?The only color Don King cares about is green.??Larry Holmes
There has been some grumbling associated with the new Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame. The grumbling doesn?t question the need for another Boxing Hall of Fame when there are already so many. The grumbling in this instance concerns the first inaugural class, specifically one member of the first inaugural class, and that member, surprise of surprises, is Don King.
The wild-haired promoter with the booming voice, fluttering flags, bespoke jean jackets, threadbare clich?s and gift of gab has been deemed unworthy of inclusion in the newest boxing institution. It?s not his accomplishments in boxing that are in doubt. It?s how he went about accomplishing those accomplishments, which were by hook and by crook, and of course his pre-boxing career as a numbers kingpin and the men who died prematurely as a result.
News doesn?t get any older than that. Anyone who took the time to read ?Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King,? Jack Newfield?s expos? published in 1995, or the HBO film of the same name, or any of the dozens of articles and documentaries purporting to expose the real Don King, knows that he?s a bad man. But he isn?t the first bad man in boxing, or the first bad man to be enshrined in a Boxing Hall of Fame, nor will he be the last.
There are those who feel that King doesn?t deserve to stand in perpetuity alongside the likes of Mike Tyson, Bob Arum, Sugar Ray Leonard, Julio Cesar Chavez, Larry Holmes and Oscar De La Hoya. Perhaps they are right. But King wasn?t elected the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame because of his ethics, the same criteria which applies to his fellow inductees, but because of his contribution, if that?s not too hyperbolic a word, to the ?sweet science of bruising.?
An editorial on BET.com (Black Entertainment Television) has determined that Don King is unworthy of inclusion in the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame. Not for reasons other than those listed above, but because King Don had a ?big a role in its stunning decline and its unsavory reputation.?
Boxing?s ?stunning decline? is attributable to many things, and blaming King for that which has been happening for over a half century misses the mark by a country mile. And the aforementioned ?unsavory reputation? is even more antique than boxing?s ?stunning decline.?
Anybody can string any words together and deem it significant if they so choose. But words, as capable of deceiving as informing, have meaning only insofar as the person writing those words knows what he or she is talking about. One doesn?t need to be a boxing historian to know that boxing always had an ?unsavory reputation.? That doesn?t mean that there haven?t been great fighters and great fights. Those are the very things that make it worthwhile. But as great a sport as boxing is, it is an equally terrible business from which no one emerges unscathed, least of all the poor boxers at the mercy of the money men.
The BET editorial goes on to address the many times King was sued by fighters for having ripped them off. That too is old news. King didn?t do what others before him didn?t do, except that he perhaps did it better. What distinguishes (or distinguished) King from his predecessors is that he was robbing his own.
Perhaps that lack of solidarity is what BET is really about.
The editorial writer says that boxing ?is a sport that has no ethics,? unlike baseball or competitive cycling, for example, ?a sport that offers second chances to men who don?t deserve them.?
I?m not sure what world is being described, but it?s a world unfamiliar to me. The great F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, ?There are no second acts in American lives,? but he was wrong about that, just as he was wrong about so much else. America loves redemption stories and the worse the offense the greater the possibility of redemption, when the former offender finally sees the light, comes clean, confesses his sins, and presumes to walk the path of righteousness.
?Appearances have always been deceiving in boxing,? continues the editorial. ?The role of good guys and bad guys isn?t as easily discerned in the ?hurt business? as it is in, say, pro wrestling, and King had always been accused of preying on men who didn?t understand contracts, profit and loss, and balance sheets as well as he did.?
That?s business in a nutshell. King didn?t create the terms. He simply used the terms to his own advantage, as businessmen have done from the beginning of time.
Leaving no disparagement unturned, King is called the ?ultimate hustler? and ?con man? whose presence at the newest Boxing Hall of Fame ?brought shame, not fame, to the Nevada ceremony.?
Give me a break. And while you?re at it, retire the fire and brimstone. Context is everything. The High Church of Boxing follows its own commandments, which includes the good, the bad, and the irredeemably ugly. Beat that dead horse till you?re red in the face. Knock yourself out. But that horse won?t walk. That horse won?t run.
