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

by Jack Newfield

  But Arum interrupted the half-formed question to say, “Look, the only thing that taught me was never to go drinking with sportswriters.”

  Don King was on the stand for three days and was at his brilliant best.* He was selling a mostly false story that was contradicted by video- and audiotapes, yet he was funny, likable, and even believable.

  King used his invented words like “trickeration” and “insinuendo.” He imitated a Japanese accent. He filibustered, used hyperbole, told stories like an old actor. He kept smiling and looked directly at the jury. He was doing what he does best—promoting and selling. And this time he was selling and promoting himself.

  King swore his goal in Tokyo was only a rematch, not a changed result.

  “I’m stirring the pot, I’m instigating,” he said. “I’m promotin’. I’m selling. I was trying to box them in.”

  Revealing his self-knowledge of his own methods, King said, “If you have both fighters there, you have an opportunity to blow everything out of proportion. The internal combustion was there and I could play on it. It’s like a big mushroom.”

  King complained that John Johnson wasn’t cooperating in his stirring the pot for a rematch. “He should have been as happy as a sissy in a girls’ school,” King said, looking right at the perplexed jury.

  King’s story was that the referee “panicked” when Douglas was knocked down, but that he was not responsible for the withholding of recognition of Douglas as champion. But he was pleased that someone else had lodged a protest, allowing him to start “stirring the pot.”

  “I was happy,” King said on direct testimony. “Under normal circumstances you can’t have a rematch. But a protest puts a taint on Buster’s victory. You have a valid argument for a rematch. It can be mandated. You don’t have to go to the commissioners for approval. My agenda was to get a rematch. I had the opportunity to do something big, extraordinary. It would have been the biggest payday in the history of boxing.”

  * Well-known attorney Thomas Puccio told me, “Don King is by far the smartest person I ever cross-examined, in a trial or a deposition. And I questioned Ivan Boesky.”

  But almost in the next breath, King was demeaning Douglas, unable to suppress his hostility to the champion who became his fugitive slave.

  “Buster was a boring, lazy fighter,” King said. “He was the kind of fighter people would throw hot dogs and beer cans at. When Buster came on, everybody went to buy hot dogs. Nobody wanted to see Buster. I moved him up in the rankings through attrition, without him having to fight anybody…. I had to take Buster to Japan because I couldn’t sell him in America. I told the Japanese how great Buster was. I kept selling, selling, selling.”

  Even on cross-examination King remained appealing in his rascality. He managed to maintain his jaunty poise, even as the Mirage’s lawyers scored some solid points against his credibility.

  John Sharer pointed out that Trump had testified he and King had made “an oral contract” for Douglas–Tyson II at the end of the fight in Tokyo, but the day after the fight King had told reporters, “We don’t have a rematch right now.”

  “I don’t lie to the press,” King explained. “I just withhold some of the truth because I’m trying to make something happen. I don’t consider it lying when I don’t tell them everything…. I wasn’t under oath with the press.”

  King insisted he had never tried to change the result, or withhold recognition, even after Wynn’s attorneys played the video and audiotapes from Tokyo. King sat on the stand, impassive, as his own voice filled the courtroom:

  “Here’s the facts. Mike Tyson knocked out James Douglas. Douglas was knocked out and the referee did not do his job. If the rules is kept, the first knockout automatically obliterates the second knockout. There would never had been a second knockout…. All I can do is voice a protest…. It will be a grave injustice here if it holds that Mike Tyson was knocked out…. I issued a protest to Mr. Mendoza and Mr. Jose Sulaiman.”

  The six-four King, with his graying, spiked hair, towered over everyone else in the Tokyo ringside section, especially the shorter Japanese. And with his supersonic voice, it was impossible not to see and hear him between rounds. But King concocted a fictional detail to deny what dozens of people witnessed.

  King swore he never spoke with Meyran after the eighth round, “because the referee didn’t speak English. How was I going to speak to him, in sign language?”

  But Wynn’s lawyer reminded King that he had sat right next to Meyran during the post-fight press conference, and that the referee “spoke the English language.”

