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Maybe he biggest con artist in boxing history
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IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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00:04Hello, I'm Chris Fowler and welcome to SportsCentury. He's been described as a snake oil salesman,
00:11a shameless huckster, an evil genius, and worse. Not even the master of hype, P.T. Barnum,
00:17had more mischief up his sleeve than hype promoter Don King. But few of his products
00:22achieved the same level of fame and fortune as King's favorite client, himself.
00:30I'm a promoter of the people, for the people, and by the people, and my magic lies in my people's
00:34ties.
00:35Like me or dislike me, I present the best shows unequivocally, undeniably, unsurpassed.
00:42Only in America could a Don King happen. A true human interest story.
00:46King is the last guy standing who promotes by force of personality.
00:51I want you to buy, buy, buy 12 seconds, please buy me!
00:58By his celebrity.
00:59You're a star, you know you can do anything. Any for the best you want.
01:02How about boxing?
01:03You got it, let me sign you up.
01:06By his con.
01:07I'm fighting for white and black alike, for any of those who are the downtrodden.
01:10This guy could sell surfboards in Iowa. He's persuasive, he's enthralling, he's one of the greatest hustlers in the history
01:18of the world.
01:18I asked him, what is the one thing that you get off on most?
01:23And he said, that a street hustler from Cleveland can outsmart all those Jewish lawyers who went to Harvard and
01:30beat them at their own game.
01:32There is no better seductor than Don King. He makes you the object of his attention.
01:39He's a big person physically. He knows how to enhance his bigness.
01:44He is big.
01:44It's pretty easy to feel quite taken and overpowered.
01:47You'd see the Don King in public, the big smile, the hair standing straight up.
01:52But in private, Don King is a very different man. His eyes grow very cold.
01:57After a press conference he had conducted, and I asked him a question, and he went crazy, and he threatened
02:03to kill me, and he called me scum.
02:07There was no threat. He actually, back in the 60s, back when he was young and not famous, or the
02:1450s, he went to jail for killing somebody over an unpaid debt.
02:20You're a scumbag. I don't have no use for you at all. You may be the greatest as you think
02:24you're the greatest, but to me, and you as a man to man,
02:26you are nothing.
02:28Richie Giacchetti was Larry Holmes' trainer. Giacchetti told me he was calling from a phone booth on the corner, and
02:35that he was afraid for his life.
02:37He truly believed that Don King, through Underworld Connections, had put out a contract.
02:43I was once offered $30,000 to fight, you know what I'm saying? Don King says, I'll give you $10
02:49,000. I said, you're crazy.
02:51I said, no, Don, I'm not going to do that. He said, Larry, if you go anywhere, I'll break your
02:55leg.
02:55Basically, that's how he intimidates a lot of fighters. Fighters in general were pretty afraid of Don.
03:03Melchick Taylor, I had a return fight with Chavez. Melchick was getting $1,300,000 for the fight.
03:11Don gave Melchick a check for $300,000. Melchick said, why didn't you go to the police? He said, Don
03:18King would have me killed.
03:21One time, the fighter challenged Don to a fight, and Don stood up and was prepared to do it.
03:27And then I think in the back of this fighter's mind, I may have clicked, hey, this man killed somebody,
03:31so maybe I better leave him alone.
03:34This man was a gangster. He is a gangster.
03:37Don King killed not once, but twice.
03:39In 1954, it was ruled justifiable homicide when he shot a man who stole the receipts of one of his
03:46number's houses.
03:47But 12 years later, when the 34-year-old was involved in a second killing, he would face serious consequences.
03:55He looks so much better.
03:56Sam Garrett was a tubercular street hustler.
04:00King believed Sam Garrett owed him $600.
04:05King hunted Garrett down in a...
04:07$600 in those days, that's about $10,000 by today's standards.
04:15You didn't think you could get away with owing somebody $10,000.
04:19That's a car. That's a down payment.
04:22...bar on Cedar Avenue in the middle of the day.
04:26He pulled Garrett out of the bar and beat him to death.
04:31Here is a big 6'3 fellow, 230 pounds, stomping the guy, 140 pounds, who's sickly to death, over, I
04:38think, a $600 bet.
04:40As he was laying there, I bent over him and I put my face right next to his.
04:45He nearly said a few words.
04:46He says, Don, I'll pay you the money.
04:48That was it.
04:49He died five days later.
04:52King pled self-defense to second-degree murder.
04:55Well, that's not...
04:56The jury deliberated for four hours before returning a conviction.
04:59But the judge reduced the charge to manslaughter.
05:03King would serve four years at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio.
05:10The warden at the prison said, Don King didn't serve time.
05:14Time served him.
05:15Don King totally educated himself while he was in prison.
05:18It was Donald believing that he could do better than to be a numbers man running in the streets of
05:26Cleveland.
