The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America

by Jack Newfield

  The stakes were high for King because his career as a manager was about to come to a crashing end. His top heavyweight prospect, Earnie Shavers, was knocked out in one round by Jerry Quarry in December 1973, and Jeff Merritt would be knocked out in forty-seven seconds by Henry Clark on March 4, 1974.

  Ali had known King as a sportsman and player since before he went to prison, and he called King to offer condolences after Shavers lost. King immediately converted the call of empathy into an orationlecture to Ali to let King promote his next fight if he believed his Muslim preachings about blacks helping blacks. Although King was Catholic, he knew the Nation of Islam rap well enough to use it in the art of seduction.

  It was partly this failure as a manager that launched King’s transition to a promoter, over a line so blurry no one in boxing paid any attention to it, although the two roles are in direct conflict when it comes to how much a boxer will get paid for his work.

  The first thing King did was try to get Ali’s commitment for the fight. This was no easy task, since Arum was Ali’s lawyer on some matters and had promoted Ali’s recent fights with Jimmy Ellis, Buster Mathis, George Chuvalo, and Frazier II. Arum now says he advised Herbert Muhammad to give King a verbal promise because he never believed King would come up with the $10 million he was promising the fighters.

  In his first meeting with Ali and Herbert Muhammad, King played the race card, which probably had a lot of validity to it. He told the story of how Arum had deprived him of the closed-circuit rights in Ohio to the second Ali–Frazier match.

  King had bid $75,000 for the Ohio rights, and says that Arum assured him he would get the contract. But he never did, and as King told Ali, “Arum gave it to a white man who never done boxing before.”

  At first Herbert Muhammad rejected the allegation that Arum was anti-black. But King rolled on, putting his loss of the Ohio contract into the historical context of slavery, segregation, and racism.

  He even quoted Herbert’s father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. “You gotta help the black man, that’s what he teaches,” King bellowed. “You find a black man who can do the job, you gotta let him do it before a white man, that what he teaches.”

  Ali, then thirty-three, feared Foreman wouldn’t fight him till he was older. King assured Ali he would produce Foreman if Ali would agree first to the match. Herbert tried to suggest a co-promotion with King and Arum, but King, insulted by the closed-circuit rejection, insisted Arum be excluded from the promotion to make it an all-black event.

  Over several weeks King wore down Ali and his manager, and they made an oral commitment to the fight—if King could produce $5 million for Ali and Foreman’s name on a contract.

  In February King found out that Arum and Teddy Brenner of Madison Square Garden were offering Ali $850,000 to fight Jerry Quarry in May. This would jeopardize the Ali–Foreman match planned for September. Ali could get injured or cut. He could lose. The interim match could discourage investors. Herbert’s bonds with Arum could get reinforced.

  According to an account by author and future manager David Wolf, in the September 1974 edition of True magazine, King hid in the bedroom of Herbert Muhammad’s Manhattan apartment while Arum and Brenner tried to make the Quarry fight for the Garden.

  Twice in the days prior to this meeting Ali had agreed to fight Quarry (whom he had already beaten twice) and then wavered under counter pressure from King, who talked a great game but still didn’t have a dime of financing in place for the Foreman match.

  King heard Arum tell Ali that Jerry Quarry “loved him,” and that’s why he deserved another chance and a big payday. Quarry, in fact, did like Ali and fought him in Ali’s first comeback match after his unjust exile, despite considerable pressure to boycott the “black Muslim draft dodger.” Arum and Brenner also kept telling Ali the Foreman match was a mirage, a fantasy not worth waiting for, when he was being offered a bird in the hand worth $850,000.

  Ali then excused himself and slipped into the bedroom, where King made his pitch.

  “It’s bad business,” King began. “You break your hand on his head and you’ll be striking a leaf from the pages of history!

  “You are the greatest attraction, the greatest athlete the world has ever known! Here’s an opportunity to regain what was stolen—your crown! If you fight Quarry, George will want another fight, too. Circumstances may never again be conducive to this meeting.” Looking up to the heavens King added, “I feel we are just instruments in an overall plan.”

