Don King

King was born on August 20, 1931, in Cleveland, Ohio, one of six children of Hattie and Clarence King.⁠[1]

On December 2, 1954, King shot and killed a man who was allegedly robbing a residence he owned, reportedly a gambling den; the authorities ruled the killing justifiable homicide.⁠[1]

On April 20, 1966, in view of several witnesses, King beat a man named Garrett to death on a Cleveland sidewalk; he claimed self-defense. On February 23, 1967, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and was sent to the Marion Correctional Institution; that year the judge changed the conviction to manslaughter.⁠[1][1][1][1][2]

In March 1971, King listened in prison to the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, and less than five years later he promoted their third fight; he left prison on September 30 of that year.⁠[1][1]

After his release, King learned the boxing business from local Cleveland promoter Don Elbaum. On August 28, 1972, through singer Lloyd Price, a friend of Ali’s, he arranged for Ali to come to Cleveland for an exhibition to benefit a struggling Black hospital.⁠[1][1]

On January 22, 1973, King went to Kingston, Jamaica, for George Foreman’s second-round knockout of Joe Frazier and appeared in the frame of Howard Cosell’s post-fight interview with the new champion. In June of that year he registered in New York as the manager of heavyweight Jeff Merritt, his first official fighter, and then took over the management of Earnie Shavers and Larry Holmes.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In February and March 1974, King met separately with Ali and Foreman and guaranteed each of them several million dollars for a fight, money he did not have; through European financiers he was introduced to a representative of Zairean President Mobutu. On March 26, the bout that became known as The Rumble in the Jungle was announced. On October 30, the fight took place in Zaire, and Ali upset Foreman.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 1975 and 1976, building on his success in Zaire, King promoted a number of Ali’s bouts, including the third fight against Frazier, the “Thrilla in Manila,” and a title defense against Chuck Wepner.⁠[1][1]

In December 1976, King announced a tournament for U.S. fighters organized with The Ring magazine and televised by ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry. In April 1977 the tournament was suspended after a series of outrageous decisions and manipulated rankings and fighter records; an investigation found ethical breaches but no criminal acts on King’s part.⁠[1][1]

From Holmes’s 1978 fight with Ken Norton until Buster Douglas’s 1990 upset of Mike Tyson, King was the dominant promoter in the heavyweight division. On June 9, 1982, he promoted the heavyweight showdown between Holmes and Gerry Cooney; Holmes afterward complained bitterly that the challenger received the bigger share.⁠[1][1]

On June 9, 1982, Ali sued King for nearly $2 million in unpaid earnings; in July of that year Ali accepted a cash settlement of far less than $2 million and dropped the suit.⁠[1][1]

On January 3, 1983, King received a pardon for his manslaughter conviction; those who recommended the pardon included Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Cleveland sports figures Art Modell and Gabe Paul.⁠[1]

In November 1983, King announced the Jacksons’ reunion tour, the Victory Tour, for the following year. The tour grossed $75 million but did not sell out; King was replaced a few months in, reportedly at Michael Jackson’s behest, and later returned to help the struggling tour regain its footing.⁠[1]

On December 13, 1984, then–U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani announced a 23-count indictment against King and his assistant Constance Harper, accusing them of skimming funds from Don King Promotions, failing to report income, and evading taxes. On November 19, 1985, King was acquitted on all charges; Harper was found guilty and served four months in prison.⁠[1][1]

On March 23, 1988, Mike Tyson’s co-manager Jim Jacobs died, after which Tyson, under King’s influence, pulled away from his other co-manager, Bill Cayton. On February 11, 1990, Tyson was knocked out by Buster Douglas; King and World Boxing Council president José Sulaiman disputed the referee’s count, but under public pressure were unable to change the result. On June 22 of that year, King and Tyson were guests of honor at the United Nations address of the recently released Nelson Mandela.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In 1992, when asked about his ties to mob figure John Gotti, King invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer.⁠[2]

In July 1994, King was charged with filing false insurance claims with Lloyd’s of London for allegedly unpaid training expenses for Julio César Chávez and other fighters. In November 1995 a mistrial was declared because of a hung jury and allegations of juror misconduct. At the retrial on July 9, 1998, King was personally acquitted on all nine counts of wire fraud; the jury could not agree on the charge against Don King Productions, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York declined to prosecute it again.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

After his 1998 acquittal, King called it “a victory for all America — not black America or white America.”⁠[1]

On August 19, 1995, King teamed up again with the recently released Tyson to promote his pay-per-view comeback bout against Peter McNeeley.⁠[1]

In June 1997, King was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York. On July 15 of that year, the NAACP gave him its President’s Award for his philanthropy and for helping to enrich minority athletes; in November, the HBO film Don King: Only in America, based on Jack Newfield’s book, premiered, and Ving Rhames won an Emmy for playing King.⁠[1][1][1]

In March 1998, Tyson filed a lawsuit claiming King had taken advantage of him to the tune of $100 million. In July 2004 the two settled, with Tyson reportedly receiving a total of $14 million.⁠[1][1]

In June 1999, the FBI raided King’s offices in Deerfield, Florida, as part of an investigation into boxing dealings. In December of that year, International Boxing Federation president Bob Lee was indicted and later sentenced to prison; King was found to be one of several promoters who had paid Lee in exchange for favorable fighter rankings, and he was suspended in New Jersey, where the IBF is based.⁠[1][1]

Boxing promoter Cedric Kushner Promotions sued King, alleging that as president and sole shareholder of Don King Productions he had conducted the company’s boxing business through fraud and other unlawful acts in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The federal district court in Manhattan dismissed the complaint on the ground that King and his company were not two separate entities, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. On June 11, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9–0 to reverse the appeals court and remand the case, holding that in these circumstances the “person” and the “enterprise” were distinct and the RICO provision applied.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][1]

In the spring of that year, King tried to sign Hasim Rahman after Rahman’s upset of Lennox Lewis; the courts blocked the move, ruling that Rahman had a valid contract with Cedric Kushner. On September 29, the final of a middleweight tournament promoted by King took place at Madison Square Garden in New York, where Bernard Hopkins defeated Félix Trinidad.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On May 8, 2003, heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis sued King and Tyson for $385 million in New York State Supreme Court. The complaint alleged that King used threats and bribery to keep Tyson from fighting on a June 21 doubleheader card at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, to prevent him from signing a rematch contract with Lewis, and to sever Tyson’s ties with his management team; Lewis said he had lost $35 million as a result.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

Former middleweight champion Terry Norris sued King in 1996, alleging that King had lent $200,000 to Norris’s manager, Joe Sayatovich, and conspired with him to underpay Norris for his fights. In December 2003, before a New York State Supreme Court jury reached its verdict, King agreed to settle for $7.5 million, nearly ten times his original $800,000 offer, and agreed to make the settlement public; the settlement included no admission of guilt. King’s lawyer, Peter Fleming, said the case was unique and should not be seen as a precedent.⁠[5][5][5][5][5]

In December 2010, King’s wife of more than 50 years, Henrietta, died at the age of 87.⁠[1][1]

On September 21, 2016, while introducing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a Midwest pastors’ leadership conference held at a church in Cleveland, King recounted a conversation with Michael Jackson in which he used a racial slur against Black people before correcting himself. In his remarks he called Trump “the only gladiator” and urged white women to vote for him; Trump praised King in his own speech that followed.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]