The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America Read online

  The Life and Crimes of Don King

  The Shame of Boxing in America

  JACK NEWFIELD

  New York • Sag Harbor

  Harbor Electronic Publishing

  2003

  HEPdigital.com

  JackNewfield.com

  To Janie, Rebecca, and Joey: you’re the best

  Copyright © 1995, 2003 by Jack Newfield

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2003105231

  ISBN 0-9740201-0-9 (paper)

  ISBN 978-0-9740201-1-2 (eBook)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Harbor Electronic Publishing. Permission is granted to photocopy any part of the book under contract with the Copyright Clearance Center (www.copyright.com).

  An earlier version of this book was published in 1995 by William Morrow and Company, Inc. under the title Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King. The Epilogue first appeared in The Nation, November 12, 2001.

  This print version of the book does not include an index. Readers who need an index are directed to the eBook version, which is fully word-searchable.

  Printed in the United States of America First printing: May 2003

  CREDITS Editors: Anne Sanow, Charles Monaco Cover design: Dimitri Drjuchin

  Other books by Jack Newfield

  Bread and Roses Too A Prophetic Minority: the American New Left Robert Kennedy: A Memoir A Populist Manifesto: the Making of a New Majority

  (with Jeff Greenfield)

  Cruel and Unusual Justice The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York?

  (with Paul DuBrul)

  City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York

  (with Wayne Barrett)

  The Education of Jack Newfield Somebody’s Gotta Tell It: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working-class Journalist The Full Rudy: the Man, the Myth, and the Mania

  Acknowledgements

  I interviewed approximately 150 people for this book. But some helped me above and beyond the call of duty during the four years I worked on the project.

  Former Cleveland detectives Carl DeLau and Bob Tonne retrieved and let me copy all the 1966 police reports on King’s murder of Sam Garrett.

  Tom Moran, Tim Witherspoon’s manager, let me read and copy the complete financial records for all of Tim’s fights that had become exhibits in his lawsuit against King.

  Leon Gast allowed me to watch dozens of hours of film he shot in New York, Deer Lake, and Zaire, as part of his never-released documentary on the Ali–Foreman fight.

  Sam Toporoff allowed me to read and quote from his unpublished manuscript with Larry Holmes.

  Jeremiah Shabazz, Lloyd Price, Ernie Butler, Don Elbaum, Gene Kilroy, Hank Schwartz, Cedric Kushner, Alex Wallau, and the late Harold Conrad were all helpful in filling in particular pieces of the story.

  Tom Hauser was uncommonly generous in opening doors and sharing research. Jim Neff, who lives in Cleveland, was another who went out of his way to share tips, sources, documents, and ideas.

  Steve Lott took the time to duplicate and give me tapes of all the fights I needed to describe.

  Jose Torres and Joe Spinelli are close friends, and our hours of conversations and fight watching over the years enriched my understanding of the political economy of the cruelest sport, as well as its ring mechanics.

  Photographers James Hamilton, Howard Bingham, and Arlene Schulman were kind enough to give me photos from their archives for the picture section.

  Richard Emery, my lawyer/agent/friend, came up with the original idea that I should do a book on King and gave me encouragement at key moments.

  Ken Chandler, New York Post editor, generously gave me blocks of time off to work on this book.

  I wish to thank all the boxing writers who shared information with me over the last five years: Mike Katz, Larry Merchant, Mark Kriegel, Pat Putnam, Bert Sugar, and Wally Matthews.

  Finally, I wish to thank all the fighters who talked to me, not just about King but about their feelings and their craft. They are: Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Larry Holmes, Saoul Mamby, Mike Tyson, Michael Dokes, David Bey, Bobby Cassidy, Mark Breland, Jimmy Young, Earnie Shavers, Jeff Merritt, Eddie Gregg, Mitch Green, and Tony Ayala.

  —JACK NEWFIELD

  Preface to the New Edition

  Don King, now 72, has lost none of his power, although he has mellowed some.

  King still controls the heavyweight championship through his monopolistic manipulations of the ratings organizations. Even though champions like Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield have personally disliked him, they had to do business with him, because his octopus tentacles still strangle the sport.

  But King has also bantered and joked with me the last few times we ran into each other. The thawing of our antagonism began in a men’s room in the federal courthouse in 1995. I had just sold the rights to this book to HBO, and King had read about the transaction.

  He looked at me from the adjacent urinal, and broke a tense silence.

  “I read in the newspapers,” King roared, “that I’m now feeding your whole motherfucking family.”

  I could only laugh out loud and nod my head.

  —JACK NEWFIELD New York City April, 2003

  Introduction

  This book is not intended to be a full-life biography of Don King. Its conception is to examine Don King in the context of the modern boxing system of unregulated, rapacious piracy. I have tried to write it as much from the point of view of the exploited, often voiceless fighters as from the vantage point of King, who is doing the exploiting with consummate brilliance. The reader will soon discover just how much grudging respect I have for King’s intelligence, single-mindedness, and pirate’s boldness.

  I have attempted to combine different genres of writing—investigative reporting, biography, memoir, and essay.