05:27I think that caused Donald to take college classes and to read everything that he could get his hands on
05:35while he was in a penitentiary.
05:36As his prison time slowly melted away, King pondered his fate beyond the walls.
05:42Then, one night in 1971, the seed of an idea was planted as he listened to a heavyweight title fight
05:49on the radio.
05:57On March 8th, 1971, there was the fight of the century between Joe Fraser and Muhammad Ali at Madison Square
06:04Garden.
06:05People thought that that might change boxing, and it did, although they didn't know how it would.
06:11There was an inmate in an Ohio prison named Don King who heard that fight.
06:16The fight was a big deal.
06:33There was an inmate in Cleveland, when King was 10, his steelworker father, Clarence, was killed in an explosion.
06:41Hattie King was left to raise six children on her own.
06:45King, he was a hustler. He was always very good at bringing money home.
06:49My mother called him Donald Duck because he always had a gift to gab.
06:53When you talk a blue streak, I wouldn't want to get into a debate with him because you couldn't get
06:58a word in edgewise.
06:59But King was not all talk.
07:02By the time he graduated from John Adams High School, he was already moving up in the numbers racket.
07:07And by the mid-1960s, King was living in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights with his second wife, Henrietta,
07:14who had been a numbers operator herself.
07:19In the early and mid-60s, Don King controlled the numbers rackets in Cleveland.
07:24He was one of the few black numbers guys who had a coalition with the Italian organized crime people.
07:32Don King carried a gun. Don King carried tremendous amounts of cash.
07:38He was a gangster.
07:43King owned a nightclub.
07:45Dinah Washington, B.B. King, all the great black performers played at Don King's club.
07:53King's little empire dissolved after he was jailed for the fatal stomping of Sam Garrick.
07:58In June of 1972, nine months after being paroled, the 40-year-old ex-con prevailed upon a friend, singer
08:06Lloyd Price, to arrange an audience with Muhammad Ali, who agreed to do a benefit in Cleveland.
08:15Tell them all to get the tickets and come on out. Four men. Charity. Far City Hospital.
08:22We put together four fighters to box ten rounds in exhibition.
08:27We did $85,000, which was tremendous amount of money for an exhibition.
08:33The hospital cut $1,500 out of that $85,000.
08:38Using Ali as his boarding pass, King jumped on boxing's high-dollar juggernaut.
08:43Aligning himself with a company that promoted Joe Frazier's 1973 defense of the heavyweight title against George Foreman in Jamaica,
08:51King worked both sides of the street.
08:54King comes out of the dressing room with Frazier.
08:58He's patting Frazier on his robe.
09:00You're my man. You're going to kill this guy. I'm with you.
09:03Frazier's knees buckled. Down goes Frazier. Down goes Frazier. Down goes Frazier.
09:10In two rounds, Foreman demolishes Frazier.
09:14It is over. It is over. George Foreman is the heavyweight champion of the world.
09:20And guess what you got?
09:22He's with you.
09:23He's with Foreman. I'm with you, champ. You're my man. You know what I mean?
09:27I mean, this guy is like, whatever work, boom, he's on that side of the ring.
09:33That's, that's snake stuff.
09:35Taking his promotional magic to a new level, King spun a deal that straddled the globe and reaped millions in
09:421974.
09:43The place, Kinshasa Zaire.
09:46The event, The Rumble in the Jungle.
09:54The Rumble in the Jungle is Don King's masterpiece.
09:57He told Ali that he was getting 5.1 million and Foreman was getting 5 million.
10:02He told Foreman he was getting 5.1 million and Ali was getting 5 million.
10:07He's working both sides for him, but he was really making favor with Foreman.
10:11Because everybody thought Foreman was going to be the guy for a long time.
10:14Behind the hoopla and hype, King had a secret.
10:18He didn't have the financing to stage the fight.
10:21Really?
10:22King, the genius current artist, convinced Mobutu, the dictator of Zaire,
10:27to put up 10 million dollars for the fight,
10:30to pay for roads, to pay for improvements in the stadium.
10:34Don was able to sell an idea, a concept.
10:38This is a way to put your country on the map.
10:43Who knew about Kinshasa Zaire before that fight?
10:54Ali wins the fight.
10:56I started to work on Ali.
10:59You should be with me.
11:01I helped you get your title back.
11:03Give me a chance to deliver.
11:05If I don't deliver, kick me to the curb.
11:09King delivered, promoting a number of Ali's title backs.
11:13In 1980, he coaxed the 38-year-old former champ out of retirement to face Larry Holmes.
11:20His once consummate skills gone, Ali lost by a TKO in the 11th round.
11:25If the greatest had been kicked to the curb, the insult did not end in the ring.
11:31It was terrible.
11:32King underpays Ali by 1.2 million dollars.
11:37Ali files a lawsuit.
