Bob Arum is better with certain fighters/mangers who think they are slick/smart Don King is better with certain fighters/managers who think they are thugs/tough
I don’t care about his history outside of boxing. Will, Witherspoon is no punk ass ***** and neither is Tyson. Those are only two out of many who have complained about Don. There are stories from fighters who say that Don didn’t pay them what they were supposed to be paid. I wouldn’t lie to you.
Thomas Hausen in his pretty definitive Ali Biography described King screaming & begging for mercy in the Bahamas. When he traveled & barged into a press conference uninvited & tried to bully money not due to him... Apparently some black Muslim black belts visited him, bade his guest to depart, & practiced their craft on him. Of all the balanced portraits of individuals Hausen had, nuanced accounts of good & bad, he could find nothing positive to say about the character or integrity of King. So whether he is literally or effectively a "Gangsta", you think this is something to admire? He is a sociopath, likely a True Psychopath. He will victimize anyone for any personal gain & has no loyalty or integrity whatsoever. Don King is a Monster.
Thomas Hausen has nothing but hearsay. Back then the NOI didn't rock with guys like Hausen so how does he know what happened to King? Don King made Ali more money than anyone had before he came along. In fact Don King is the sole reason that fighters get million dollar paydays to this day. No one in the sport was getting a million for a fight and Don King made it possible. I'm not making him a saint because you don't go into a business filled with gangsters trying to act moral but King made men rich who were getting stiffed by the other guys who had no respect for them based on race alone.
C'mon now, no Historian would be able to prove anything if they were limited to just stuff they saw & who they hung out with. That is not how the science of documentation works. Hausen's book was extensively footnoted-what reason do you have to believe that what he described was false? Show me anyone who even ever disputed it. King did make fighters much money. That does not make his large scale thievery any better. Some guys WERE moral, at least with their fighters. King also had a monopoly on the best fighters, & he did create big events. So these guys were gonna earn a lot of money anyway. Ali settled for a miniscule fraction of what he was ower (10% I believe-& warned Holmes that when King was done with him he would have nothing. Something like that. King exploited Tyson's insecurity & used a racial comradery rap to fuel Tyson's paranoia & steal from him more effectively. YES some guys would not respect the fighters do to racism. Evil stuff. But some would cheat or be honest REGARDLESS of background. Like Goldman stealing Rocky blind. King evidences absolutely no racial bias. So what? It is like saying a mass murderer does not happen to be a ******. King only cared about Green, he constantly short-moneyed boxers & charities (done only for PR)... I do not think you would dispute that he was lucky to just do time for one murder. Or that either was actually self-defense. He just became a more sophisticated criminal. There is no indication he has any human feeling for ANYONE man.
I know that's not a nice thing to say, but I really don't care. And I would think the majority share my feelings.
VG I don’t like promoters in general but I don’t have enough against them to make a comment about either guy and I grew up knowing the ish that King and Arum pulled on fighters. You just created bad luck for yourself if you believe in that sort of thing.