  When I began my research in early 1990, I did not come to this project with a blank slate. I had already published two lengthy articles critical of King’s financial practices for the Village Voice. King reacted to those in a bemused, forgiving way.

  In May, June, and July of 1990 I wrote King three formal letters seeking his cooperation with this book, asking to tape-record interviews with him, and promising to incorporate his perspective and emotions wherever possible. He said maybe yes, maybe no, and we fenced about the proposition in several conversations. Our mutual friend, the late Harold Conrad, vouched for my fairness in several conversations with King.

  In 1991, my relationship with King became more adversarial, in a very public way. I was assigned to be the correspondent and writer on a public television documentary about King that would eventually win an Emmy.

  In the course of shooting the documentary, King lost his self-control and verbally attacked me one day in Las Vegas. Our camera was rolling and dozens of people were watching, including boxing writers from around the country. King called me a “scumbag” and other names, while I kept saying, “Answer the question.” The confrontation became the dramatic centerpiece of our documentary, and the show was broadcast nationally at least three times by the PBS network.

  Afterward, wherever I went, people remarked about the scene where King is screaming invective at me. That two minutes seemed to personalize the perception of our relationship, and therefore personalized this book to some degree. But it did not change my thinking about King. I had already been yelled at by experts—Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Ed Koch, landlords, judges, labor racketeers. This tantrum just happened to
be on national TV a few times.

  I regarded the scene with King as almost routine, as an attempt at intimidation, and felt that it was part of my job to resist it. But people who saw it on television seemed to remember it vividly, like it was Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson.

  The image of King shouting insults, and me repeating the question—why did he accept money under the table in violation of the international boycott of apartheid—became a larger-than-life metaphor.

  Before that scene, during the summer of 1990, King at least pretended to give consideration to my written requests to get his point of view in a series of interviews. But when I pressed him for a definitive answer, he draped his arm over my shoulder and bellowed, “I’ve decided, no interviews for your book.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because the day your book comes out,” King explained, “I want to be able to call a press conference and tell the whole world, that damn white boy didn’t even have the decency to speak to this poor nigger.”

  With that, Don King laughed loudly and patted me on the back, like he had just put something over on me and wanted to gloat a little.

  But I could see that his eyes were cold and dead.

  Someday they’re gonna write a blues song for fighters. It will be for a slow guitar, soft trumpet, and a bell.

  —Sonny Liston

  It’s like we’re racehorses. They race us till we drop, and then they shoot us.

  —Tim Witherspoon

  Don, I’ll pay you the money.

  —The last words of Sam Garrett

  1. One Last Vicious Kick

  A loaded, unregistered .357 Magnum in his belt, $2,000 as usual in his pocket, Don King sauntered into the Manhattan Tap Room at 100th and Cedar in the Cleveland ghetto. His brand-new Cadillac convertible was parked outside. It was high noon on April 20, 1966.

  With his imposing size and magnetic life-force, King had already risen to the top of the hustler’s meritocracy. When he walked into the Manhattan Tap Room he was a celebrity. He was known as the biggest numbers banker in Cleveland.

  King was a street Machiavelli, a ghetto Einstein. He dropped dimes on his competitors in the numbers business. He invented ways to cheat the system. He had influence with bad cops, judges, and politicians. He had survived two assassination attempts by his rivals. He was close to Italians in the traditional Mafia, who protected his operations for a price.

  King dressed like a pimp, talked like an evangelical storefront preacher, and thought like a chess grand master. He believed his own life was destined to be an epic odyssey.

  King was already a force of nature. He possessed the alchemy of a brilliant strategic mind, working-class ambition and anger, and no conscience. This is the combination that would propel analogous modern rogues—Mayor James Michael Curley of Boston, Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, and Morris Levy, the mob’s music mogul.

  Part of King’s street stardom was his ownership of the popular hangout, the New Corner Tavern, at Seventy-eighth and Cedar. There musicians like Erroll Garner, B. B. King, Jonah Jones, and King’s close friend Lloyd Price came to perform and mix with the elite of players. When King was in a particularly jovial mood, he would jump up on the bandstand and conduct the brass section.

  In fact, Don King already displayed obvious similarities to the heroes of Price’s two-million-selling songs. Like “Personality,” King had “walk, talk, style.” And like “Stagger Lee,” he was a gambler who had already killed a man. (Years later I would ask Price whether King was more like “Personality” or “Stagger Lee,” and Price replied, “Neither.” He said King was really “more like Billy,” the character in his song “Stagger Lee,” who swore the dice read eight when Stagger Lee rolled a seven.)

  In April 1966, “Donald the Kid,” as he was known to the gamblers and grifters in the East Side ghetto, was the biggest of the five clearinghouse numbers bankers in Cleveland. He was grossing $15,000 every day on the poor people’s lottery.

  Each morning King left his comfortable home at 3451 Sutton Road in Shaker Heights with a wad of cash and a loaded gun. King carried the gun because he thought traveling with a bodyguard made him look like a gangster. And he desired respectability. Yearned for it.

