headliner but King had nothing to do with either party in the main event. The only fighter on the card in his grubby clutches was Mensah, never heard from since.

 

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Total douchebag but to play devil's advocate, he did make the big fights and put on great shows with awesome undecards.

 

Don King did nothing different that the mafia was not already doing before he got there, he just happened to be from Cleveland. On a honest note anybody who signed with King after Muhammad Ali publicly sued him deserved to be paper gangstered out of there money. People forget that these fighters were poor as dirt before King and did not know how to manage their money anyway. Don King made them rich and they would squander all of it then turn around and start asking about money instead of hiring a lawyer to look at that paperwork.
Don King and Bob Arum laid the blueprint for Hearn, Haymon and every other promoter today and in the future. I do totally agree that his ending has been a total bust,yet when he dies people are gonna talk him up.
@3:55

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So because many other guys robbed fighters, & King did it on a massive scale for years, & many boxers did not know how to manage money...
It is OK that King continually robbed, expolited, lied to manipilated, ruined in mismatches, backballed, destroyed in various ways...

The 2 time murderer is a remorseless sociopath.
He can steal from & hurt even the ATGs who did the actual fighting & took all the risks, & anybody can find his criminal confessions charming?

Don King is a Monster.

 

Don King was arguably the greatest promoter in boxing history when it came to putting together quality cards for the fans.

Before King, promoters, for the most part, gave little interest to under cards. King put together some of the greatest fight cards, top to bottom, we've ever seen.

He was one of the biggest characters the sport has ever produced.

But, yes, his time has passed. That's okay. It happens to them all.

 

Every all-time great thought his promoter stole from him. ALL of them.

Don King made 100 boxers millionaires. There are Fortune 500 companies that don't make 100 employees millionaires.

Don King was a boxing promoter. It's not an occupation for the faint of heart.

 

Which legendary promoter went out with a bang?

Tex Rickard 's last fight - Tunney vs Heeney - didn't even earn enough to cover the fighter's guarantees. And Rickard died in his prime, basically.

Main Events basically crashed and burned when Dan Duva died. The company went broke and had no boxers. Kathy Duva, Dan's wife, fired all the employees at one point and just started over.

Mike Jacobs? Truman Gibson? Cedric Kushner? Dan Goosen? Butch Lewis? Frank Maloney? Mickey Duff?

 

Maybe many thought this, but show me how Frazier or Louis or Louis did. Let alone so many non-HWs.
It is important that King DID steal from them-& reveled in it.
Making some wealthy & ripping them off in numerous ways, when the events were highly profitable, destroying others..As decent as King shifting to Foreman's corner, abandoning Frazier, him buying off or rewarding jurors who exonerated him...

There is no rationale to consider him either better than basically evil, or accept that because some others do some similar things, that makes it any better.

And you do not get to by hook or crook create huge profits, yet justify taking whatever you can. A criminal contemptuous of any morality.
While many others might have made great cards, IF Trump did not steal all the...Everything.

 

Oh please.

First, Don King didn't promote Joe Louis. I don't know where the hell that came from.

When Joe Louis was broke, in a wheelchair, and near the very end of his life, King paid Joe Louis to show up to fights and sit ringside, so the cameras could catch a legend at the fight on camera. Joe Louis died after returning home from sitting ringside at the King-promoted Holmes-Berbick fight, where King paid Louis to appear. (That evil Don King.)

Second, the Frazier-Foreman stuff is ridiculous. King had nothing to do with that promotion. He was invited by someone in Frazier's camp to fly to Jamaica. He did. And he celebrated with Foreman because he wanted Foreman to win. King wasn't working for Frazier. Someone from Frazier's camp offered King a ride. And he didn't fly home with Frazier's team. Howard Cosell spent all his time with Frazier and Yank Durham in Jamaica, too, but he wanted Foreman to win, too, and celebrated with George afterward as well. Spending time with one side and rooting for the other happens.

King promoted two Joe Frazier fights. The Thrilla in Manila and the rematch with Foreman. Frazier had no problems with King.