  Ali returned to the living room intending to veto the Quarry match. Arum’s closing statement stressed Foreman’s unpredictability and claimed Quarry was the victim of a black conspiracy, and that Ali was afraid of the fight.

  According to Wolf’s version, Ali shouted, “I ain’t no coward,” and returned to the bedroom.

  King shouted, “The mere fact Arum tries to lead you down this path demonstrates his inability to relate to your blackness and the cause you’ve struggled for.”

  Putting his hand on Ali’s shoulder, King reached a crescendo:

  “This isn’t just another fight! Consider the monumental magnitude, the symbolic impact. Your regaining your title would do more for the cause of freedom and justice and equality than anything!”

  King’s appeal to history, liberation, empowerment, and personal redemption proved irresistible. Ali turned down the fight with Quarry.

  As Teddy Brenner was leaving Herbert’s apartment, he shouted out, “King, wherever you are hiding, you’re full of shit. But if you can really pay him five million dollars, he would be a fool not to take it.”

  After several more lengthy meetings in Chicago, Ali agreed to the fight. Video Techniques paid him a $100,000 advance for signing, on February 15. Under a complicated agreement, Ali was guaranteed $100,000 more by February 25, with King then providing a $2.3 million letter of credit at Chicago’s Guarantee Bank and Trust by March

  15. A second letter of credit, for $2.5 million, was due ninety days before the actual fight. If any payment deadline was missed, Ali would keep all money already paid as “liquidated damages” and not be obligated to go through with the fight.

  “I’m giving you your chance,” Herbert told King. “But you must perform. If you fail, don’t expect me to do anything different than I’d do with anyone else.”

  It is quite possible that, like Arum, Herbert Muhammad never really believed King could meet each deadline and come up with $10 million. He may have considered the agreement an easy way to make $2.3 or $5 million for Ali, without having to do any fighting.

  King called Schwartz from Chicago as soon as Ali had agreed and asked if his boss had signed Foreman yet. “We don’t have Foreman,” Schwartz had to admit. “I couldn’t get to him.” Under the terms of the Ali agreement, Foreman had to be signed within a day or two, or the deal fell apart. King jumped on the next plane to California, where an angry Foreman was training to fight Ken Norton in Caracas in March.

  In February 1974 George Foreman was a bitter man, surrounded by boxing’s usual circle of leeches and hustlers. He was tied up in lawsuits and a messy divorce case that made it legally impossible for him to box inside the United States.

  In the year since his crushing knockout of Frazier, Foreman’s popularity had dimmed. His only title defense had been a one-round knockout of the inept Joe Roman, whom Foreman had hit while he was down. Despite Foreman’s crown and unbeaten record, Ali now seemed more popular than Foreman was. Nobody roots for Goliath.

  Even though Foreman had destroyed Frazier, and would soon demolish Norton, the two men who had beaten Ali, it was now the aging, heroic, comic, tragic, socially significant Ali whom the fans loved. As Ali acknowledged, he was “the people’s champion.”

  This paradox made Foreman seethe in anger and envy.

  Foreman was furious about his pending divorce settlement. His “business manager,” Leroy Jackson, was trying to make deals for himself and shake down promoters and entertainment agents. Jackson continued to negot
iate with Jerry Perenchio through the winter of 1974 for Foreman to fight Ali and Frazier on the same night. Jackson, an old ghetto classmate of Foreman’s in the Houston Job Corps, paid himself a generous salary as the champ’s deal-maker and gatekeeper. But the George Foreman Development Corporation, headed by Leroy Jackson, was $173,000 in debt.

  All this swirling chaos was converging to make the champion an unpleasant, isolated man, as Don King arrived at his training site, facing a forty-eight-hour deadline to sign him to fight Ali.

  Leroy Jackson, seeking to make his own deal with Perenchio, tried to keep King away from Foreman, confiscating messages and speaking ill of King.

  King finally ambushed Foreman in an Oakland hotel parking lot after a sparring session and managed to convince Foreman to take a walk with him. The walk would last ninety minutes with King talking nonstop. King later told David Wolf, “My legs almost gave out, but I was spiritually motivated.”

