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The most poetic promoter until Lou DiBella’s tirade following Vernon Forrest’s decision victory over Ike Quartey, Don King, his life and his Hall-of-Fame career have been Shakespearean drama with fuzzy hair.
He ran ******** operations, was connected with homicides and spent more than four years in prison. He became an avid reader.
“Jail was my school. I had one of the most delightful times under desperate conditions,” King told scribe Thomas Hauser. “I read Aristotle and Homer. I got into Sigmund Freud. When I dealt with William Shakespeare, I got to know him very well as a man. I love Bill Shakespeare. He was some bad dude. Intellectually, I went into jail with a peashooter and came out armed with a nuclear bomb.”
He became a promoter, raised millions for charity and millions more for himself and his fighters. He became a legend, a public figure, a man of controversy and yet a legitimate celebrity.
He was criticized but, unlike King Lear, never ostracized, in spite of the nature of a sport in which money talks and lawsuits fly, and despite the charges hurled at him from fellow promoters and fighters both prominent and problematic.
He is 75, five years younger than Lear was, and with no signs of slowing down or giving up his King-dom. But for all the praise that has energized his trademark smile and flag-waving, there are also enough accusations about his calculations to send the man out into a storm, asking for thunderbolts to singe his white head due to the ingratitude of man. [details]
He ran ******** operations, was connected with homicides and spent more than four years in prison. He became an avid reader.
“Jail was my school. I had one of the most delightful times under desperate conditions,” King told scribe Thomas Hauser. “I read Aristotle and Homer. I got into Sigmund Freud. When I dealt with William Shakespeare, I got to know him very well as a man. I love Bill Shakespeare. He was some bad dude. Intellectually, I went into jail with a peashooter and came out armed with a nuclear bomb.”
He became a promoter, raised millions for charity and millions more for himself and his fighters. He became a legend, a public figure, a man of controversy and yet a legitimate celebrity.
He was criticized but, unlike King Lear, never ostracized, in spite of the nature of a sport in which money talks and lawsuits fly, and despite the charges hurled at him from fellow promoters and fighters both prominent and problematic.
He is 75, five years younger than Lear was, and with no signs of slowing down or giving up his King-dom. But for all the praise that has energized his trademark smile and flag-waving, there are also enough accusations about his calculations to send the man out into a storm, asking for thunderbolts to singe his white head due to the ingratitude of man. [details]