King, the Ring and The United States Boxing Championship Scandal and Aftermath

Im sure mainy of you will be familiar, at leasst in passing, of the scandal of the United States Boxing Championship. Obviously the scandal must go down as a stain on the history of boxing and the corruption that has plagued it. But what do people think the long term impact of the scandal had, if any on boxing? Did it have far reaching consequences that influence the way boxing is today? And in the aftermath of it did anything much change for either better or worse?

For those not overly familiar with the story it roughly goes as follows. The failed United States Boxing Championships in 1977 was the brainchild of Don King. Boxing at this time was popular and in the mainstream. The U.S had captured 5 golds in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Rocky had been released the previous year to overwhelming popularity and it was the U.S Bicentennial. King looked to take advantage of this period of success and create his own tournament with a distinctly patriotic flavour to appeal to the U.S people. The concept was an all American mini tournament held in 8 weight classes which would crown a U.S national champion. Fights would be staged at patriotic venues like the US Naval academy in Maryland and even on a U.S aircraft carrier. Not a bad concept thus far.

However in order to sell his ambitious idea to prospective TV networks, King had establish the credibility and quality of the tournament. He couldnt do this on his own and needed to enlist the help of less controversial sources before any TV network would give him the backing he demanded. To do this he turned to the New York State Athletic Commission, chaired by James Farley Jr, and the Ring Magazine "Bible of Boxing" and its editors Nat Loubet and John Ort. King paid the Ring in order to use their independant and respected ranking to guarantee the quality and legitimacy of the fighters in the competition and this would be sanctioned by the NYSAC. King would pay both for their services and give them national television coverage on top. With this in place the TV network ABC enthusiastically received the project and invested heavily in King.

However its at this point that the controversy and problems really began. King wasnt simply happy to put an a tournament which would make him a huge profit, he also wanted fighters involved in the tournament to sign exclusive and often career long contracts solely with himself. Naturally most (if not all) of the top U.S fighters at he time had little interest in this, and despite the heavy financial backing King had recieved from ABC it still fell way short of the amount needed to lure all the top named American fighters together in one competition (which King undoubtadly knew from the start). Instead King assembled what was in essence a bunch of journeyman fighters most of whom signed over their careers to him with the tantalising prospect of national exposure offered by ABC.

The obvious problem was how to convince the tv networks or anyone else for that matter that these sub rate competitors were legitimate contenders. To this effect the Ring Magazine played a crucial part. Fighters selected by King to compete would be legitimised through bogus Ring ratings and in many cases have their actual records altered. Arguably the most notorious example of this was Ike Fluellen. A journeyman fighter who had retired in 1975. With the tournament scheduled to begin in early 1977 the Ring credited Fluellen with two fake wins in 1976 and introduced him as a number 10 ranked middleweight which mysteriously moved up as high as Number 3 in one of the early Jan editions. They also nominated him for the "Progress of the Year" award for 1976 despite the fact he never actually fought that year. Various other fighters involved benefited from similar treatment. Its worth remembering that this was before the days of the internet and tools like boxrec, so the influence publications like the Ring had were far reaching. Thanks to Kings bribery, the Ring helped esablish many of his lame ducks as genuine contenders. Even so, there was an element of trying to "fool all of the people, all of the time" from King and the Ring. Not everyone, especially respected boxing journalists and those in the know in the fight game could ignore the bizzare goings on. Rumours of the validity and credentials of many of the fighters and the tournament as a whole began to surface before it even began. Even with ABC itself, a couple of the more clued in to boxing executive began to worry about the quality of fighters King was signing up. The result was a hastily drawn up affadavit by ABC which King had his associates sign swearing to the legitimacy of the whole thing. Thus the tournament began as scheduled.

How the whole thing would have panned out and whether it would have been a success or not remains somewhat unclear but already one or two journalists (Malcolm Gordon in particular) aswell as an associated ABC produce, Alex Walleau had uncovered the scam by several months into the tournament. Add to this that one of the tournaments better heavyweights, Scott leDoux (died last year) had become disillusioned with Kings contract and the farcical competition and wanted out. As a result he was told he would not win a fight and was duly robbed by Kings own handpicked judges in his first fight (many of whom had never, and never would judge a fight again). Furious he more or less blew the whistle on King live on tv after his fight. But this seemed to be merely confirming what many insiders now already suspected. The media got hold of the allegations and more or less ripped the tournament to threads in scathing fashion. In a panic, ABC cancelled the whole thing.