  “I guess so,” King admitted, in one of his few flustered moments in three days. King also had to admit that he never actually spoke the word “rematch” in Tokyo, in all his hours of raving with the press.

  John Sharer asked King if he had ever been sued by boxing promoters other than Arum. King took a deep breath, closed his eyes, tilted his head back as if in a pensive trance, and said, “I don’t remember.”

  It was a great act, but King surely could remember being sued by Tom Prendergast, to whom he paid $1.4 million; and by Butch Lewis, whom he paid over $200,000 to settle a trial over Greg Page; and by Murad Muhammad, who sued him over Razor Ruddock; and by Sam Glass, who sued him over Gerry Cooney. Or that he paid Cedric Kushner $150,000 over the theft of Gerrie Coetzee.

  In response to another question on cross, King did admit that he “didn’t want Douglas to get up” when he was floored by Tyson.

  But these admissions and inconsistencies may have been neutralized in the minds of the jurors later that day when the attorney for the Mirage, Bruce Levin, took the witness stand.

  Levin testified that the court should void King’s contract with Douglas on the basis of a Nevada commission regulation that prohibits exclusive promotional contracts. But under questioning from King’s lawyer, Bob Hirth, Levin had to admit the Mirage itself had exactly the same exclusive contract with middleweight champion Michael Nunn.

  “At the time we wrote the contract,” Levin explained, “I was not aware that exclusive promotional contracts were invalid in Nevada.”

  “Have you since ripped up the Nunn contract?” Hirth asked.

  “No, we have not,” the Mirage’s attorney replied.

  In boxing there are no good guys or white hats among the promoters. There is no reform faction to root for among the casino interests. Steve Wynn, Donald Trump, and Bob Arum did not come across any better than Don King during this trial. They all seemed rapacious, they all seemed cynical, they all disrespected the craft and dignity of the fighter.

  Arum was there for revenge. Trump was there to gain leverage for future deals with King. Wynn had double-crossed Arum, and wanted to do exactly what King had done with monopoly control. And King had rewritten history.

  Right after the trial ended, Vic Ziegel wrote in the Daily News: “Take it from someone who was in Tokyo, who listened to King plead Tyson’s case, long and hard, immediately after the fight. He wanted to change the verdict.”

  Putting contracts and legalities aside, it is emotionally impossible to fault Douglas for not wanting to work for the promoter who tried to rob him of his crown, said he was so lazy that fans tossed beer cans at him, deprived his family of tickets to the biggest fight of his life, admitted he was rooting for him not to get up when he was knocked down, and poisoned his hometown neighbors against him.

  On Friday, July 17, the lawyers began serious settlement talks. The talks lasted through the weekend, and continued on Monday, as Judge Sweet recessed the trial to give the lawyers more time.

  One factor tipping Douglas toward a settlement was that his estranged father, Billy Douglas, was on King’s list of witnesses. Billy Douglas was even at the courthouse, wearing a Panama hat, sitting with King’s faction, letting the son know what was coming, putting psychic pressure on the son to settle.

  The issue became the cross-examination of Billy Douglas. Buster was told his father would be humiliated and exposed for t
aking money from King, for letting King pay for his birthday bash in Columbus. But Buster was reluctant to see his father crushed on cross, even though his father was prepared to testify against him.

  A friend of Douglas’s told me, “Buster is torn up. He’s having imaginary conversations with his dead mother, about whether it is worth the effort to expose his father on the stand. Buster is just a soft-hearted guy. He had too much dignity to offer his old man more money than King paid him.”

  James “Buster” Douglas tried to leave Don King after he knocked out Mike Tyson in 1990. But King sued him, and writer Murray Kempton said that King was trying to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act against Douglas. NEW YORK POST

  On Saturday, July 18, Steve Wynn flew from Vegas to New York, and that night he and King bargained face-to-face at the Waldorf Towers in Wynn’s suite. The broad outlines of deal were agreed to.

  Judge Sweet recessed the trial for Monday, and the parties negotiated all night at Hirth’s law office. By midnight, all the principals were there in separate rooms—King, Douglas, Wynn, Johnson. They were in touch with Trump by phone. At 2:00 A.M. a deal was finalized and everyone shook hands and joked with one another. It was announced the next morning in Judge Sweet’s Courtroom.