  “George, I know people been screwin’ you,” King the salesman began. “But I’m bringing you something solid. You got an opportunity to make five million and—I tell you this as a man who cares about you—under no conditions should you let it slip through your hands.”

  “Ali don’t want to fight me,” Foreman interrupted.

  “I can deliver him,” King replied. “And this is a victory you must achieve. Otherwise people will never accept your greatness. But you must move now! Ali may not want this fight for long.”

  King played on Foreman’s insecurity for a few minutes, on how liberating it would he for him to conquer the haunting ghost of Ali.

  Foreman asked about poster billing and getting a larger purse.

  Then King stopped walking and pointed to the skin on his arm.

  “You’re two super athletes. Both black,” he thundered. “You’ve got to forgo the pettiness. This event is bigger than both of you as individuals. It’s monumental, not just in revenue but in the symbolic impact that will reverberate throughout the world—from a black perspective. This is MY promotion! And I’m BLACK! Here is an opportunity to give inspiration to the downtrodden, to show that black men, together, can succeed with proficiency and effectiveness!”

  Foreman walked in silence for a few minutes, and then turned to King and said: “I’m gonna give you an agreement. This is with ME! I’ve never done this before, but I’m giving you my trust. You got the fight.”

  Foreman recalls signing a blank contract that King would fill in later.

  Hank Schwartz, who was in Oakland with King, recalls, “Foreman signed three blank pages. One of them he signed in the middle of the page, one he signed three quarters from the top, and one he signed at the bottom. Foreman instructed his attorney to go back with me to San Francisco and write the contract and use any of the three pages as the signature page, depending on where the language of the contract ended. His lawyer wrote the contract into those pages and we signed next to Foreman’s name. I don’t think Foreman saw the contract.”

  Schwartz says each fighter was told he was getting $5.5 million and the other was getting only $5 million. Foreman was assured that because he was the champion, he was getting a symbolic $500,000 more. Ali was told that because he was the fan and media attraction, he was getting $500,000 extra. In fact, each got the same amount, while feeling more wanted and superior to his rival.

  On April 30, 1990, at a press conference in New York announcing a fight between Foreman, then at the start of his amazing comeback, and Adilson Rodrigues, King humorously thanked Foreman for giving him “the opportunity of my lifetime.”

  “George Foreman signed seven blank sheets of paper,” King recalled, “and allowed me to put on a fight with him that became the Rumble in the jungle.”

  Bob Arum, who was sitting next to King because the fight was a co-promotion, couldn’t resist jabbing the needle: “George has learned. He won’t sign any more blank contracts.”

  Although Schwartz and King had the signatures of the two fighters on pieces of paper, they did not have any financing in place. And they faced a series of deadlines to produce the funds that would make the fight a reality. And they did not have a venue for the match.

  Schwartz flew to London in mid-February thinking—perhaps wistfully—he had a commitment for financing from British promoter Jack Solomons, who was then about eighty and well past his prime. Schwartz had spent about fifteen minutes with Solomon and his proposed investors—two brothers in the London film business—when he realized he was wasting his time.

  It was all talk. Nobody had done any preparation. They didn’t have any idea about a site. They had no knowledge of how many seats were in any American or European stadium. They had no business plan. And they didn’t have any money, with the first deadline to pay binders to the fighters less than a week away.

  Schwartz sank into a depression. He feared he would lose the deal. He called King, who was in New York, and told him they were in trouble. King was trying, without success, to get a backer, even appealing to Perenchio and Mike Burke at Madison Square Garden.

  Schwartz started to walk around London in the rain feeling sorry for himself. Then he passed a townhouse with a plaque outside that read HEMDALE FILMS.

  “I remembered that I had met the president of Hemdale several years before at the Pierre Hotel,” says Schwartz. “I gave him some advice about video and pay-per-view systems in some hotels Hemdale was involved in. So I decided, why not? I might as well talk to somebody about this. And I made a cold turkey call to John Daly, the president of Hemdale.

  “John was nice enough to see me without an appointment. I was dripping wet and he offered me tea. I told him I didn’t know if he wanted me to stay long enough to have tea or take off my coat.