Whats interesting is what people who are familiar with the scandal make of the aftermath? Naturally their was a scandal and fallout as a result, some arguably shaped the sport as it exists today. Naturally there was alot of finger pointing in all directions. King, the mastermind of the operation obviously lost credibility but for a boxing promoter this is a daily occurance and sadly no big deal. Legally he got away free of charge (the associates who signed the afadavits carried most of the can). It reinforced Kings already rather notorious reputation, but seemingly little beyond that. The chairman of the NYSAC, James Farley Jr who had leant his support to the USBC was forced to resign. The Ring, whos bogus rankings and records were exposed suffered a massive loss in credibility resulting in an almost entire clear out of staff in an effort to regain its credibility and put the scandal behind them. Several prominant boxing journalists and media men like Howard Cosell (tail of a pony) who had gone on record defending both the tournament and Kings honest intentions were severely undermined. However perhaps the most far reaching consequences involved the tv networks who had been duped, at least initially, by King. The massive failure of the USBC and the nature of the corruption involved meant that they were more reluctant than ever to simply pass over control to boxing promoters and in future sought to have much more control and say in boxing matters themselves. This lead to a much closer relationship with the sanctioning bodies like the WBC and WBA with whom the TV Networks felt they had far greater influence. As a result we further sanctioning bodies such as the IBF and WBO were also inspired to appear down the line aswell as the creation of ever more titles used to market fights. Nowadays much of the real power is held by the likes of HBO and Showtime who can exert enormous influence over sanctioning bodies, promoters and fighters alike aswell as being able to serve their own interests to a much larger degree. Would anyone agree? What other potential consequences might there have been? Was there an opportunity missed to do more with regards the structure of the sport?

To finish things off I will leave a quote given by King to Sports Illustrated in the run up to the infamous United States Boxing Championship which is deliciously ironic:

"The Tournament will change the face of boxing and remodel an image that has long been unfair. We will show that boxing belongs, that the undesirable elements long associated with it are no more¦people dont know what theyre talking about when they talk of fixes and gangsterism inside boxing. Thats a holdover from years and years ago. What about baseball and basketball and football and horseracing? The scandals in these sports had been outrageous and on a larger scale. Yet they come back bigger than ever. Why? Because of television, of the concerted efforts and promotion behind them." Don King, Sports Illustrated, January 3, 1977.

Excellent article manos, am familiar with the scandal as anyone who has read Jack Newfield's excellent biography of King will be and have always felt in a career of scandal the tournament ranks as one of his worst. Is staggering he came out of it nigh on unscathed, and proves his sometimes nickname of the teflon don is not unwarranted.

The real tragedy is the tournament was a beautiful idea, as you have stated with Ali still around and a Ray Leonard inspired team cleaning up at the Olympics there was a real thirst for the sport and had King played it clean and done it right the tournament could have really kickstarted something. I know the Petronelli's pulled Hagler out of discussions through an unwillingness to sign with King, when it was clear Marvin was the best middle without a belt and just the sort of fighter the tournament was purported to be designed for.

I think one of the major impact is the tournament served to sour the relationship the sport had with network TV in the states, it just reinforced a lot of the stereotypes that boxing is the sewer of porfessional sport, because ABC gave King pretty much a blank cheque and creative freedom to deliver boxing to them and his almost inbuilt instinct was to screw them which was completely unnecessary as he was already getting well paid and given he had the most talented heavyweight in the tournament (Holmes) under contract as likely to come out of a fair and honestly run tournament in a good position.

Cracking article and interesting stuff yet again.

Great article Manos and one i knew nothing about, interesting stuff but not suprising considering who was behind it.

