Don King

• 1. Introduction

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  Don King, the American boxing promoter born on the 20th of August 1931, once received a blunt verdict on his career from a man he had promoted. Mike Tyson said of him: "He did more bad to black fighters than any white promoter ever in the history of boxing." Tyson was no distant critic. King had been his promoter, and Tyson later took him to court. Yet the same promoter's name is tied to some of the most famous fights in heavyweight history. How did a Cleveland numbers runner come to control so many championship nights? What happened in his past, including two killings for which he was charged? And why did so many of his fighters end up suing him?

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• 2. Cleveland Beginnings

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  On the 7th of December 1941, a ladle exploded at the Otis Steel plant and engulfed Clarence King in molten steel. The plant belonged to the Jones & Laughlin company. His son Donald was the fifth of six children born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Clarence and Hattie King.

  Hattie received $10,000 in compensation and moved the family to the middle-class Mount Pleasant neighborhood. To earn a living, she sold peanuts and homemade pies, and her younger children helped. She sold them at a local policy house. It used the look of a concession stand to run a numbers game.

  King and his older brothers all drifted into the betting scheme. Looking back, King said: "So now what we did is we capitalized off of this here, and we hustled. It was statutorily illegal, but who knew about the statutes?" He graduated from John Adams High in 1951. He then briefly attended Kent State University before dropping out.

  In that same year, 1951, King began running an illegal bookmaking operation from the basement of a record store on Kinsman Road. The business earned him the byname "The Kid". It also earned him the nicknames "Kingpin" and "the Numbers Czar".

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• 3. Two Killings and Prison

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  On the 2nd of December 1954, Hillary Brown was shot in the back inside one of King's gambling houses on East 123rd Street. King fired the shot. Brown and two accomplices had been trying to rob the place. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide.

  On the 20th of April 1966, King attacked a 34-year-old employee named Sam Garrett in an open street, in front of several witnesses. Garrett owed him $600. King beat and kicked him and held a .357 magnum revolver to his head. Garrett never regained consciousness and died of severe head trauma on the 24th of April.

  King claimed self-defense. The prosecution argued otherwise, backed by witnesses that included the arresting officer, Bob Tonne. Garrett's last words were quoted in court as "Don, I'll pay you the money." In 1967, King was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to one to twenty years.

  At the Marion Correctional Institution, King began educating himself. By his own account, he read everything in the prison library that he could get his hands on. He summed up the lesson this way: "don't get mad, get smart."

  In 1972, after three years and eleven months, King walked free when his attorney got the conviction reduced to manslaughter. In 1983, Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes pardoned him. Letters of support came from Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, George Voinovich, Art Modell and Gabe Paul, among others.

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• 4. Mob Shadows

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  On the 20th of May 1957, someone bombed the porch of King's house. In October of that year, unidentified gunmen shot him in the head and neck with a shotgun. The attack was reportedly tied to his refusal to pay $200 a month in protection money to crime boss Shondor Birns.

  In December 1957, the IRS raided King's house over evasion of $32,029 in policy tax. Blackmail charges against Birns and five others were dropped in July 1958, after King declined to testify in court. The attack on King's home eventually fed into the landmark Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio.

  Decades later, a 1992 Senate investigation asked King about his connection to the mobster John Gotti. King invoked the Fifth Amendment.

  In 1999, Robert W. Lee Sr., president of the IBF, was indicted for racketeering. King was neither indicted nor called to testify at Lee's trial. Prosecutors, however, reportedly described him as "an unindicted co-conspirator who was the principal beneficiary of Lee's machinations."

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• 5. The Promoter's Rise

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  A charity exhibition for a local hospital in Cleveland opened the door to boxing for King. He persuaded Muhammad Ali to box in it, with help from the singer Lloyd Price. Early on, he partnered with Don Elbaum, a local promoter who already had a stable of Cleveland fighters and years of experience.

  In 1974, King negotiated to stage the heavyweight title fight between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire. It became known as "The Rumble in the Jungle". Rival promoters all wanted the bout. King secured it through an arrangement with the government of Zaire, producing a then-record purse of $10 million.

  In 1975, King arranged Ali's fight against the journeyman Chuck Wepner. It is widely believed that this fight inspired Sylvester Stallone to write the screenplay for Rocky, released in 1976. Later that year, King promoted the third Ali and Joe Frazier fight in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He named it the "Thrilla in Manila".

  Throughout the 1970s, King built a roster under the Don King Productions banner. It included Larry Holmes, Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran, Salvador Sanchez, Wilfredo Gomez and Alexis Arguello. Many finished their careers with Hall of Fame credentials. In the following two decades, fighters such as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Julio Cesar Chavez and Felix Trinidad chose King for many of their biggest nights.

  King also worked outside the ring. He was the concert promoter for The Jacksons' 1984 Victory Tour. In 1998, he bought the Call and Post, a Cleveland weekly serving African American readers in Ohio. As of 2026 he is still its publisher.

  In 2023, King was announced as the financier of the Bomaye Fight Club in Major League Wrestling. In 2024 he was in talks with the Canadian promoter Dan Otter to stage a WBC cruiserweight world title bout.

