King To Unify Heavyweights

King Vows To Unify Heavyweights
by Barnaby Chesterman
15 March 2007

PARIS – Don King rolled into Paris this week ahead of the cruiserweight world title rematch between undisputed champion O’Neil Bell and France’s Jean-Marc Mormeck.

The flamboyant King’s primary role is that of fight promoter but the man with electric hair had a surprise for everyone up his sleeve.

Aside from seemingly turning his hand to French politics during his stay in the French capital – King spent half the pre-fight press conference in Parisian suburb Levallois campaigning for Levallois mayor Patrick Balkony, who does not even have any elections coming up.

The loud man of boxing was also keen to tell anyone within earshot about his next engagement.

After Saturday’s eagerly-anticipated title fight, King will head off to the Vatican for a meeting with the Pope.

“Pope Benedict XVI is going to receive me and I’m going to ask him to say a prayer for this great man Patrick Balkony,” gushed King, clearly pleased that Balkony had helped him bring the title fight to France.

Mormeck is King’s main man for the fight and the promoter is convinced his charge will win back the titles he lost to Bell in their original meeting a year ago.

“I will be with Pope Benedict XVI to tell him about the great comeback (of Mormeck) that took place here and I’m going to present him with the WBC belt,” added King, who was draped in sparkling silver jewellery.

After meeting with the Pope, an arrangement facilitated by the priest brother of a fighter King promotes, King will turn his attentions back to the jumbled heavyweight division.

After briefly claiming that Mormeck will storm the division once he has dealt with Bell and swept up all before him at cruiserweight, King turned his focus to the actual reigning champion big men.

With four recognised world championship belts in each of the 17 professional boxing divisions, the sport can become somewhat confusing for the ordinary fan.

A few years ago, King tried to clear up matters in the middleweight division by staging a mini-competition between the four belt holders.

American Bernard Hopkins emerged as the undisputed middleweight king and a star was born. He has since lost his titles but his name still commands the utmost respect in the boxing fraternity.

Now King wants to put on a similar winner-takes-all competition in the heavyweight division.

“Absolutely! That’s the only way to give the public something they can relate to and identify with,” said King.

“They must be able to know who is the champion. Right now they’re very confused and so am I.”

The four current world champion heavyweights are Ukraine’s Vladimir Klitschko, giant seven-feet tall Russian Nikolay Valuev, Kazakh-born Russian Oleg Maskaev and American Shannon Briggs.

It is generally accepted that the two outstanding fighters in the division are Klitschko and Valuev – whose recent performances have suggested he is more than a giant freak show.

King, who co-promotes Valuev, is desperate to get Klitschko into the ring with his man.

“He’s on the list. I want Klitschko like a rare steak or roast beef. Nikolay Valuev told me yesterday: I want him Mr King, I want him. He has a great appetite and it’s insatiable.

“Nikolay is a giant man with a giant heart. He’s a great man and I love him. He protects women in the parking lot.

“He’s the man who gets out there and knocks down men that are pushing women around or grabbing their pocket books.”

That is one fight the world is waiting to see, but one that poses a minefield of contractual obstacles to overcome.

However, after meeting the Pope, hopefully King will come away from the Vatican with the kind of divine intervention needed to make Klitschko-Valuev become a reality.

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Sugar Ray Leonard Launches Reality Boxing Event

Warren And Leonard Bring The Noble Art Into Reality TV Era
By Steve Bunce
7 February 2007

The promoter Frank Warren and Sugar Ray Leonard have formed a partnership to launch a “reality” boxing event in Britain, starting in April.

Leonard and his former partner Sylvester Stallone were the men behind the successful American boxing reality show Contender and now Britain will have its own version.

The plan is for seven boxers from Britain and seven from America to fight each other on 30 March in Newcastle for the Sugar Ray Leonard Cup. There will be no boxing televised that evening, but two weeks later a series of one-hour shows will culminate with the contests. The first part of each programme will allow ITV 2 viewers to get to know the boxers first, so that when the fights are shown there will be a degree of involvement.

“The list of fighters includes those who are going there, those who have been there, and those who are treading water,” said Warren, which is a fair assessment of the gathered talent.

On the British side, the current World Boxing Union light middleweight champion Wayne Alexander tops a pile that includes the unbeaten and promising fighters Paul Smith and Anthony Small. The American team includes many veterans of both the Contender I and Contender II series, with Grady Brewer, the winner last year, being possibly the best.

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Don King Of The World

King of the world
Even at 75, Don King is at the top of his game when it comes to hyping fights, pleasing crowds
By Josh Robbins
February 2, 2007

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The man of the hour was 38 minutes late when a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom finally pulled up to Courthouse Square on Wednesday. Politicians, camera crews and boxing fans lined up on the sidewalk, craning their necks to see the guy who brought championship boxing here.

The back right-side door opened, and Don King emerged. He held miniature U.S. flags and smiled widely.

