Rear View Mirror – Don King
“One afternoon in Kingston, Jamaica, Don King performed a magic trick by arriving at a heavyweight title fight in a limousine with the champ and, when he was knocked out, left in the limo with the new champ; King switched camps and nobody noticed or cared.” Steve Bunce, Thursday 15 May 2014, the Independent.
If only that was the most spectacular thing about Don King…
Alternatively, you should also go to the BBC Sounds website and listen to Lennox Lewis and Steve Bunce describe Don King’s crazy relationship with boxing “Power Play, The House of Don King.” It’s a long listen but every word spoken takes you on one hell of a journey…
But for me it was the hair.
It was always the hair.
And to be fair he is so much more than that mop of bizarre mane at the top of his head. For many, Don King has been like a colossus that has straddled so much of American boxing and by turn, the boxing world, in its entirety that has been much of my experience of boxing. I look across at Don King and think only one thing – boxing. And he has been the presence in the sport, an unmistakable association with the greatest fighting game on the planet.
I was blessed by being able to see him first in black and white, like some old-style feature from a Saturday morning Hammer show he was helping his Muhamad Ali promotion for the Rumble in the Jungle, and we caught him full on. The thing about King was that we, in the UK, just could not take to him, trust him, believe him but we all kind of liked him.
He was the ultimate image of a coloured guy who was making good and, in a time, when exploitation usually had a white face, he seemed to be the very picture of capitalism with an acceptable face; I said SEEMED…
His rise to prominence was thanks to that 1974 Ali/Foreman classic and from that point onwards each time we put on the TV on if Don King was not promoting the transatlantic fight, we took fright and wondered if it was really going to happen at all. Now 93 years old we still occasionally see him, well we spot the hair, when there are occasions that boxing is on TV and especially when the past is eulogised.
He was a hustler, a street trader and fighter who by 1967 was in jail on manslaughter charges, but he left prison with an aura, an image and a reputation; after all it was not the first man he had killed. He was street smart and, in the shark, infested waters of the boxing world of the early 1970’s that was a perfect apprenticeship; many in that world who thought themselves as the sharks, became his bait.
His ability to stay on the right side of the powerful, coupled with a seemingly untouchable ability to rob his own meant there were very few who would take him on; many managed to win when they did – eventually. His ethics were buried in his childhood but his mark on the boxing world has never been doubted.
He was a consummate mover and a hipsway shaker as he could start with clear allegiance to Frazier, swap into the entourage around Foreman and emerge with the biggest fight in the history of the sport side by side with Ali in Zaire; often in the length of a sentence. It meant he could bring together promises and supply other’s moneys to meet competing demands from which he took and distributed in the one to you, two to me process that seemed, at the time, to be justifiable.
But King delivered. After having given the world a feast in Africa he did it once more with the Philippines his next destination.
If we had thought the Jungle was hard, he made sure the Thriller was kept to Manilla. King spotted not only how to get 70’s dictators onside but also the TV. He realised it gave him a bigger market than ticket sales; he caught on quick and took an entire sport AND the world along for the ride as packages included close up access, pay per view opportunities and broadcasting to nations, hitherto immune to Don King madness – and everyone was entitled to some of that!
By the end of the 1970’s this was not only A guy to know in boxing he had manoeuvred himself into being THE guy to know.
He was adding people to a bigger and bigger stable with the likes of the new generations of Duran and Holmes and showing the world how it has to be done in the modern era. He was growing each year and there were times you thought it might all pop and then just when you thought he might have peaked he then brought to the world Iron Mike Tyson.
The late 80’s was a golden time and the next series of raids upon our pockets were achieved with explosive action and the delivery of true sporting beauty all with that tough reputation on the line every time he needed to show who was boss – he always was THE boss too.
King’s problems though were beginning to bury themselves deep and plant seeds for the future, and with anyone who finds thin ice attractive he was going to be close to things fallen beneath him. Clients began to question his methods, not on their behalf but in their pockets. Fighters like Ali, Tyson and Tim Witherspoon asked questions that ended up being public ones as they took King to court.
He was, however, as slippery as an eel as each time he ended up being charged and investigated by the authorities he evaded punishment. This included tax evasion in 1984, twice being under scrutiny for fraud and investigation by the FBI in the 80’s and 90’s – it all led to nothing.
By the new millennium, with the rise of MMA, the dilution of boxing titles and the fatigue with which many now viewed the sport, King found himself less relevant. His company began to downsize as his wealth was under attack from courts and law suits. It was no longer his suited attire that caused his wallet to wilt but the suits in court that were making it start to creak and moan.
His presence though was undeniable. He could still get himself in on the action.
In 2016, he was representing another heavyweight – Eric Molina – in his fight against the WBC champion, Deontay Wilder. At the weigh in, with the arrival of both boxers muted and there being little excitement, the star attraction turned out to be very fella who would not be getting punched for his money – King. People clamoured and strained, and the public finally got to see a boxing legend. The challenger Molina got no recognition, the champion got no real applause but a then 86-year-old man who was not even promoting the fight and was in the wrong corner for the evening was the most recognisable face there.
His legacy is tainted by what he had to do to climb the ladder but let us still be clear there was no ladder before King. He invented it, created it crooked, changed the pathway in case anyone followed, climbed it and has left it hanging for other people to try and straighten it to try and climb it.
King’s rise may well have been in a different era. People can talk of different times, because they were different, and there were methods used, not needed, that would be appalling today. They were appalling then but people got away with them. Why? Because they got away with them.
You couldn’t argue that Don King was an example of just how good any rehabilitation from prison was, however, the power of his personality is what has made him who he is. That and the litany of names with whom King has been associated, from Julio Cesar Chavez to Sugar Ray Leonard, from Leon Spinks to Evander Holyfield, from Ali and Frasier to Duran and Tyson, King has stood like a colossus over the top of them and many believed required them to act like puppets at the end of his string.
King used his legal knowledge to manipulate, manage and throw boxers into fights that they should never have been in or fights that they claim they never get paid for properly. He is still going strong in his 90s, Don King is as much boxing royalty as the bricks that hold up the Royal Albert Hall are prestigious real estate for this country.
He is unbelievably a character and when people start to complain that sports are losing their characters, as Natasha Jonas told Lauren Price, be careful what you wish for, and whilst Jonas didn’t quite match Price in the ring Don King exceeds anybody’s descriptive power – just ask Steve Bunce, or anyone who met him, did business with him or fought on his cards…
More articles from Donald C Stewart HERE