A Pro Boxing Fan Born Every Minute

Fight promoters are, by all odds, the strangest cast of characters in the whole spectrum of sports.

Tex Rickard was a nerveless gambler who could turn over a card that would mean he was $100,000 richer or flat broke without a change of expression. He was the first to put gold leaf in tickets and charge $100 for them in a day when $100 would have bought you a car.

But he was always afraid he had overmatched opponents with Dempsey and even went so far as to beg Dempsey once to take it easy with Luis Firpo--who only knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Mike Jacobs was a Broadway ticket speculator who got into promotion because fights sold tickets and that was his business. He worked out of his office and no one ever saw him at a fight camp or even ringside; his connection to the sport was the counting house.

Don King is as unlikely a historical figure as any of them, and he sees himself as their spiritual heir.

With his electric hair and long-running monologues delivered in the booming bombast of Moses addressing the children of Israel, King feels he is the apotheosis of the breed. Not for him the brooding uncertainties of a Rickard, the reclusion of a Jacobs.

“I am a showman!” he bellows. “There have been only three great showmen in the history of this country--P.T. Barnum, Mike Todd and me!”

Look, if you were too young to remember the traveling medicine shows or the snake oil merchants of the Old West, take heart.

There’s always a visit from King. Be prepared to be sold the Brooklyn Bridge, a gold brick or prime swampland in Florida.

It has been said King could sell sand to an Algerian or ice to an Aleut.

There used to be a saying in Hollywood: “The bigger the flop, the bigger the junket.” In other words, a studio with a turkey of a movie on its hands would fly the press to Monte Carlo for the premiere.

King isn’t going to fly anybody to the south of France, but he was in town this week in a blizzard of superlatives and hyperbole to promote a fight card at the Mirage in Las Vegas next Sunday featuring Julio Caesar Chavez and Terry Norris and Greg Haugen and Julian Jackson and Michael Nunn and Tony Tucker.

Pretty good slate, you would say? Right.

Only Julio Caesar is not fighting Haugen or Norris. He’s fighting Marty Jakubowski, the scourge of central Indiana who might or might not be undefeated in 37 pro bouts.

I say “might be” because King in his checkered past might be called the “fight doctor.” Not because he treated fighters, but because he doctored fights.

A heavyweight elimination tournament of King’s once proved to have 25 fights recorded that had never taken place and another 80 that probably didn’t take place.

The network canceled the tournament. King sued the network.

Julio Caesar Chavez against Marty Jakubowski might be the most lopsided mismatch since the Titanic and the iceberg, but promoter King is having none of it.

Carefully avoiding calling Jakubowski by name (he can’t pronounce it), King hints that every fighter of no matter what lean skills is up for a fight against Chavez, whom he identified as the best fighter pound-for-pound in the world.

Jakubowski might be up for the fight, but not for long. By the second round, he will be down for the fight, is the way to bet.

Undaunted, King promotes Terry Norris, who, he tells you, is the greatest fighter “pound-for-pound,” if Julio isn’t.

He touts his meeting with an unknown named “Irish” Pat Lawlor as a “war.” If so, it’s the United States vs. Grenada.

Irish Pat is, pound-for-pound, one of the worst fighters in the world. He’s probably not even Irish. In the fight game, “Irish” in front of your name is a code word for “white.”

Julian Jackson, who might actually be pound-for-pound the best fighter around, will take on Eddie Hall, who isn’t. Hall has lost nine of 21 fights. He has been knocked out three times in his last six fights, lost another and got a draw in another.

None of this deters King. He takes it as a challenge and the adjectives flew. Anybody can promote Dempsey-Tunney, Louis-Schmeling, Ali-Frazier, is his position. P.T. Barnum could sell Tom Thumb. But could he sell Greg Haugen vs. Armando Campas?

Actually, King is a sad case these days. He still owns 2,000 acres of prime land in central Ohio, a Park Avenue penthouse and a fleet of Cadillacs and closet full of bench-made English shoes.

But, for the first time, almost, since he got out of prison, he is without a heavyweight champion or contender in his entourage. It’s kind of depressing.

King is not a lightweight champion kind of guy. His real meal ticket is a heavyweight champion. Unfortunately, his is in the big house in Indiana these days doing three-to-10.

A promoter without a heavyweight champ is like a captain without a ship. But Captain King is not discouraged:

“We are working to get Mike Tyson out. (Alan) Dershowitz expects to not only get him out, but pardoned. When we do, he will be able to beat the likes of Riddick Bowe, then rest for a minute and beat Holyfield or Lennox Lewis or anybody else.”

King will tell you that Tyson’s misadventures began with “the second fight” against Buster Douglas in Tokyo.

The second fight!? The record book lists only one--”Douglas, K.O. 11.”

King shakes his head. “Tyson knocked him out in the eighth round. The long count. Then, Douglas won on an illegal knockout in the second fight three rounds after he was himself knocked out. I mean, how many times you got to knock a man out?”

King’s face hardens. “Then, Buster Douglas lays down and bays at the moon against Holyfield. He quits like a dog. He cheats the public. He cheats the world.

“We need Tyson to restore order,” he says.

In the meantime, the great showman must make do with guys who are too light fighting guys who are too obscure.

King accepts it. After all, Barnum did it with a guy 30 inches tall.