Just to play devil's advocate, was Don King really this evil garbage?

George Foreman made $700,000 for the Norton defense, when others were promoting him, and seven months later he made $5 million for his next fight which was the first major fight staged by Don King.

There weren't any "advances" in technology that caused the pay scale to jump that much.

Foreman and Ali got $5 million each because King negotiated with both fighters, with the leader of Zaire and with financial backers to put it together and to get everyone to agree.

Madison Square Garden insisted it wasn't financially feasible and was trying to stage Ali-Quarry 3 and wanted to pay Ali like one-fifth of that.

King elevated the purses of fighters and brought the other promoters at the time kicking and screaming along with him.

 

That's like saying Eddie Hearn was the matchmaker of Joshua-Usyk, and not the promoter.

Don King negotiated with Ali, he negotiated with Foreman, he found their price, he found the location, he negotiated with the president of Zaire, he got everyone to sign the deals, he put everything together including the concert that went along with it, and he promoted the event.

Those guys bankrolled it (like the Saudis do now).

If you want to read how Don King put together the Rumble in the Jungle, read Ali: The Life by Jonathan Eig. It's the book they used to put together the Ken Burns documentary on Ali.

And that line about Don King not killing anyone in 60 years IS hilarious, because some of you guys act like you lock your doors at night because you're afraid Don King is going to come over and kick you in the head.

I'm trying to bring you all back to reality. You all just mimic the outrage the hysterical Jack Newfield ... who was given access to King to write a book about his life, and then spent the whole time talking about a decades old charge (at the time) against King that he'd already served time for ... and acted like promoting and managing a boxer was the biggest single crime that could be committed in the sport. God forbid King promoter AND manage fighters. Lord help me I'm having the vapors.

In the publishing industry they refer to what Newfield did as "A HATCHET JOB."

 

Good Lord. You're posting clips of a documentary WRITTEN and STARRING Jack Newfield. Go back and watch the credits for that documentary. It's written by Jack Newfield, who was trying to sell his book. That narrator is quoting Jack Newfield and Newfield appears in your clip.

And, again, Newfield is OUTRAGED that Don King won't let him attend the Tyson-Ruddock fight for free after blasting King in his book.

Jack Newfield was outraged by everything. He was probably outraged by his hotel bill that morning, the price of the cab ride over, and outraged by the way the strap on his lanyard creased his shirt collar.

The NY Post was Fox News and MSNBC before cable. Back then it was just a bunch of screaming headlines, most famously, "HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR."

My advice is to read more.

And that clip you posted from Don King Unauthorized with the cop had always led me to roll my eyes. Can you believe he took a camera crew, went to Cleveland, which was the car bomb capitol of the world (no hyperbole, the world) in the mid 70s, and asked a beat cop if he remembered a day nearly three decades earlier where one guy kicked another guy in the head? And the guy said he remembered that day clearly? Despite the thousands of murders he's witnessed and the pieces of bodies laying around after a 100 car bombs went off in the middle of that decade, he remembers one guy kicking another guy decades earlier?

If you asked a beat cop in Chicago today if he remembers a guy kicking another guy in the head on his beat three decades earlier, he'd laugh in your face and say he doesn't remember what happened last week.

Can we all move on from the "faux Don King drama" at this point?

 

Exactly.

The same couple names get trotted out so much. I posted just "some" of the recognizable names he promoted at the start of his career as a promoter.

