Boxing: Tua team sparring with heavyweight from ghetto

By PETER JESSUP

Don King carries a reputation bigger and more shocking than his hairdo.

It suggests that, should you ever have the opportunity to meet the man and shake his hand, it would be best to count your fingers afterwards.

The list of top-line boxers who have signed with, fought for and then sued King is long and includes heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Tim Witherspoon.

Despite that, King still pulls the strings in heavyweight boxing.

South Aucklander David Tua is one of the few contenders over whom he has no control.

But he's trying hard, phoning Tua's management in Auckland every day as he tries to buy out the contract the Samoan-Kiwi has with Cedric Kushner Promotions.

Given the sway King holds, the contacts he has in boxing, from financiers to venue owners, the fighters he has on his books (including Evander Holyfield), and therefore the match-ups he could make, Tua and his team cannot afford to dismiss him.

Tua's financial manager, Martin Pugh, has been at the forefront and agrees it's been an interesting ride, one that looks to pick up speed, especially if Tua beats Hasim Rahman in March.

"I put my hand in a boxing glove when we shake," Pugh said of the suggestion to count his fingers afterwards.

He's wary. "It's like walking into the lion's den and the lion is making jokes and telling you he's not interested in eating you - you can't help but like him, but we're not that naive."

The negotiations have largely gone along the lines of, "Well boys, the market's tough," followed by an offer Pugh considers way too low and a string of demands way too long.

The concern from the Tua camp is that King already has a variety of deals with other heavyweight contenders, deals that might guarantee title shots before their man gets his.

But Don King is still "The Man" in heavyweight boxing and if they want to get the big pay cheques, with fights against the big names, they might well have to get closer contractually.

King has Rahman on his books and won the purse bid for Tua-Rahman Two.

He has yet to settle on a venue but it's tipped to be Caesars Casino in Atlantic City, where he has a promotional deal.

Watch for immediate release of a snappy slogan, a la Rumble in the Jungle, Thrilla in Manila, or the Great Brawl of China - the name he gave to a John Ruiz- Holyfield match-up planned for Beijing but since moved back to the United States.

There is bad blood between Tua and Rahman after the former knocked out the American in round 10 of their first fight in Miami, Florida, in December 1998.

Rahman has always maintained Tua landed a late blow at the end of round nine that set him up for the fall. So King should have a field-day with the promotion.

But he will be worried about who will win, and that's why he wants Tua's signature.

Tua cannot afford to walk away and ignore King, despite the latter's record of acrimony around the ring.

King's sense of loyalty to his stable of fighters was never more aptly demonstrated than at the 1973 meeting between then-champion Joe Frazier and upcomer George Foreman.

When the bigger man smashed a sorely under-prepared Frazier into submission, King stepped over his man so he could help to carry Foreman from the ring. They soon signed a deal.

"I came with the champion and I left with the champion," he declared, with no hint of concern or sympathy for Frazier and no sense of regret as he congratulated himself on his cunning.

He repeated the act in 1983, stepping over the semi-conscious Michael Dokes to get to Gerrie Coetzee, who had just removed Dokes' WBA title.

King's streetwise manner from his ghetto upbringing has been the attraction for so many of the American boxers who have risen from the same-style neighbourhoods.

His mother, Henrietta, raised him in the poor part of Cleveland, Ohio, after his father left town.

He has the notoriety of having done time for killing a small-time heroin dealer, Sam Garrett, over a $600 debt.

Garrett was kicked in the head after being pistol-whipped. A murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter.

King speaks his boxers' language, literally, and swaggers their style of charming menace.

At 196cm, closing on 130kg and bedecked in gold and jewels, King has a large crucifix hanging from his neck to show he's a God-fearing man.

He is surrounded by a sweeping entourage of bodyguards and lawyers, moving in the best transport and staying at the finest hotels as he makes millions.

King is everything so many of them want to be.

And to be fair, King is correct when he says that no other promoter has made so much money for so many people who would otherwise be penniless.

More than 100 fighters who have gone through his books have fought for US$1 million or more.

He "made" the first fights to break the million, then US$10 million - promising Muhammad Ali and George Foreman half each for the Rumble in the Jungle.

Foreman apparently had only one condition - that the fight be held outside the United States because he was in the throes of a messy divorce and was wary of losing half his big pay.