11:40King then convinces Jeremiah Shabazz, who was Ali's teacher in the Islamic faith,
11:46to deliver 50,000 in cash to Ali in a hospital room in Los Angeles.
11:52Jeremiah made Ali sign the release ending the lawsuit.
11:55He should have won.
11:57The bigger Don King got, the smarter he got.
12:00He always knew the government was watching him.
12:02He knew he was constantly under surveillance.
12:06Yeah, that's what happens when you go to prison.
12:09Today I'm standing in the glory of the Lord, giving me the opportunity and the privilege
12:13to really exemplify what democracy is all about.
12:16Don King approached ABC Sports in late 1976 concerning a new concept to have all the leading fighters
12:24in the United States fight in a tournament to declare champions in each of the weight divisions.
12:30Nothing was a rat's nest of corruption.
12:33Marvelous Marvin Hagler was excluded because he wasn't connected with Don King.
12:41The rankings were fixed.
12:42Marvin Hagler would never sell out to anybody.
12:44In two years, was suddenly ranked sixth in America because he kicked back money to Don King's organization.
12:54Even before the first bout took place in January of 1977, ABC had gotten wind of improprieties.
13:02The whole thing blew up when a decision went against a heavyweight named Scott Ledoux.
13:08That's all boxing down for it, right there.
13:11Why?
13:11Because we're not all fight up people.
13:15Don King, Al Fraberman, and Patty Flott.
13:19We had to pull the plug on the tournament because the rumors that we had heard that there were
13:24kickbacks involved, phony records involved, turned out to be factual.
13:32Despite the scandal, King continued to thrive over the next two decades as boxing's most powerful promoter.
13:39In 1997, his earnings were so large that he reportedly paid the IRS $30 million in taxes.
13:47But through the years, he was a moving target for law enforcement.
13:51The United States Attorney's Office in New York tried for years to nail Don King.
13:59Spent millions of dollars investigating him.
14:02They couldn't nail him.
14:04He is smarter than everybody else.
14:06He's smarter than the prosecutors.
14:08He's smarter than Rudy Giuliani.
14:10Today, a federal brand jury indicted Don King and Constance Harper, president and vice president
14:16of Don King Productions, in 23 counts, involving the diversion of over $1 million in corporate
14:23receipts from Don King Productions.
14:25Don didn't get convicted because Don didn't personally do that stuff.
14:29He always instructed somebody else to do it.
14:32In the 1985 trial, King was acquitted while his associate, Constance Harper, was convicted.
14:39In 1998, federal prosecutors charged King with cheating Lloyds of London out of $350,000
14:46in training expenses for a 1991 Julio Cesar Chavez fight that was canceled.
14:52Again, King was acquitted.
14:54We all live the game!
14:55We all live the game!
14:57We all live the game!
14:58If you look at all the things that Don King has overcome legally, and we're talking about
15:03a slew of things, that he is definitely the Teflon Don of sports.
15:09King's leverage over fighters transcended the boxing arena, as he showed that even in civil
15:15court, he held all of the cards.
15:17You got more money than you.
15:18You got more lawyers than you.
15:20You keep you in court.
15:22And a lot of the young fighters don't have that kind of money to stay in court.
15:25Don gets sued a lot, yet there is some settlement agreement, and then they go out and continue
15:31to do business.
15:32Because ultimately, the fighter has to fight to make money.
15:35So they're really the victims.
15:37A good part of Don's brilliance and success is his relentlessness and his persistence when
15:45he wants a fighter.
15:46He'll buy them a card.
15:47He'll call the fighter's mother.
15:49He'll call the fighter's father.
15:50After I turn Greg Page professional, he starts to go around me and gets to Greg Page's father.
16:00He's sending somebody with a briefcase full of money.
16:04The father, he had a heart attack, and he passes.
16:08Don comes to Louisville to the funeral.
16:10He starts to look like he's crying, and says he had conversations with Mr. Page.
16:19I want to leave Greg in your hands, Don.
16:22And they thought it.
16:25Nearly everybody bought what King was selling, because there was no alternative.
16:32King's control of boxing was so extreme, that if you really didn't sign with Don King, how
16:39in the world were you ever going to get your chance?
16:42The majority of the fighters, especially when they're younger, they don't think about money.
16:46Don, show these young fighters that if you get with me, you can become the champ of the
16:52world.
16:52He put them in a situation.
16:54He cut them off from their support system.
16:57He basically becomes your suck on.
17:01You feel trapped.
17:02I signed up with Don because he was the only man putting something on the table.
17:08But he was giving me a couple hundred dollars a week to keep me in the gym, keep me training.
17:13Those things he used down the road.
17:16Every time I fought, I would get 50% of my money.
17:20It seats his little bevious venom in there somehow, and he got you gun-ho and crazy,
17:27and you don't know if you're coming or going.