  The settlement gave Douglas his freedom to fight Holyfield for Steve Wynn and be paid $24 million for his purse.

  King and Trump got $7 million from the Mirage for their rights, with King getting $4.5 million.

  King agreed to pay Douglas a promised $100,000 bonus for beating Tyson that he had reneged on when the litigation started.

  King would have the opportunity to promote a Douglas–Tyson rematch after the Holyfield defense. He needed this to keep Tyson in line.

  Douglas would be free of all obligations to King, except for the Tyson rematch.

  John Johnson was thrilled, telling reporters, “We did what we set out to do—get rid of Don King and get James the greatest deal in sports history.”

  In the hallway outside Room 443, the jurors gave interviews to reporters. It turned out three of the six jurors were leaning toward King and three others sounded neutral, waiting for Wynn and Johnson to testify.

  Juror Carol Solanto, a junior high school teacher in the Bronx, was impressed by King’s testimony but said, “They’re all being greedy. It’s just a whole underworld.”

  Juror Gabrielle Mellet, a fund-raiser for the ACLU, said, “You couldn’t believe what anybody said about anything.”

  Juror Erica Franklin, a health magazine reporter, said, “I didn’t believe anybody. King was an effective witness, but you have to take everything he said with a grain of salt.”

  King then showed up, in an ebullient mood, and shook hands with all the jurors. He invited them all to attend Tyson’s next fight— an echo of his flying the jurors who acquitted him of tax crimes to London to see the Witherspoon–Bruno fight.

  King also promised one juror—Daniel Kahn, a graduate student— a Team Tyson jacket. A press assistant gave King’s business card to each juror.

  “This is what makes America so great,” King proclaimed. “The ability to put away animosity and hostility, and sit down at the table of brotherhood and understanding.”

  On October 25, 1990, Douglas made his first title defense against Evander Holyfield at the Mirage. Steve Wynn had invested more than $40 million in this fight: $24 million for Douglas, $8.1 million for Holyfield, $7 million paid to King and Trump to settle the lawsuits, $4 million in legal fees, $2 million in advertising costs. But Wynn believed the event would propel him into the dominant position in boxing, displacing King.

  As has happened so often in the recent past, a new heavyweight champion beat himself before the bell rang. Buster’s motivation was destroyed by fame, money, his conflict with his father, divisions within his own camp, King’s attacks on him, the attainment of the title, and the absence of any new goal to inspire a work ethic.

  Douglas weighed in at an obese 246 pounds, 15 pounds more than he weighed in Tokyo. In the hours between the weigh-in and the fight, the odds moved from even money to 8 to 5 in favor of Holyfield.

  In the fight Buster was lackadaisical in the first round, gasping for oxygen at the close of the second round, despite the lack of exertion. In the third round Douglas missed a lazy, looping, long-range uppercut. Holyfield stepped in and countered with a sharp right cross, and all of Steve Wynn’s boxing dreams evaporated on his canvas, pitched on his property called the Mirage.

  Douglas took the ten count on his back with his eyes open. He rubbed his nose three times with the thumb of his glove. He looked like a beached whale.

  Referee Mills Lane told reporters afterward, “Buster was not unconscious. His eyes were open. I thought he was gonna get up. He made no attempt to get up. That’s the truth.”

  Eddie Futch, the grand old trainer of Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes, told the press: “Buster Douglas was disgraceful tonight. He allowed himself to come in in such poor condition. He had no snap. He showed me that he could get up, but he didn’t, for his own reasons.”

  Mike Trainer, Steve Wynn’s boxing consultant, said, “What a piece of junk! He was a dog! It’s embarrassing. I don’t want to say he was a disgrace, but what he did was wrong.”

  “He quit again,” cackled King.

  But King’s promotional rights to a Tyson–Douglas rematch were now meaningless. King had lost something too, although he still controlled Tyson, and Tyson gave him leverage with the casinos and the Showtime cable network.

