Don King

“If Don King were a city, he would be Las Vegas: flamboyant, awake 24 hours a day, driven by money, rooted in gambling, and the mob.”

Donald King, could be described as one of the few promoters that  kept fire of the earliest intelligent scoundrels, such as Tex Rickard  and ‘Doc’ Kearns, burning. His flamboyant and flashy personality, combined with creativity and ruthless ambition.

Don King was born in 1931, in Cleveland, and the theme of his early life was characterised by the ambition of the town, from the city’s numbers racket game, which would later also be the theme of all his actions in later life. As a young kid, Donald was recruited to walk around Cleveland and record the lottery-style bets of the city’s numbers game for his older brother Connie. King’s impressive social skills was evident from the early ages as Don got increasingly involved in the mob-controlled rackets of the day. He was set to study law at Kent State university, but on December 2nd, 1954, King shot and murdered Hilary Brown and was then convicted for justifiable homicide. It was after Brown and two acquaintances attempted a robbery on one of King’s gambling houses. The message was clear: no one gets in the way of King and his money. King was released around 4 years later and went straight back to running numbers. King was then convicted again, for stomping a former employee to death due to a $600 debt. Again, it was over money and King was sentenced for a first degree murder. King’s time in prison only increased his relentless ambition. King spent his time reading and increasing his intellect, to go with his already-savvy street smarts and great talking ability.

Within a year of his release, King started putting together fights and eventually his convinced Muhummad Ali to come to Cleveland to put on a charity boxing exhibition. Much like Rickard’s improvement of boxing as an event, King done the same by adding musical festivities to boxing events, including a concert by Marvin Gaye and a fashion show. Ali’s team never really trusted King, but they couldn’t help admire his ambitious plans. In 1974, King got his big break when he staged the global event Muhummad Ali against the feared young champion George Foreman. Staged in Zaire, Africa, and dubbed ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’, the match up came to represent great symbolism for the Africans who supported Muhummad Ali, and garnered great interest from the general public who were eager to see if Ali could pull of the seemingly impossible, against the seemingly invincible young Foreman. The event was one of the biggest sporting (not just boxing) events of the 20th century.

The earliest signs of King’s financial ruthlessness and ambition in boxing was emerging in the 70’s. Don King understood the importance of being visibly and audibly flashy to gather attention, and the importance of being on the winning side. King adopted his ‘electric’- styled hair and distinctive catchphrases to make himself central to all of the spectacles occurring in boxing, more so than even his fighters. It was from Don King that, promoters started to place themselves in a visible position in interviews, and the face-offs between his fighters. King understood the importance of never allowing opportunities to promote and grow his own brand, to go to waste. It is believed that King ripped off every (if not the vast majority of) fighter he worked with. Ali was the fighter that caused King to grow into the global icon that he became. Yet despite this, King ripped off Ali in his fight with Holmes, short-changing him of $1.2 million from Ali’s $8 million purse. To make matters worse, King tricked Ali’s associates to drop the lawsuit Ali filed. And after this, he forced his associate into bringing the ageing (and ailing) Ali a contract to sign, which would force Ali to be under King’s company should he ever fight again.

King was a revolutionary promoter

Ali would go on to promote(and steal) from other great fighters and champions, including Roy Jones Jr., Larry Holmes, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., Bernard Hopkins, and Felix Trinidad. However, the fighter who he managed to get in his clutches, and in many ways destroy the career of, was Mike Tyson. King’s pursuit and acquisition of Iron Mike was patient and calculating. King got to Mike when problems started to derail the personal life of the heavyweight champ, playing the role of friend and family, and their relationship would last for over a decade. It ended however with Tyson referring to King as’just a bad man, a real bad man. He would kill his own mother for a dollar. He’s ruthless, he’s deplorable, he’s greedy … and he doesn’t know how to love anybody.’

In Mike Tyson, Don King saw a vulnerable young kid (Tyson won the heavyweight championship at the age of 20), in which he could offer comfort and stability in a way to form a relationship with him. In truth though, according to those that worked with King, there is no relationship you can have with King that doesn’t involve Don reaping rewards as one’s own expense. After Mike Tyson’s adopted father and mentor Cus D’Amato died in 1985 and then after  Jim Jacobs, Mike’s next closest confidant, die too, Mike wasn’t protected as much as he was before. This allowed Don to increase his hold over the young champ, and eventually he convinced Tyson to dump his trainer Kevin Rooney and his manager Bill Cayton. These two men were the last remaining connections that Tyson had to the Cus D’Amato family, and after they left, Tyson arguably was never the same fighter again.

King was great at using racial relations to convince young black fighters to side with him, as opposed to ‘the man’ at the time who he said would rip them off, which Tyson was also no doubt a victim of. However, it was Don himself who Tyson needed to be wary of. In 1998, Tyson claimed Don King had short-changed Mike (who was the most expensive athlete in this period), for over $100 million,  but only received $14 million in an out-of-court settlement.

Don King was the first promoter to put his face in the back of stare offs

Overall, Donald King is one of the most ambiguous characters in boxing history. The traits that were the cause of his great success, were also the cause of his ability to polarise opinion. King has been sued more than any other man in boxing history, but on the other hand, transcended the sport as an event. King’s ambitious pursuit of the dollar and ability to generate finances is truly impressive, especially in a time of overt and institutional racism. It could be described as disappointing that those skills were used to short change fighters who put their life on the line every time they fight. His ambition to succeed an overcome numerous challenges is respectable and unique. How many people go to prison twice for murdering individuals and manage to come back and create an empire? His abilities and actions truly merit his comparisons to the earliest of his kind, including moneymen Tex Rickard  and Doc Kearns, but it may be the case that he out-done all of them in his own right. But history won’t remember him as a source of transcendence. Rather, boxing will remember him as the man who was the true embodiment of boxing’s darker, corrupt side.