Story has it that Foreman signed three blank pieces of paper and King and his lawyers wrote out the details.

That fight made King. Up to then he had been the owner of a small tavern, The Corner Store, in Cleveland and a hanger-on in the fight fraternity. He didn't have the US$10 million.

It was typical of his lateral thinking to take the fight to a small African nation ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator desperate for world acceptance and able to pay for it.

President Sese Seke Mobutu bankrolled the fight, which went ahead at 4am in Zaire to satisfy American pay-TV timing demands. King never looked back.

By then everyone knew that he was the man who could earn you the most.

Pugh agrees that could be the case for Tua.

"But when Don offers you another $500,000 to sign for him you know he's going to get another $5 million.

"And yes, it is great fun," he comments about working with the man who is sport's biggest enigma.

Pugh and Tua's trainer/manager, Kevin Barry, flew to meet King at the wire-haired promoter's expense - an encounter Pugh describes amidst bursts of laughter.

"His office is like the White House ... Huge, lush carpets and furnishings, and Don in the middle of this huge desk with a bank of lawyers on one side and a bank of secretaries on the other."

King opened the meeting by lighting a cigar and blowing the smoke in the faces of Pugh and Barry.

He interrupted the meeting to take a call from the White House.

"I'm going to see George Bush and I'm going to tell him about New Zealand," Pugh quotes him as saying.

Nothing was achieved at the meeting. But King keeps ringing. Last week, before Tua flew out to his Las Vegas base, King requested they all go via Florida so they could continue negotiations.

"I told him that last time we went to see him all he did was blow smoke in our faces," Pugh said.

"I've given up smoking for you boys," King replied, according to Pugh.

They will meet at some point - they have to, to settle details of the March 8 fight.

But first King has to arrange the Holyfield-Ruiz bout on March 1 in Las Vegas.

So he was too busy to talk to the Herald. "You don't just ring up and get to talk to Mr King," his personal assistant said.

Unable to ask King why Tua should sign with him considering his history of jail time, investigations by the FBI for fight-fixing and of lawsuits from former proteges, I have to lift previous answers.

From King, they're all gems.

"Investigation is my middle name. I've been accused of racketeerin' and skimmin' and launderin' money.

"I've been told I'm a corrupter of judges, an exploiter of fighters, a fixer of fights and a stealer of souls. Now you know that just ain't true - none of it.

"There will always be the failed and the foolish, the jaded and the jealous who want to tear down a successful black man like me. They refuse to see that I am the true attestation of the American Dream.

"But I am fearless, I am undeterred.

"I am the American Dream - inviolate, invincible, indestructible."

When Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson, commentators claimed Tyson stayed down when he could have fought on.

"I know you consider me the master of trickeration but he was down for more than 10 seconds," King said.

When Pernell Whitaker controversially drew with Julio Cesar Chavez, King commented: "I feel unjustly and unconsciously excoriated. My integrity and honesty have been abrogated. I effectuated the ultimate promotion and what do I get? Aspersion, innuendo and insinuation."

Accused of always seeing things his way, he flew back at journalists: "Of course you're right, I must take the splinter out of my eye before I can ask you to take the two-by-four out of yours."

King, 70, has risen above it all. When Tyson came out of jail, his lawyers sued King for money spent on renovating his home, grants to King's sons Carl and Eric, and other money paid for services to the Mike Tyson Fan Club that King claimed were performed by his daughter Debbie and son-in-law.

Tyson's fortune allegedly dwindled from US$100 million to less than US$15 million, and more than that was owed in taxes. The boxer is still battling to extricate himself from this trouble.

Doubtless plenty of others in the hanger-on category got plenty, too, and Tyson wasted money on fast cars and fast women.

But King was his manager, and managers are supposed to see their fighters stay healthy - financially and physically.

The other side to King has seen him installed as a Hall of Famer in boxing and rock'n'roll, which recently recognised his efforts in the early promotion of jazz and blues musicians who went on to achieve fame after starting at The Corner Store, among them Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, BB King, Lou Rawls and Muddy Waters.

He has an honorary doctorate in business from the South's oldest black college, Shaw University.

King has donated millions of dollars to charities.

The challenge for Tua's management is that they don't get caught by the comic hype and come home short-changed, spouting another expression the flash-toothed King claims he coined: "Only in America".