  After this fiasco, Steve Wynn pulled back from the boxing business, letting the MGM Grand casino, Caesars, and Trump bid for the big fights. He had lost about $20 million on his attempt to topple King. But King had proved he was far from the extinct dinosaur that Wynn had called him back in February at the Mirage cottage of John Johnson.

  Although only thirty years old, Buster Douglas never had another fight. By May 1994 he had ballooned up to over 350 pounds. He talked about a comeback, and visited a gym occasionally, but he never stuck with it. In July he fell into a diabetic coma and nearly died.

  Once again Don King was the winner and survivor. Douglas had money and was better off than Jeff Merritt or Michael Dokes. But King had made his brief, eight-month reign as champion a painful experience that left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Buster Douglas ended up as the Fugitive Slave who got rich in one fight for Steve Wynn. But he never realized his full potential. He beat the mighty Tyson, but he couldn’t beat the system—or Don King.

  14. “He underestimated me because I’m so quiet”

  In June 1986 Joe Maffia needed a job. He was working for Paramount pictures as an accountant, but his office was soon moving to California.

  He went to a headhunter, who happened to know Don King’s director of operations, Celia Tuckman, and that’s how Maffia got an interview with lawyer Charles Lomax, and then King himself.

  This was two days before King was promoting a Hector Camacho– Edwin Rosario fight at Madison Square Garden, and when Maffia showed up at King’s offices, TV camera crews were coming and going, and the prefight publicity was in high gear.

  Maffia was interviewed for an hour by Lomax, and for five minutes by King. The first thing King said to him was “Don’t believe what you read about me in the newspapers.”

  A few minutes later King told Maffia he would hire him to be the assistant to the controller.

  “You do right by me and I’ll do right by you,” King told Maffia, then twenty-seven years old. Maffia said he would begin in a month after giving proper notice to his supervisor at Paramount. He started with King at the comparatively low salary of $30,000 a year.

  Despite the sound of his name, Joe Maffia is not an Italian American. His father was of mixed German and Spanish heritage, and his mother was a black from the Caribbean. He has thought of himself as black all through his adult life, although he looks white. His father was adopted by an Italian family when he was a child, and Maffia was the name of this adoptive family.*
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br />   Maffia’s ex-wife is Jewish, and he says, “I don’t know how to describe the ethnicity of my children in less than a minute.” He is quiet, conventional, and private—the opposite of King is almost all ways.

  By the time Maffia reported for work at Don King Productions in mid-July of 1986, the controller had apparently absconded with about $100,000, and Maffia assumed the functions of controller of the company from his first day on the job. He was given the formal title after about a year.

  Most of Don King’s relationships start out well, and so did his association with Maffia. Maffia received several raises and bonuses his first year on the job. King also gave him a $25,000 interest-free loan to buy a co-op apartment.

  Maffia saw King pay $5,100 for the funeral of Ali’s trainer and spiritual inspiration, Drew Brown, when no one else stepped forward and the body was lying in a funeral home. As a favor to Maffia, King flew back from California to speak at a luncheon of CPAs and dazzled them without any preparation.

  As controller of DKP, Joe Maffia saw every check that went out. As a cautious stickler for the letter of the law, Maffia soon realized King operated in his own secretive style that was a little different from a public corporation like Gulf + Western, which owned Paramount. And when Maffia started, King’s financial records were not even computerized.

  In October 1987, Maffia says, King was “freaked out” by his loss of about $3 million in the stock market crash. He had it in blue-chip stocks, on margin. The losses created havoc with King’s cash flow, and when the day came that King needed to write a check for $350,000 to the IRS for his federal taxes, the money was not available from the normal DKP accounts.

  * Maffia’s sister, Roma Maffia, is a talented actress who had a lead role in the film Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. She has also appeared in several TV series.

  “I remember,” Maffia recalls, “being shocked when Don suddenly produced $350,000 in cash that had been wrapped in plastic and sealed with heat, and had been stamped by the Caesars Palace casino. It was dated five years earlier, in 1982, around the time of the Holmes–Cooney fight at Caesars. I deposited the cash at the bank and wrote out a check to the IRS. This was a pretty unusual transaction.”