How much different could the heavy s of the 80 "s have been without don king?

Thanks ... I'm still learning!

Yeah, at the end of the day, it IS business; if you follow wrestling or bodybuilding, Vince McMahon and the Weider brothers have/had a similar impact on their sports. If you were successful, they played a large role in it - there were a few athletes who did very well because of their influence and business sense. They also left a large wake of ruin behind them by exploiting the less-successful or less-savvy ... but again: that's business. It's not always fair.

 

Don King is arguably the primary reason we saw so many great fights in those eras.

He was one of the greatest boxing promoters who ever lived.

Fighters complained for decades if King didn't pay them what he promised them, because he often promised them the world.

But nobody can say those boxers would've MADE MORE without King, because nobody was offering them more.

That's why they stuck with King.

I read once that Don King made more than 100 fighters millionaires in his career. There are Fortune 500 companies that haven't made that many individuals millionaires, particularly individuals with very little education. No other boxing promoters have, either.

Nobody left King and suddenly found other promoters were tripping over themselves offering them fortunes they'd been denied. Mike Tyson made less when he fought for Cayton and Jacobs than he did when he fought solely for King. And Mike Tyson made less when he left King than he made with him. Ali made more fighting for King than he made fighting for anyone else. Basically, they all did. Even Witherspoon.

I remember Chris Byrd, in particular, complaining that King had said he'd pay him a million dollars a fight, and King was only paying him $250,000 or something like that a fight ... so he was being ROBBED. Forgetting the fact that before Byrd fought for King was making $10,000 a fight on USA, Fox Sports and ESPN. And, when Byrd dumped King, Byrd went back to make $10,000 a fight on ESPN and Fox Sports.

It was the same with all those guys. Most of the "Don King robbed me" stories are boxers who said KING PROMISED ME THIS but he only paid me THIS. Meanwhile, what he actually paid them was more than ANYONE else would pay for their services.

And since he controlled nearly all the heavyweights for a period, nearly all of them fought each other. You can say a couple guys didn't fight a couple of those guys, but we basically saw incredible lineup of fights under his banner.

And if King SIGNED you, you knew you were going to get fights. Witherspoon was a total unknown, signed with Don King, and King matched him with Snipes and then Holmes for the title.

BOOM. BOOM. Just like that. He didn't play around. He wasn't there to coddle fighters or match them soft hoping to build up glossy records based on wins over knockover opponents.

You sign with King, and he was going to match you with one top 10 contender after another, fight after fight, and it was sink or swim. You either did well or you got your @ss beat. And if you couldn't handle the pressure, there were a dozen other guys willing to take your place.

I can understand complaints fighters had, because he wasn't there to protect them or their careers. King was there to make great fight cards. And that meant competitive matchups.

He wasn't there to be their dad. He wasn't there to look out for them. He wasn't there to set aside money for their retirement. He was there to put on exciting shows. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

He was among the best ever at promoting boxing. And every fan benefited one way or another.

 

Tyson was a minor when he signed with Jacobs and Cayton. By the time he turned 21, he wanted to leave them. He was just growing up. A 20-year-old black athlete in the 1980s wanted to hang out with Public Enemy and go to nightclubs, he didn't want to stay home every night with a bunch of old, gay Jewish men watching boxing matches from the 1940s.

And Tyson made more fighting for Don King than he made fighting for Cus and Cayton and Jacobs. I think Tyson made a whopping $2 million dollars for his unification final against Tucker under those guys in the HBO tournament. He was making $30 million a fight for King against guys like Bruno and Seldon and breaking PPV records.

And when he left King, and signed with a bunch of old gay Jewish men again, like Shelley Finkel, Tyson fought even worse and went bankrupt, even after earning millions fighting guys like Lennox Lewis.

You can't blame King for Tyson's behavior, because he was doing all the same things regardless of whether his career was being run by Cayton/Jacobs, King or guys like Finkel.

 

Yes. Tim Witherspoon

 

Tony Tubbs said he was screwed by DK. But these guys couldnt look after their money and as Tubbs admitted, if you blow 2 million you would blow 5 million.

 

Especially if you're blowing it on blow.

 

Good post, but
Shelley Finkel isn't gay.
Married with 3 kids, Tyrell Biggs always said he was a good guy as his manager.

 

Watched a dated Frontline Report just last nite. It concentrated on Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Mike Tyson, and many of the 80's heavy's getting ripped of by DKing.