Fight promoter speaks to 'Post' about what links Israel, peace and boxing.
By BEN SOLOMONdon king 224.88(photo credit: Asaf Kliger )
From the moment he walked into the Shelah Lounge in Tel Aviv's Dan Hotel on Monday, Don King exuded his trademark eccentricity.
His hair was as white as snow and pointing straight towards the heavens. He sported a denim jacket covered with glittered stars and stripes, marine pins and, on the left shoulder, an enormous airbrushed picture of his own face. Moreover, he seemed to enjoy the entire room of people examining and laughing at it.
The large, 77-year-old boxing promoting legend sat down in the interview chair, laid down the mini Israeli and American flags he had been carrying around on the table beside him and put a big, unlit cigar in his mouth. It took only a moment before he started doing what he is famously known for: Speaking beautifully, poetically and endlessly.
"I've been going around working, talking to people and it's just been great being here in Israel and seeing Shimon Peres's center for peace," said King, jumping right out of the gates, as if he was reading from a script.
Throughout the conversation, the Cleveland native who spent four years in federal prison after being convicted of manslaughter in 1967, quoted philosphers and classic writers including William Shakespeare and John Dunn.
Although he hasn't had much formal education, King is obviously book smart as well as street smart.
"Israelis are involved with mankind and the Palestinians are involved with mankind, but they have to be able to understand the perspective from which you are looking at mankind," he said.
"You say it's your home and I say it's my home, everyone has a claim and it has always been the conqueror and the vanquisher. Now let us come and deal with this here and put hands across the border for the coming good and the betterment of humanity."
As the only boxing promoter to be named in Sports Illustrated's 40 Most Influential Sports Figures of the Last 40 Years, King has a long list of both achievements and controversies accumulated over the years.
He has been sued by boxers, including Mike Tyson, and accused of association with the Italian-American Mafia. King made his name in 1974 when he organised the famous 'Rumble in the Jungle' fight between Mohammad Ali and George Foreman which took place in Zaire.
In the 1996 movie When We Were Kings, a documentary which follows the events leading up to the fight, author Thomas Hauser describes King as "totally immoral".
When confronted with his critics, King just smiled and played with his cigar.
"My achievements and accomplishments are irrefutable. The stats are just unbelievable. They are unparalleled in mankind as far as boxing." King said.
"Everyone is gonna sue you, there gonna do everything because they can. You've got to know going in what it is you're up against."
Don King's resume is a lengthy one. He has promoted big names such as Ali, Tyson and even Michael Jackson. At 77, he remains a hard working important figure in the sport of boxing.
"Boxing is more life than any other sport that you have. Boxing is life," King said. "The problems are right before you and you have to deal with them extemporaneously or you can do it by planned assault."
He then claimed that the criticism is simply racism.
"When your dealing with a black personality, blacks have been coupled with negative association, sin, of ludeness, depravity. You know - the bug man, the 'bogey man'. Anything that comes as close association with blackness is tainted and contaminated.
"They may hail your achievements and give you kudos but then they have to find something in your life that would make you different, that would degrade, dehumanize and subhumanize (sic) you so you wont be able to do that. This is what we got to overcome."
As a guest of the Peres Center for Peace, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this week, King spoke at the session, "Overcoming Hurdles through Sport" which included such guests as Joesph Blatter, president of FIFA, and Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses. King had plenty of praise for Peres and his organization.
"The problem here is a problem that is worldwide for one reason or another in different varies," said King. "I think the shining example is Shimon Peres trying to do something about it. That's the remarkable part of this here. You're not just furthering it and more deeply embedding the hatred for the other."
While there are few Jewish boxing heroes these days, back in the early part of the 20th century some of the greatest boxers in the UK and US were Jews.
King commented on the way boxing became a uniting factor within the Jewish community.
"Ethnic pride is valuable to any ethnic group. If you get a hero and he's a Jew and you are a Jew you can take pride in his heroic achievements. That gives the youngsters something and adds to the mythology of folklore and these are things which the tribes and the people and groups of people grow from this. Anytime a person of an ethnic background achieves and accomplishes something and is something that is good you want to be able to use that as a shining example.
"They gave hope to those who are suffering from hopelessness and despair. It gives the inspiration and motivation to say 'Yes, I can!' when everyone says you can't. In America this went with the Jewish boxers with Benny Leonard, who was great, one of the most classic fighters ever and Max Baer.
"Jewish boxers were very important because people don't think of Jewish people in boxing. But when people are hungry and you need money you gotta go out and do whatever you got to do to get it. That's what it really boils down to."
Although boxing is not a sport most Israelis are keen on, King believes it could be successful in Israel, both as a sport and means of peace between the Jews and Palestinians.
"There's a market for boxing everywhere, because boxing is basic and fundamental." King explained. "You find more things in common with people that you never knew anything about in sports than you do in any other equation that you are trying to get into. Sports are really tremendous, they're a great equalizer."
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