Don King, demon or angel?

He also robbed a great deal more $millions from boxers, than any other promoter.

 

Strong words.Not that they stopped Tyson from picking up a paycheck to do colour commentary on Don King's website for the Agbeko-Perez card two years back,mind you.

 

Read the life and crimes of don king :deal

Horrible, horrible man

 

It's a more interesting question after the initial reaction to Don King's personal character and abuse of fighters. Obviously he's a devil if you consider his criminal history or his financial treatment of certain fighters. The more specific question for me is "Did Don King advance the sport of boxing through his promotional efforts" and I'm not sure there is an easy answer. I saw some great Don King cards and am of the opinion that he was a fabulous promoter when motivated to be so. Maybe the best of all time.

 

Neither, he is an arsehole.

 

Somewhere in the middle, what he did to Ali in the Holmes fight was straight up foul.

 

I will give you an easy answer.

He put it back about 40 years.

 

he destroyed a lot of fighters, a famous example being mike tyson. but like others have said he gave us some really memorable fights. without him we might never have had the rumble in the jungle.

 

That is a tree.

Stand back from the tree so that you can see that most of the forest has been slashed and burned.

 

Peak for peak he is greater than any other promoter.

He has made some of the biggest fights of all time and generated vast sums of money for boxing.

 

Give me an example of his "burning down the forest" and I might buy it. He facilitated the Chavez phenonema, did he not? Good for boxing or no? Did he not push Trinidad too? Same question. Was the Holmes run good or bad for boxing? I'll grant you the Tubbs/Page/Witherspoon era was negative, but what else did he specifically do to hurt boxing as an overall sport?

I thought the real demise of boxing was a combination of cable TV destroying the local clubs and gyms and the advent of MMA. Correct me if you disagree. Maybe I'm not seeing this right.

 

He's like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, mostly evil. He is a person who traded morals for money.

He has close to no morals, especially when you consider that he once did time for stomping a man to death who owed him money.

I also recall reading someplace years ago where they were having some sort of function or discussion about people with parkinsons and Don king said " they ought to put on some kind of benefit for people who shake like that". This of course was said out of sarcasim, he could care less.

I would say that he's 20 percent good and 80 percent evil, i don't care how many great fights that he promoted.

Look at the ali-holmes fight when ali stepped into the ring. Check out how king smiles, like a fox in the henhouse. He had that mischievious grin because he knew that ali was weakened because of the pills that he paid ali's physician (charles williams) to give him.

Not that ali would have won but I don't believe it would have been as bad if he had his full strength. He had nothing at all and was for all intents and purposes physically handicapped.

King had a way of screwing all of his fighters and the fights that he promoted were not so much for the good of boxing but for his own good.

Verdict: demon.

 

You don't judge the effect of a man like King by the fights he made, you judge it by the fights he didn't make.

King came allong at a time when the sport was at its verry pinacle in terms of the most competitive fights being made, and as he solidified his control fewer and fewer top fights were made and he sought to protect his interests. Decades on end were lost as the titles became further fragmented and King protected his principle cash cows.

That is the patern, and that is his legacy.

 

Superb post. :good

 

Hes responsible for some memorable cards/matches etc.

But hes also responsible for ruining a lot of fighters.

His way of doing business was basically.

"Ill get you a fight for $1m and a title shot, however you get £600,000 and ill take £400,000. If not then, you can fight some local bum for £10,000, choice is yours, oh and if you do decided to sign, i get to promote your next 3 matches etc etc"