As an amusing aside when this all blew up and Ike Fluellen was asked about his ability to rise through the rankings without fighting his response was "I should have stayed retired, I could have been world champion"

Pretty bad stuff from The Ring but i suppose they had a clearout. Is there quite a bit about this in Newfields biography of King?

There is a whole paragraph on it, believe the paragraph is called Dung King and Johnny Bought, which gives you some idea of Newfield's view on the scandal, the book is definitely worth reading, I have read it countless times and it never fails to be anything short of fascinating.

just seconding the above, excellent stuff... and would agree manos, that the real irony is that the tv companies that got duped, now do the duping themselves. I suspect however, that that was always going to happen... tv shapes all sports, but only boxing, with no single central body, lends itself to the kind of manipulation we sadly see

Cheers Rowley will try and pick up a copy in the near future.

Great article Manos, my favourite and original reason for reading these boards.

Funny, as Rowley alluded too, that if it were not for King's obscene greed this tourny really could have been as good as Don's quote suggested. So much potential.

However, as we continue to find out 35 yrs later with the Super 6, these kind of tournaments really are very very hard to pull off successfully.

I think it was real opportunity missed in terms of introducing better regulation to the sport.

As others have said, the concept of a tournament involving the top U.S fighters based on credible (supposedly) independant rankings is a good idea. Not only that but the actual model was designed to draw everyone under 1 umbrella - promoters, networks and fighters with fair competition and revenue splits removing tedious negotiating and posturing.

A successful, clean tournament would have been great for boxing and provided a blueprint on how to do boxing the right way. However in after what transpired, it was an opportunity for the various commissions and tv networks to bring in some much needed regulation and control of the sport to avoid a repeat. Instead it appeared that not a whole lot was done about it. The tv networks were unable or unwilling to really provide any regulation. Instead they turned to the sanctioning bodies which was a pretty disastrous move as they were little better than King. At a national and federal level in the U.S essentially nothing seemed to happen. There were no safegaurds installed nore any real concerted efforts to provide better regualtion for the sport. The chairman of the NYSAC was forced to resign, but no real change to structure or the root of the problem. In the end it became little more than just another controversy in a sport that was synonomous with them. Its almost like corruption was so ingrained in the sport that it was met with indifference and seen as the rule rather than the exception.

Brilliant article, Manos. Knew some odds and ends about the ill-fated championship but nothing more than that - your detail and quotes on the matter are deinitely appreciated!

King's famed "Only in America!" line springs instantly to mind, yet again. It's amazing how he and his reputation recovered (or, at the very least, didn't suffer too much) in the aftermath of this. The man has had so many fingers (and toes, probably) in so many pies it's almost scary.

Great points regarding the long-term influence this kind of caper has had with regards to television, too. Easy to understand and appreciate why the networks would want to have such tight control, but while it serves their own interests well, it doesn't serve the interests of boxing much. Brings up the age-old question about whether King's influence and achievements in boxing have been more good than bad or the other way round, of course, but in this particular case he couldn't have got it more wrong if he tried.

Super stuff.

The real tragedy with King is he is a brilliant, brilliant promoter, as I said earlier this tournament at the time was a superb idea that could have been a huge success for everyone involved King included without any shenanegans, likewise putting together the Rumble in the Jungle shows the tenacity, creativity and genius of the man, even more so to hold it all together in the wake of George's injury. There just seems to be something hardwired in his brain that he cannot shake off the instinct to rip people off.

Don't get me wrong I am not naive enough to think there are any saints in the world of boxing promoting but King could have been an inspirational figure in the sport, from ex con to the worlds biggest boxing promoter is the American Dream writ large but his story will forever be overshadowed by the scandals that are a seeming constant in his life.

I always find it hard to evaluate Kings impact on boxing. Mainly because its difficult to interpret what would have happened had he not been there. He was obviously a talented promoter. He had flair, panache, work ethic, vision and a great business mind.

Amidst all the obvious negatives about him tends to be a belief that he made the big fights happen and wasnt as unwilling as most other promoters to engage in protecting fightes or avoiding threats. Thus he was fan friendly. This tends to be his biggest redeeming aspects with most people. But I often wonder if too much is made of this. For instance fights like Ali/Foreman, Ali/Frazier III, Tyson/Spinks, Tyson/Holyfield etc were surely going to happen regardless of whether King was there or not? It sometimes seems like King is acreditted with being the only guy capable of making these fights happen when clearly big fights were happening long before he arrived on the scene.