  Long before 1966, King had already killed a man with a gun. On December 2, 1954, three men from Detroit tried to rob one of King’s gambling houses, on East 123rd Street. There was a gunfight with King firing a Russian revolver. When the shooting stopped, Hillary Brown lay dead on the ground. The county prosecutor, Bernard Conway, ruled King had fired in self-defense and the death of the stickup man was “justifiable homicide.”

  So Don King was already a star in his galaxy of outlaws when he sauntered into the Manhattan Tap Room for an early drink on April 20, 1966. The bartender knew him, some regulars at the bar knew him, and Sam Garrett, drinking early that day, also knew King.

  Sam Garrett had been an employee of King’s numbers organization. He had been King’s friend. But now Garrett owed King $600 from a bet King had placed with him on number 743. King had hit the number but Garrett had not paid him yet.

  King had placed this bet as part of a new system of betting, based on inside information and mathematical calculation, that he had invented. King called it “run downs” or “counts.” It was a product of his mathematical talent and allowed him to make bets with the odds on his side, as well as take bets with the odds on his side.

  King’s insider trading in the numbers was based on a call he, or a subordinate, would place to New York about 2:00 P.M. each day. The winning number in Cleveland was three digits in the middle column of the final daily stock market quotation of stocks that gained, lost, or remained unchanged. There was also a separate winning number for the middle column of advances, declines, and unchanged in bond transactions.

  At 2:00 P.M. King would get the stock quotations from a broker he knew in New York. If the advances were 117, the declines 307, and the unchanged 238, King then placed 35 or 40 bets in different combinations of the middle three digits of 103. He would bet 234, 194, 233, 143, 204, and so on. At $1 a number, for $35 King often hit the number himself, collecting at odds of 500 to 1, when he had actually lowered the odds of his winning to about 200 to 1 with the advantage of his creative cheating.

  King used his own runners and pickup men to place the bets with rival policy bankers once he got the 2:00 P.M. information from New York and figured out the 35 or 40 most likely combinations close to that three-digit sequence.

  So when King noticed Sam Garrett at the bar, he felt a jolt of anger at the man who had not paid off on his winning bet that was part of a method invented by King’s own cynical ingenuity. Garrett was a sickly man, a drug abuser, a sufferer from tuberculosis in his left lung, and a man whose kidney had recently been removed in surgery.

  King himself did not have the reputation for being a great fighter. While in high school he had had four amateur fights as an 108-pound flyweight. He won his first two by decision, lost his third by decision, and was knocked out in his fourth and last match. As an adult he was known to back down from physical confrontations with men his size. In high school King flunked physical education.

  The two men argued at the bar for several minutes, King standing very close to Garrett, using his girth and size and loudness as a form of physical intimidation. Then the dispute spilled out onto crowded, sin-kissed Cedar Avenue. Suddenly King began to attack the smaller man. This was not a fight. It was a beating. King outweighed Garrett by one hundred pounds. And King had a gun, while Garrett was unarmed.

  King knocked Garrett down either with a punch or, more likely, with the butt of his gun. Once Garrett was down on the sidewalk, King started kicking him in the head, without restraint. King’s heavy shoes left footprints on Garrett’s cheekbone.

  Blood started to smear Garrett’s swelling, mashed face. But King, swept up in the frenzy of the violence, kept on stomping, the revolver in his right hand glinting in the high-noon sun.

  A crowd of fifteen or t
wenty people gathered to watch the beating, although no one intervened to stop the mismatch. They came out of the Tap Room, Rico’s Confectionery, the 12 Counts Bar, a smoke shop, and a Laundromat. Others watched from the windows of the dingy apartments above the Cedar Avenue shops.

  King kept stomping the smaller man. Most people would have stopped by now. Most people would have felt satisfaction, or remorse, or some cathartic release by now. But not King. Some bully demon deep inside him kept the violence going beyond reason.

  Officers Bob Tonne and John Horvath were on routine patrol, in police car 962, driving west on Cedar at 12:30 P.M. Both were in plain clothes—suits and ties.

  Detective Bob Tonne knew this violent turf along Cedar very well. He had joined the Cleveland police force in 1949, and in 1961 he had been jumped and pistol-whipped by a gang of men at Ninety-ninth and Cedar. He needed seventy-two stitches in his face to close the wounds.

  The first thing Detective Tonne noticed from the radio car was a man’s head bouncing off the asphalt pavement like a rubber ball. Then he saw a large man standing over him with a gun in his right hand, applying another kick to the head.

  Tonne and Horvath jumped out of their radio car, drew their guns, and ordered the larger man to drop his weapon.

  “Donald, don’t kick him no more, he’s hurt,” a voice in the crowd said.

  “Drop it!” Tonne said, with the urgent intensity of pumping adrenaline.

  Don King turned slowly to place his weapon on the trunk of a parked car. As Tonne scooped the gun off the car, King got in one last vicious kick that Tonne would never forget.

  Tonne handcuffed the man he did not recognize. But King recognized the police detective.

  “Tonne,” he said, “you don’t have to cuff me. I’m Donald King.”

  Tonne thought King was suggesting he was too much of a celebrity to suffer the indignity of being cuffed. King’s hands were so large that Tonne had trouble getting the handcuffs to fit around King’s wrists.