By James Slater: Legendary boxing promoter Don King celebrates his 80th birthday today. There cannot be a fight fan alive who doesn’t have an opinion on King: whether they choose to celebrate him or to hate him. King has done it all, seen it all and said it all. However, whenever he speaks, people listen; even if much of his rhetoric has been heard many times before.
The “Only in America” man recently gave an interesting interview with top writer Jeff Powel of The Mail, and King had some interesting as well as intriguing things to say – about Floyd Mayweather Junior especially.
King revealed how he has recently lent Mayweather half-a-million bucks – for what exactly he did not say. Is the boxing master known as “Money” having some problems with the green stuff? Or, as Powell suggests, does the loan give strong indications that King and Bob Arum will co-promote the massive and much-talked of Mayweather-Pacquiao fight next year? “Bet against it at your own risk,” Powell writes.
King, by the way, feels Floyd will definitely beat Pac-Man; a fighter who has “made the brilliant most of Floyd’s absence from the ring.” Interesting indeed. King clearly feels Pacquiao would not have achieved all he has done had Mayweather remained fully active as apposed to taking his infamous “vacations.”
King also had quite a bit to say about former WBA heavyweight champ David Haye. Like practically all of us, the man who promoted heavyweight classics such as Ali-Foreman and Holmes-Cooney among many others, was hugely disappointed by Haye’s lacklustre effort against Wladimir last month. King suggest Haye would have been a different animal had he been looking after him.
“The Klitschkos, who are good big men, are more champions of Germany than of the world and your David Haye was a horrible disappointment against Wladimir,” King said to Powell. “Haye would never have fought that feebly if he had been with me. He had the charisma and style to revive heavyweight boxing but, in a stadium full of Germans, he became one of many fighters I’ve known who were afraid to hit the white man. The least he could have done was go down fighting. I don’t think his confidence can ever recover. Certainly not with his current crew around him.”
Is King angling to get a hold of Haye and rebuild him? It certainly would be interesting to see what the no-nonsense promoter would do with Haye if he invested in him. King is hated by many for alleged stealing from fighters, but King’s relationship with his warriors was such that he got the best out of them almost every time out. Would Haye, with the carrot and the stick treatment from King, have made sure he “at least went down fighting” against Klitschko?
King may be 80, but he insists he is far from done working. If he can pull off staging Mayweather-Pacquiao next year, his swansong may well prove to be amongst his most memorable promotions.