17:31If King's ticket to fame and fortune was Muhammad Ali, his biggest paydays would come from Mike
17:37Tyson, the future heavyweight champ.
17:40Easy.
17:41Seth Abraham called me up on the phone one day.
17:44He said, I got an idea, Big D.
17:45He said, let's put together a series to bring about one champ.
17:49He said, everybody's clamoring for it.
17:50I'm daring enough to do it.
17:52I said, well, let's go with it.
17:54In 1986, King staged a heavyweight unification tournament for HBO, showcasing a prodigy not
18:02among his stable.
18:03But that would change.
18:06Tyson suffered a series of emotionally destabilizing setbacks.
18:11Gus D'Amato, his founding trainer, died in 1985.
18:16Jimmy Jacobs died in 1988.
18:19He was an emotional wreck.
18:22King was at Jimmy's funeral circling by the vulture.
18:26King moved and got his talons into Tyson.
18:31King then began to fill him in with this brainwashing about how he should be with a black promoter,
18:38and all the terrible things that I was doing to him, lies.
18:42Everything was black.
18:43Black power, power to the people.
18:45But his whole life was white.
18:46His whole staff is white.
18:49King signed Tyson in October of 1988, then gained the troubled fighter's trust by protecting
18:55his $35 million in assets from Tyson's estranged wife, Robin Givens.
19:00If the partnership gleaned hundreds of millions over the next decade, the split was less than
19:06even.
19:07I never had a lawyer in my best interest unless it was his lawyer.
19:11My accountant was his accountant.
19:13Don would write a check.
19:14He put the description on it, and it would say OTT or CBMT.
19:21CBMT meant charge back Mike Tyson.
19:24OTT meant off the top.
19:26What he would do is, okay, Mike, your purse was $20 million.
19:30We had $10 million of expenses.
19:33So there's $10 million left, and then we split it.
19:36Despite earning huge purses under King's Watch, Tyson's emotions were operating near the poverty
19:42level.
19:43He fell on February 10, 1990, to a 42-to-1 underdog.
19:48Buster Douglas.
19:50Buster Douglas is the new heavyweight champion of the world!
19:54What you do to Mike Tyson, man?
19:57The guy with you, next thing I know, he's crawling on the ground looking for his mouthpiece.
20:02He's broke.
20:03$120 million.
20:04Ain't no other athlete alive got that kind of money in 18 months.
20:07You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink.
20:10You know what I mean?
20:11I still got all mine.
20:15King sailed on, while Tyson sank even further.
20:19A highly publicized rape conviction in 1992 netted him three years in prison.
20:25When Tyson was released, King jumped back on the gravy train, promoting six fights for purses
20:32totaling $140 million.
20:34Wow.
20:34I found out to someone who I believe was my surrogate father, my brother, my blood figure.
20:40And he turns out to be the true Uncle Tom, the true sellout.
20:45He did more bad to black people than any white promoter ever did in the history of boxing.
20:51Tyson with me was making $30 million, $40 million a fight.
20:54Now he has left me.
20:56If I'm the bad guy, why ain't he making some money?
21:00The night before Tyson got out of prison in Indiana, King convinced him to sign a long-term
21:07contract.
21:07The mistake Mike Tyson made twice.
21:11He went with Don King in 1988, and then in 1995, he went back to King.
21:16Those two choices were Tyson's responsibility.
21:20In 1998, Tyson slapped King with a $100 million lawsuit, claiming the promoter had cheated him
21:27out of tens of millions.
21:28The action is still pending.
21:31Regardless of whether they cast his purgations, castigate, vilify, or character assassinate,
21:36I'm going to continue because the greatest thing anyone can have is to have his family
21:43by him.
21:44I know his wife would love for him to come home and sit back and enjoy time.
21:50with her and the family, his grandkids.
21:52But I don't see that happening.
21:54I see Don promoting until the very last breath.
21:58He still has people around him that you would not want in your home.
22:04He's never really left that corner in Cleveland where he ran the numbers.
22:08We were fighting publicly, and I hadn't seen King in a while.
22:12All of a sudden, I hear out of nowhere,
22:13Lou DeBella, my main man.
22:17How you doing, Lou?
22:18I still love you.
22:20And my wife turned around, she goes,
22:21He doesn't seem to dislike you.
22:23And I was like,
22:24Even if he did, you wouldn't know.
22:26Ha!
22:29While Don King was looking to finance a movie about his life and times,
22:33a car accident landed him in the hospital.
22:36But that didn't stop him.
22:37According to a partner of his, Don Elbaum,
22:40two weeks later, King walked out of the hospital with a cashier's check for $250,000.
22:46He had talked the doctors into backing his film.
22:49The movie never got made,
22:51and the doctors never got their money back.
22:53For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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