  “I told him I had two great contracts from gladiators—Ali and Foreman. But we needed four hundred thousand in a couple of days. Daly was entranced by the idea. Also, I had not known this before, but Daly’s father had been a fighter in his youth, and Daly had grown up around boxing. He had a good and close feel for it.

  “Daly said, ‘Take off your coat. Have tea. I’ll call my partners in the United States.’ He left the room, made some phone calls, and came back into the room and said, ‘Okay. Let’s work out the deal. Have you got the contracts?’

  “Daly asked if he could copy the contracts. I told him he could see them, but you can only copy them if you give me a ‘hold harmless’ letter that you will not reveal the terms of Foreman’s contract, or the fact that we have a contract with Foreman, until he has completed his divorce proceedings.’”

  For the next twelve hours a group of lawyers worked to draw up contracts that contained the basic structure of the deal. Because of a power shortage in London’s business district, they worked by gaslight.

  There were three entities to this original deal. One was a company chartered in Panama called Telemedia de Panama. This was Schwartz and a man named Alex Valdes, and the purpose of this company was to negotiate film rights and closed-circuit deals for the fight. The second party to the deal was Video Techniques. The third party was Hemdale Leisure Corporation. Hemdale immediately transferred $200,000 to each fighter from its American accounts.

  The first deadline had been met. Schwartz flew back to New York.

  A week later the deal almost fell apart.

  Schwartz met with Daly’s partners, who turned out to be the heads of the three biggest theater distribution chains.

  According to Schwartz, “Their objective was to take over the promotion completely and to receive a larger percentage of the income derived from it because, in their mind, they were providing the money, and the closed-circuit venues. The negotiations broke down. I left the meeting upset that Daly’s cash advances were exposed because I refused to sign a different contract than what we had agreed to in London.”

  At this point an international fixer named Fred Weymer entered the picture.

  Weymer was an odious character: a vodka drunk, a former participant in the Nazi Bund in America who was banned fro
m entering this country, and a former investor with Bernie Cornfeld who was implicated in Cornfeld’s financial scandals.

  He was also the agent of Joseph Mobutu, the corrupt and homicidal dictator of Zaire. He managed Mobutu’s Swiss bank accounts, which were numerous and ample.

  He had the perfect credentials for boxing as it entered its internationalist age.

  Weymer had been calling Schwartz for a few weeks. He had a proposition. His principal—Mobutu—wanted to stage an international extravaganza, like a heavyweight championship fight, to place Zaire on the map, to give him a status advantage over his rival, Idi Amin, in the imaginary contest for leader of the African continent. Zaire, with 70 percent of the world’s diamonds and bauxite, wanted prestige and trade, not tourism.

  Because Weymer was banned from the United States, a meeting was arranged in Paris. The agenda would be the impoverished and backward country of Zaire putting up $9.6 million to finance the Ali– Foreman fight. The attendees would be Schwartz, King, Weymer, Daly, and another memorable character named Modunga Bula, Mobutu’s other “financial adviser,” who lived in Brussels and could return to Zaire only by special permission of Mobutu.

  It seemed Bula had been an ally of Patrice Lumumba, the original revolutionary leader of Zaire when it was the Belgian Congo, whom Mobutu had murdered, perhaps in complicity with the CIA. Bula was a possible rival to the paranoid Mobutu. But Bula also had a gift for moving and finding money. Mobutu was so concerned about plots against him that he compelled his whole cabinet to fly with him whenever he left the country. So he kept Bula permanently stationed in Belgium as a precaution.

  Bula was accompanied to the meeting by attorney Raymond Nicolet, who had an office in Geneva and represented a secrecy-shrouded Swiss corporate entity named Risnelia Investment, Inc.

  Risnelia, chartered in Panama, was a shell company that was sold three times in five years and then purchased by Mobutu. Risnelia was a front for Mobutu’s offshore and Swiss “investments.” It existed only as a folder in the office of Raymond Nicolet. It was not listed in the Geneva phone book. It had no employees. It was a conduit, a wash, for a dictator who commingled his dwindling national treasury and expanding personal fortune.