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Having followed the sport of boxing for 50yrs. i feel today's boxing fans "Missed Out" on The Don King period of this sport. Today fight-fans buy a PPV event and the cost does not justify what we receive. We get 5 boxing matches on the show, 4 of which are club-level fighters, then we get the main event(usually a mismatch). During the 1980/90s when Promoter Don King was the No1 in the business, fight-fans like myself got "Excellent value-for-money" when we bought PPV. Don King would put on 5 or 6 World Title fights on the undercard, followed by The Main Event. All fights were a match-up of pure quality evenly match fighters, The Main Event would always pitch the No1 and No2 in the world in their weight class. with everything about the show being `value-for-money`. Fight fans can say what they want about Don King, but during my lifetime "Don King was the Fight-Fans Best Friend". He put on PPV event todays younger fans could only dream of. Today's promoter's are ripping off fight-fans.
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Well things have gotten worse since his time. If Don had peaked in the 00s I don't think he'd be much different than all the other promoters, he'd have to conform to modern times or else be shutdown by the rest. Politics. And King was all about the money so again I don't think he'd be much different if he came along later than he did.
One other thing, the fighters that were promoted by Don King never needed him(and his money stealing tactics) they were huge in the sport when the sport was much bigger than it is now overall. Despite of all the wrondoings, he was still good for the sport and did many good things as well. But I wouldn't make an appreciation thread for him. jmo. -
Aside from the devious side of Don King and how he treated fighters, he did some tremendous promoting during that era. Three or four of the top p4p fighters sharing the same pay per view. Unfortunately I personally had a bit of resentment with how he controlled the rankings and judges but there has been no match in history for the amazing ppv's and cards he put on.Comment
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TV has ruined boxing before too! In the 50's boxing started to be on as much as once a week live from NYC and the surrounding buroughs. The live gate began to suffer and then the quality of the show shorten because the TV main event became the selling point.
In todays masrket the PPV has slapped the buyer in the face with a horrible undercard and at times a worse main go.
Well your HOME you can't get up and go to the ticket booth or approach the promoter, matchmaker and commisions office rep. to tell them the show stinks or stunk and you'll never be back!!!!
The promotion knows you as a fan have no recourse so screw you and you'll be back anyways because the boxing fans today are fanboys fanatics!!! Not all but look how many are here hating and brown nosing their fan favorites!!
So once again TV has degraded boxing into the "pro wrastlin" catagory!!!
We even have hero's & heels just like wrastlin'!!
RayComment
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I attended on of kings cards live and it was a showcase of talent from top to bottom. Having said that it is amazing what tex Ricard did in promoting Dempsey in the late 10s and 20s when boxing was really popular with out the tv medium.Comment
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King's crookedness and his capacity to put on stacked cards cannot be disentangled.Comment
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The man is absolute scum. But I did enjoy his cards...JC Chavez, Terry Norris, Azumah Nelson and Ricardo Lopez all on the same show. Throw in Felix Trinidad at times too.
Those were the days.Comment
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I wasn't around for Kings heyday as a promoter but I've done my research on the man and he was a very smart criminal who wormed his way into the heart of boxing and stole millions from some of the greatest fighters. He put some great fights on sure, but what he did was like a cancer on the sport. These guys were risking their health for King to steal from them, its inexcusable the guy was a dog.Comment
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