“Mr. King,” a television reporter said, “would you please speak some words in Spanish?”

“Te quiero mucho el pueblo!” King obliged, his voice rising to a scream. “Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!”

Even at 75 years old, the world’s most famous — and, to some, infamous — boxing promoter still can work a crowd. With bankable stars now at a premium, and with Mike Tyson all but finished, King is almost certainly the sports’ most recognizable active figure.

His gray-and-black hair still stands straight up, a feature that he said comes from God and from “laying in the bed with my beautiful wife, Henrietta and, all of a sudden, my head went to rumbling — PING! PING! PING! — and the hair started standing up by itself.”

King launched into promoting Saturday night’s fights at Silver Spurs Arena — three title bouts, in all — saying that God lured him here.

It’s yet another gamble in a controversial career filled with big risks and dizzying successes. He’s a millionaire umpteen times over and Forbes once reported that he has, at times, kept $70 million in his checking account.

King’s company has promoted seven of the 10 largest pay-per-view events in history, and 16 of the top 25 highest-grossing live gates in Nevada history, according to figures provided by his company.

“You’ve got to understand, Don is not on a mission to improve boxing,” said Jay Larkin, the former head of Showtime’s boxing department. “To his credit, he never claims to be. There’s a lot of people in boxing who get in there on their high horse and say they’re going to save boxing and revive the sport. Don hasn’t taken that position.

“Don has been accused of doing a lot of harm to the sport, but you can’t look at that in a vacuum. He’s also done tremendously positive things for the sport. In a time when boxing is facing shrinking audiences and an aging fan base, Don more than any one promoter has done more to keep it in front of the public.”

In 1974, just two years after his first boxing promotion, he orchestrated “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the fight in Zaire between then-heavyweight champ George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.

He promoted other huge fights in the years since: the “Thrilla in Manila” between Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975, the first meeting between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran in 1980 and the two fights between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield.

If the suit fits

King’s been sued countless times — often by rival promoters, sometimes by the fighters he’s promoted — and parodied as a leach and a liar on The Simpsons and in movies such as Rocky V.

Yet, on the day he arrived in Kissimmee to start promoting the card, people embraced him.

King stood on the stage wearing Statue of Liberty suspenders and a jean jacket with red and white stripes on the forearms, Mt. Rushmore on the right breast and his catchphrase, “Only in America,” on the back.

When American fighters stood at the podium, he smiled and waved U.S. flags — one in each hand.

With Mexican fighters, he waved Mexico’s flag. When WBC light heavyweight champ Tomasz Adamek from Poland rose, King waved Poland’s flag.

King never met a camera he didn’t like.

He even agreed to go inside a courthouse and pose as a judge for publicity shots. He sat there in a robe, with a gavel in his hand, smiling the entire time.

A long journey

The moment oozed irony. In 1966, King stomped a man to death who was said to have owed King several hundred dollars.

King, a former numbers runner who said he was acting in self-defense, was convicted of manslaughter and served almost four years in prison.

That past is at odds with the kind, grandfatherly image he often portrays.

How does he explain the difference?

“When you’re instrumental in the fatality of a fellow human being, you suffer deep contrition,” he said, sitting in the back of his Rolls-Royce. “That’s frustrations of the ghetto, I call it then and I call it now, expressing themselves. You never know it’s going to end up being a fatality because you’re in a street fight. You have 10,000 street fights a day in the ghetto. Mine was misfortunate.”

Taking a punch

King’s reputation took a massive hit when Tyson imploded, ultimately filling for bankruptcy protection. Tyson sued King for $100 million. The suit eventually was settled for $14 million.

“Tyson, when he left me, owed nobody no money,” King said. “He got him a couple of hundred million in the bank and no debt.

“I like Tyson, man. I want to see Tyson do well. He’s his own worst enemy,” he continued. “My heart breaks. I grieve. That’s part of the hype and the propaganda for me, because they thought I had a Pope-like quality of absolvement.

“Everything Tyson did when he was with me, I was to blame. But when Tyson left me and went to the white guy [Shelly Finkel], everything Tyson did, he [Tyson] was to blame. They don’t understand the hypocrisy every day.”

About an hour later, King returned to his hotel suite.

He had no more public appearances, just a phone interview for an afternoon sports radio show. He took off the four rings on his hands and the eight necklaces — his “gaudy do-dads,” he called them — as well as his jean jacket.

His assistants stocked his room with Diet Coke, ginger ale and his favorite liquor, Grand Marnier.

King reached into his bag, pulled out 10 books, including The Quest Study Bible, the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass, a collection of Martin Luther King Jr. speeches and We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends.

He loves to read, and he’s blessed with a near-photographic memory, especially for numbers. In the span of several hours, he quoted a range of writers from Thomas Carlyle to Khalil Gibran to Victor Hugo.

“Nobody can say I’m lazy or shiftless,” King said, his voice now quiet. “But I’m catching hell with that `lying, cheating and stealing’ thing.”

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

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