Whatever happened to Don King?

A Don and a King, what a man!

 

At his age, most African Americans have suffered degenerative diseases and very few reach 80 ( no racism).

So he must be doing something right.

 

All that good karma eh.

 

LOL @ IB Getting biblical on that oll ass

 

And who'd you say is the anomaly?

 

King is in better shape than the 2 guys he killed in 1954 and 1967, i read that Cleveland nearly renamed a portion of the road in area where he stomped his last victim to death as Don King Way, but came to their senses.

 

King, a genius? Yeah, right. Tell me how King was a genius. It's more like King would do ANYTHING to get a win for his fighter. Look at the Johnny Boudreaux-Scott LeDoux fight. An out and out robbery. LeDoux beat him from pillar to post and Boudreaux got the decision. Not that this doesn't happen a lot in boxing but this one was so obvious they investigated it and found King guilty. There is nothing to respect about Don King. The guy is a street hustler who did time for beating a man to death. Once he started talking he wouldn't shut up as he waved his little American flags.

 

I've always liked Don King.

King had little education but was great with numbers. So he got a job with the Cleveland mob in the 1950s running part of their gambling operation. He worked for famous Cleveland mobster Shondor Birns. At the time, there were a lot of fights over territory among mob factions. Don King's partner had his car blown up. King ended up marrying his partner's wife and adopting his partner's son. Then King's house got bombed. King was forced to testify in court.

There's a famous photo of him clean cut, before the spikey hair, reading a paper waiting to testify. He became famous in Cleveland around that time because it's the first time he ever used his famous gift for gab, citing famous leaders from the past, going on and on about history, while he was on the witness stand. He'd do it at press conferences before boxing matches, talking for an hour or more and put people to sleep. He did that in court while testifying, without ever naming names or snitching on anyone, until the lawyers and the judge just got tired of him rambling and told him to step down. (LOL)

King was accused of killing two men. One was in self defense, the other he stomped a guy to death who owed him money. Then again, King was collecting money for the mob, and they were blowing people up right and left, so everyone had to pay or it was Don's fault if they didn't. These weren't a bunch of soft people running around. Everyone knew the score. If you're gambling with the mob and not paying when you owe them, it's not going to turn out well.

Before he went to jail, he attended, I believe the Ali-Cleveland Williams card because he and Ali had a mutual friend, a well known singer at the time. There is footage of King behind Ali after Ali stopped Williams.

So, when he was in jail, he knew when he got out he wanted to get into boxing.

He moved into boxing and the first professional boxing card he promoted was the freaking Rumble in the Jungle. He managed to do it by talking the President of Zaire into fronting a lot of the money.

King made some money off that, but he wanted to remain Ali's promoter so he went back to the Cleveland mob to help him finance Ali's first defense against Chuck Wepner in Cleveland in March 1975. Bob Arum was quoted later as saying Don King didn't manage to completely pay off the mob for that fight until the Holmes-Cooney fight in 1982.

Interestingly, King's old boss Shondor Birns was blown up with a car bomb about a week or so after the Wepner fight by an Irish mobster named Danny Green (who was also killed later by a car bomb).

So King came up with a pretty dangerous crowd, and eventually he paid his way out. I think he was happy to put that part behind him, and I think he was genuinely happy he survived it. Basically, everyone he'd worked with was dead. And he became arguably the greatest boxing promoter ever, if not one of top three.

If you go back and read books written by Jack Newfield, that destroyed King, most of what he railed against King for is common practice or totally part of the boxing culture now.

When King started a promoter couldn't manage a fighter, so King had the boxers add his stepson, Carl, as their co-manager.

Newfield raged against King because he thought it was TERRIBLE that Carl managed two men fighting against each other, because King "couldn't lose" if one of them won.

King also famously paid the editor of Ring a couple thousand to rate some boxers so he could stage a US Boxing Tourney on ABC (because King promised ABC all the boxers would be rated.)

Today, boxers sign with promoters and the promoters only match them with boxers they also promote (which King was vilified for).

Today, boxers' promoters are essentially their managers ... see Hearn-Joshua for Exhibit A. And Bob Arum and everyone he promotes as Exhibit B.

In the 1990s, Oscar De La Hoya bought a California promotional company, renamed it Golden Boy, dumped his promoter Bob Arum and started promoting and basically managing himself. And Oscar would later sign other boxers to Golden boy and fight them, so Oscar promoted both boxers in a match while competing in the actual matches himself, which seems like an incredible conflict of interest.

And Oscar didn't pay off Ring editors for ratings, he just bought the magazine and paid everyone's regular salaries.

So, as the years go on, all of the evils Don King perpetrated don't seem as evil anymore.

 

Who investigated the decision and found Don King guilty of fixing the decision?

You're all mixed up. Ring compiled a list of U.S. boxers specifically for the tournament. When it was reported Don King paid the editor of Ring to rate some fighters he'd signed to compete in the tournament - ABC dropped the tournament and ABC execs were called before Congress to get yelled at for not doing their due diligence about the participants.

Nobody was "found guilty in court" of anything.

And Johnny Boudreaux was rated by Ring magazine in their WORLD ratings before Don King ever put on the tournament. King paid Ring for a handful of unknowns to be ranked in the lighter divisions ... and he may have paid for a U.S. rating for Ledoux. Ledoux wouldn't even have been invited without King. He wasn't a contender at the time. There were a lot more than 10 U.S. heavyweights who were considered better than Scott Ledoux in 1977.

 

The last champions he promoted, I believe, were Cornelius Bundrage, Bermane Stiverne, Tavoris Cloud and Devon Alexander.

I was at the card in Missouri when all four of them fought and it was televised by HBO - Bundrage-Powell, Stiverne-Austin, Cloud-Mack and Alexander-Matthysse. That was in 2011. After that, he just sort of popped up here and there, like when Stiverne won or fought for the WBC title.

King also promoted Omar Henry, who was a very popular young fighter coming up. But he got sick and died unexpectedly a couple years ago.

 

When Lennox Lewis beat Holyfield in 99 is when King's control in boxing started to fade.

 

I think the multiple lawsuits he's had against him had something to do with him not being able to sign up many fighters. The courts probably put an injunction on him and/or he signed a non-disclosure agreement with opposing parties to not sign certain fighters and/or not rip off fighters anymore.

Also, I think that Don just has a bad reputation for ripping off Tyson, Holyfield and so many big name fighters that other up and coming fighters refuse to sign up with Don and now he just cant get top notch fighters to sign with him.

Another reason, Don has too much competition, such as Golden Boy, Top Rank, Goosen's Promotions, DANZ, Main Events, etc.

Age might be a factor, but he already has his son-Carl doing the promotion business for him, under Don's supervision, but still, big name fighters are being cautious of signing with the Kind stable due to their notorious reputation of ripping off fighters and being stuck with King Contracts with no way out until the term runs out, so that's probably the major reason he hardly has any fighter. He does have a training camp somewhere in Ohio, but no big name fighters want to do business with Don.

Anyways, I saw Don King in person, along with DelaHoya, years ago at a weigh-in, in the Honda Center, in Anaheim, CA while they promoted the Abner Mares v Joseph Agbeko title fight.

 

A disgusting human being.
Its a shame such a person had such an impact on the noble art.

 

DLH is the new Don King, passing of the torch