King, Don

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King, Don

August 20, 1931

Boxing promoter Don King was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. As a young adult King was involved in organized crime in Cleveland, running an illegal lottery. King also owned a nightclub, and in 1966 he was convicted of manslaughter for killing a former employee during a street fight. After spending four and a half years in an Ohio penitentiary, he was paroled in 1971 and pardoned by the governor of Ohio in 1983.

Soon after his release King began a career as a boxing promoter. By 1972 he was promoting and unofficially managing local fighters, including Earnie Shavers, who went on to become a challenger for the heavyweight championship. In 1973, immediately after George Foreman knocked out Joe Frazier to become heavyweight champion, King talked himself into Foreman's camp and was hired as the new champion's promoter. With his newly established Don King Productions company, King set up Foreman's first defense of the championship, a successful two-round knockout of Ken Norton in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1974 King arranged a match between Foreman and former champion Muhammad Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire. The "Rumble in the Jungle" ended when Foreman was knocked out in the eighth round, but the fight provided Foreman with five million dollars and established King as the sport's most successful promoter.

Based in New York, King went on to promote fights for a number of the greatest boxers of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran, Mike Tyson, and Julio Cesar Chavez. King copromoted the famous 1975 "Thrilla in Manila" heavyweight championship match between Ali and Frazier. His rise to fame was aided by his flamboyant, often volatile personality and trademark vertical shock of salt-andpepper hair. In 1984 King branched out from boxing by promoting the multimillion-dollar world tour of the Jacksons, the singing group consisting of Michael Jackson and his brothers.

King's business practices have been the focus of significant controversy. In 1984 King and his longtime secretary Constance Harper were indicted by a federal grand jury, but ultimately acquitted, on twenty-three counts of income tax evasion and conspiracy. In the late 1980s he was investigated, but never indicted, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney General's office for alleged racketeering in the boxing industry.

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, King held a virtual monopoly on promotions for major boxing matches, and boxing reformers often pointed to his powerful hold over the industry as an example of the sport's corrupt centralization. He was often criticized for acting as de facto manager for many of the boxers whose fights he promoted. (International boxing bylaws prohibit one person serving as a boxer's promoter and manager because of potential conflicts of interest.) In the most famous instance, he came under intense scrutiny for "advising" both Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas, whose 1990 heavyweight championship fight King promoted. King also was accused by many of his former clients of misappropriating funds from boxing matches. In 1993 he proposed his own seven-point plan to reform boxing, including round-by-round displayed scoring, the elimination of draws, and a prohibition on promoters paying the expenses of judges and referees. King's reform plan, while often mocked as hypocritical, was lauded by many in boxing as a constructive proposal.

King was awarded an honorary doctorate from Shaw University in 1998.