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• 6. Fighters in Court

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  In 1982, Muhammad Ali sued King, claiming he had been underpaid by $1.1 million for his fight with Larry Holmes. King then called on Jeremiah Shabazz, an old friend of Ali. He handed Shabazz a suitcase holding $50,000 in cash, plus a letter ending the lawsuit.

  Shabazz was to visit Ali in the hospital and get the letter signed, then hand over the money. The letter also gave King the right to promote any future Ali fights. Ali signed. Shabazz later said: "Ali was ailing by then and mumbling a lot. I guess he needed the money." Ali's lawyer cried when he learned the suit had ended without his knowledge.

  Larry Holmes alleged that King cheated him out of $10 million in purses over his career. He said King took 25% as a hidden manager. He said he received only $150,000 of a contracted $500,000 for fighting Ken Norton. He also said he received only $50,000 of $200,000 for facing Earnie Shavers.

  Holmes later sued over the accounting for the Gerry Cooney fight, claiming he was underpaid by $2 to $3 million. When King deducted a $300,000 finder's fee from his purse for the Mike Tyson fight, Holmes sued again. He settled for $150,000 and signed an agreement not to give reporters any more negative information about King.

  Tim Witherspoon described being threatened with blackballing unless he signed exclusive contracts with King and King's stepson Carl. Without his own lawyer present, he signed four "contracts of servitude", in the words of Jack Newfield. One was a promotional contract with King. Two were managerial contracts with Carl King, one for show at 33% and one at 50%. The fourth was completely blank.

  Witherspoon was promised $150,000 to fight Larry Holmes but received $52,750. Against Greg Page, he netted $44,460 from a guaranteed $250,000. For the Frank Bruno fight, HBO paid King $1,700,000. Witherspoon's purse was $500,000, yet he received only $90,000 after deductions, while Carl King received $275,000.

  In 1987, Witherspoon sued King for $25 million. He eventually settled out of court for $1 million.

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• 7. Settlements and Suits

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  In 1998, Mike Tyson sued King for $100 million. He alleged King had cheated him out of millions over more than a decade. Tyson has called his former promoter "ruthless", "deplorable" and "greedy". The suit ended in an out-of-court settlement, with Tyson receiving $14 million.

  Terry Norris sued King in 1996, alleging theft and a conspiracy with his manager to underpay him. The case went to trial. In 2003, King settled for $7.5 million, and he also accepted Norris's demand that the settlement be made public.

  In May 2003, Lennox Lewis sued for $385 million, claiming King had used threats to pull Tyson away from a rematch with Lewis. In early 2006, Chris Byrd sued for breach of contract. The two settled out of court on the condition that Byrd be released from his contract.

  King went on offense in 2005, with a $2.5 billion defamation suit against ESPN over its SportsCentury documentary. The program said King had threatened to break Larry Holmes' legs, had cheated Meldrick Taylor out of $1 million, and had threatened to have Taylor killed. It also said a hospital had invested in a film that was never made. King's attorney said: "It was slanted to show Don in the worst way."

  The case was dismissed on summary judgment. The court found King could not show "actual malice" and had not proved any challenged statement false. It also noted that the producers had tried several times to interview King, who declined.

  Three years later, the Second District Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal. It disagreed that none of the statements were false. Judge Dorian Damoorgian ruled: "Nothing in the record shows that ESPN purposefully made false statements about King in order to bolster the theme of the program or to inflict harm on King".

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• 8. Honors and Screen Life

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  In 1997, King was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He was elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2025, he entered the International Women's Boxing Hall of Fame in its non-boxing category.

  Street names have followed him. In 2015, a street in Newark, New Jersey, was renamed Don King Way. In April 2016, Cleveland named a section of Shaker Boulevard, near the Call and Post headquarters, with the same name. In September 2016, the city council proposed moving the name to Cedar Avenue, where Sam Garrett was killed. That proposal proved controversial and was scrapped.

  On the 10th of June 1987, King was made a Prince Hall Freemason as a "Mason-at-Sight". The following year, Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, gave him an honorary Doctorate of Humane letters. Each Christmas he has given away two thousand free turkeys to needy South Floridians. His wife, Henrietta, died on the 2nd of December 2010, at the age of 87. They had a daughter, Debbie, a son, Eric, and an adopted son, Carl.

  In politics, King supported Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections. He had earlier appeared in the media promoting George W. Bush, including at the 2004 Republican National Convention. He has also long supported Donald Trump.

  On screen, Ving Rhames played King in the 1997 HBO movie Don King: Only in America and won a Golden Globe Award for it. Mykelti Williamson played him in the 2001 film Ali. King's catchphrase "Only in America!" went to George Washington Duke, the promoter in Rocky V. The Simpsons gave the same hairstyle to a promoter named Lucius Sweet. King appeared as himself on Miami Vice and Moonlighting. Deon Cole plays him in the 2026 film Michael.

  In September 2024, King was hospitalized with an unspecified illness that required a blood transfusion. Tyson told an interviewer: "You know, Don is not doing well right now. He's probably close to 100 years old. He's not doing well."

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