And, after trials, when Don King was found not guilty, he invited the jurors to a fight -- all expenses on him. What a "DEVIL." (LOL)

Speaking of "evil," Don King's friend and business partner was murdered (his car was blown up) in Cleveland during the mob wars going on down there. King's house was bombed, too. King decided to take care of his partner's wife and son. He married his partner's widow (who was older than him) and adopted his partner's son (Carl). They had a long and happy marriage. When she died, he was destroyed and that's when he basically stepped back from boxing.

When Gerald McClellan was beaten into a coma by Nigel Benn, King paid for McClellan's surgery and paid to have his family flown to the UK and paid to have them all flown home. And Roy Jones, who was supposed to fight McClellan, gave money to McClellan, too. But Emanuel Steward, who used to train and manage McClellan, was owed a cut of the McClellan purse from the Benn fight. And instead of just letting McClellan's family keep the money (because they needed it), Steward demanded his cut. (Then, years later, when McClellan's family was broke and needed money, the multi-millionaire Steward held a "fundraiser."

Being greedy doesn't make people evil. It makes them greedy.

And King didn't have to do that for McClellan. When Magomed Abdusalamov was beaten into a coma a few years ago (against Mike Perez), no promoters paid his bills. Lou DiBella asked fans for "donations." WTF is that? And when Prichard Colon fell into a coma after another DiBella show, same thing. Colon's family is now suing DiBella.

In comparison to some of these recent "coma" situations, Don King looks like a goddamn saint. Is DiBella EVIL? Was Steward EVIL?

Andre Ward was suing his promoter (Dan Goosen) while Goosen had liver cancer. Ward didn't care what the strain of a lawsuit had on Goosen's health or how it impacted his family.

Is Andre Ward EVIL?

Don't act like King was some monster in a land of honest Joe's. They all want their cut. They all want more. It's every man for himself.

 

I did a thread here called "Stack", Don King Cards was the most frequent posts.

My complaint with him was his intervening/getting to Tyson. I can't remember the fight, but post interview, King came on and Rooney tried to push him aside. Looked at him with a MuthaF%#! look on his face.
1 or 2 fights later and IMO he slid in using the "My Brother We got to stick together" Card. Interesting that there are quite a few pictures with him, Robbin & Her mother. I don't fault them as much as King using them to get to Tyson.

And since Holmes didn't go bankrupt, makes me think that some of the fighters should share some blame for being swindled by Con King.

 

Psychopath.

 

Very good promoter. He put on great fights and that is what a promoter does. Better fights than Arum if you look at the full cards. Arum had the greats Leonard, Duran, Hearns and Hagler, but King made better cards. Arum marketed fights with those top guys and then had terrible undercards.. Of course if you have elite names you can do that, but King made more with lesser fighters.

 

Um, yes. They should "share" the blame. The fighters who are broke blew their money. (LOL)

Don King was their promoter. He wasn't their financial manager.

Lots of King fighters like Holmes, Felix Trinidad, Julio Cesar Chavez are all still multimillionaires. Even lesser fighters like Mayorga are still listed as multimillionaires, and he wasn't the brightest bulb. I think Gerry Cooney still has every dime of the millions he made from the Holmes payday.

And guys like Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson didn't go broke under King. They made more fighting for King than they made for any other promoter. When Tyson got out of prison, King presented Tyson with the biggest boxing contracts ever with the MGM Grand. Tyson later sued King to get even bigger share of that money ... and Tyson's next promoter Shelley Finkel got Tyson more multimillion-dollar purses. Tyson blew it all.

Don King didn't tell Mike Tyson to buy tigers and leopards, for God's sake, or tell Holyfield to buy the biggest homes on the planet and then get two-dozen women who weren't his wife pregnant.

Same with Witherspoon. Witherspoon famously sued King because King shorted him repeatedly. Witherspoon got a multi-million-dollar settlement. And Spoon was broke six months later. He just blew it all.

These guys are all independent contractors. It's all on them to pay their taxes and control their money and not get every woman they pass on the street pregnant. Not their promoter.