How many lawsuits did George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Jimmy Young, Wilfred Benitez, Victor Galindez, Carlos Monzon, Ron Lyle, Ron Stander, Joe Bugner, Tony Licata, Ray Elson, Jorge Ahumada, Rodney Bobick, Jean Pierre Coopman, Joe "King" Roman, Roy "Tiger" Williams, Stan Ward, Sugar Ray Seales, Ronnie Harris, Mike Rossman, Ray Anderson, Bobby 'Boogaloo" Watts, David Love, Leroy Jones, Floyd Mayweather Sr., Vonzell Johnson, Rubin Castillo, Saoul Mamby, Alfredo Evangelista, Alfredo Escalara, Esteban DeJesus, Lorenzo Zanon, Edwin Viruet, Matthew Franklin, Billy Douglas, Jerry Quarry, Sugar Ray Leonard, Carlos Zarate, Albert Davila, Alexis Arguello, Rey Tam, Ossie Ocasio, Carlos Zarate , Emilio Hernandez, Edwin Viruet, Bruce Curry, Arturo Leon, Randy Stephens, Monroe Brooks, Michael Dokes, Scott Ledoux, Carlos Palomino, Wilfredo Gomez, Carlos Mendoza, Andy "Hawk" Price, Leon Spinks, Aaron Pryor, James Scott, Jerry Martin, John Tate, Carlos DeLeon, Bernardo Mercado, Marvin Camel, Alan Minter, Mustafa Hamsho, John L. Gardner, Salvador Sanchez, Wilfredo Gomez, Luigi Minchillo, Renaldo Snipes, Randy "Tex" Cobb, George Chaplin, David Bey, Dujuan Johnson, Miguel Montlla, Scott Frank, John "The Beast" Mugabi, Curtis Ramsey, Jeff Sims, Jumbo Cummings, Gerry Cooney, James "Quick" Tillis, Eddie Davis, Murray Sutherland, Leroy Haley, S.T. Gordon, Azumah Nelson, Juan LaPorte, Jesse Burnett, Mike Weaver, James "The Heat" Kinchen, Thomas Hearns and Lupe Pintor ...

Just to name a few from the late 70s and very early 80s ... but you get the point ... how many of them filed charges against him?

And there are a quarter of a century of fighters after those he promoted.

Enough already. Some people got the raw end of the deal and they sued him. The vast majority had no problems with him at all.

 

I was responding to someone who literally compared him to Hitler.

 

I’d like to see some of the mob (as in real Mafia) people who ran boxing long before King came along looked at with this same lens. You just hear ‘oh the mob’ and people brush it off as if that same mob wasn’t murdering people on the streets, selling drugs, running prostitution, etc.

King was a ruthless businessman and he served time for real crimes, but I don’t think he compares to those guys. Yet you don’t see much about that.

 

King did not negotiate the terms for the Ali v Foreman fight.His only function for that event was as match maker.

 

I have Eig's book,DON KING did not promote the Zaire fight just reconcile yourself to that fact.

 

Nobody compared him to Hitler ,its called an analogy as in one guy being a bigger POS than another does not in any wat mean the other is not a POS.

 

Yes he did.

In what was is Don King analogous to a man who tried to wipe out an entire race of people, murdering millions while also having his scientists perform heinous, torturous medical ‘experiments’ on them?

 

You and I have nothing to discuss.

 

Then stop replying to me and commenting on my posts.

 

I wrongly assumed you were referring to my Hitler vStalin comment.othwerwise I would not have replied.

 

I list 95 guys (just the name ones, I didn't list everyone on the undercards) he promoted just from the early days ... and you list the same handful of people who you guys always bring up. (There's never anyone new on those lists. You'd think the list would stretch to a thousand names by now. But it's always the same handful.)

If I list another 95 totally different fighters he promoted who were fine with him and who didn't sue him ... can you find seven or eight people you haven't listed before?

And if I list another 95 or 100 different guys who didn't sue him ... can you scrape the barrel to try to find another couple two or three you never brought up before?

All you're proving is that 90 to 95 percent of the people he worked with thought Don King did a good job for them.

And, frankly, considering the thousands of fighters he worked with, it's a pretty good average. Because every promoter gets sued.

And with every 95 to 100 names I find of people who are fine with him, and the fewer and fewer names you can find who did have a problem, that 90 to 95 percent ratio gets even tighter.

If Don King robbed everyone, shouldn't you be posting the hundreds of names he stole from and I be the one who has to scrounge around looking for the couple of fighters he didn't cheat?