He obviously aided many of the big fights through his promoting skills and made them huge affairs - to that extent Ive little doubt he was great for boxing. But Im not wholly convinced he was the only guy that was willing to make the fights happen in the first place, which is sometimes the impression I get people think. The idea that Don King was on the side of the fans. Theres a tendancy to forget about alot of the other stuff he put together that wasnt so good (Ali/Holmes for instance).

And then of course theres all the other baggage that goes with him regards shafting fighters, manipulating rankings, influencing judges and the general ruthlessness, corruption and unpleasantness associated with his practices.

There might not have been that many promoters with his kind of vision or flair out there but was he really as neccessary to boxing as people think overall and without him would there have not been somebody else that could fill the void without anywhere close to the negative baggage associated with King? I suppose we will never know really.

Excellent thread.

In the above post manos, you say that the big fights would have happened anyway. Maybe so or maybe not. We'll never know given the Floyd/Pac debacle. One thing for sure is that King's cards were massive and stacked with high quality fights. Wasn't the Chavez/Taylor fight an undercard foght?

Can you imagine Chavez as an undercard fighter if he were around today? Guys like JMM would be undercard and not even main support fighters were they under king. He may not have been great to his boxers, but he was terrific for boxing fans. If he had either Manny or Floyd, that fight would have happened 2 years ago. he was fan friendly because he knew that being fan friendly meant making more money because the fans will pay.

azania wrote:Excellent thread.

In the above post manos, you say that the big fights would have happened anyway. Maybe so or maybe not. We'll never know given the Floyd/Pac debacle. One thing for sure is that King's cards were massive and stacked with high quality fights. Wasn't the Chavez/Taylor fight an undercard foght?

Can you imagine Chavez as an undercard fighter if he were around today? Guys like JMM would be undercard and not even main support fighters were they under king. He may not have been great to his boxers, but he was terrific for boxing fans. If he had either Manny or Floyd, that fight would have happened 2 years ago. he was fan friendly because he knew that being fan friendly meant making more money because the fans will pay.

I tend to think the big fights probably would have come off for the most part. For example Ali/Foreman and Ali/Frazier III were surefires to go ahead. King merely outbid his rivals to secure the fights thanks to his ambitious gaurantees from Zaire/Phillipines. But they almost cetainly would have happened anyway. However King left his own exotic kind of mark on them and a obviously the fights themselves were classics that exceeded all expectations.

Another aspect of of things was that the landscape of boxing began to change. Whether this was in part in spite of King, irrelevant to King or because of Kings influence is hard to know. But things changed over time. The introduction of things like ppv and the internet had a big impact. Im not sure even with King that Mayweather/Pacquiao would happen because the reasons are more complex now. In other eras the top fighters always earned good money but for the really big money you had to take fights that were tougher. The Leonard/Hearns fight is often quoted as how easy it was to make fights previously but in that case you had two guys that genuinely wanted to face each other and both guys knew that the money the could earn from that fight would be far greater than what they could make for a routine defence. Nowadays Pacquiao and Mayweather dont seem to have any problem in not facing each other and they both know they can make silly money, only marginally less by facing much more beateable fighters for far lower risk. Mayweather can make 30million fighting a Mosley or Ortiz dominating the lions share of the agreement so the incentive to for him to take a much higher risk and tougher fight in the shape of Pacquiao where he might have to settle for 50/50 isnt really there - or so it would seem.

I agree that Ali/Frazier/Foreman all would have fought regardless of King. But I believe the PBF/Paq fight would have come off if he were promoting either of them regardless of whether the fighters could make equal amounts fighting lesser fighters. The reason being that that fight would have make King more money. And one thing about Don King is that what makes Don King money will be made. It so happens that giving fans what they wanted made King money.

Yeah but even King would have his hands full with someone like Mayweather. The guy knows how much he can earn per fight on his own, he knows how much a fight with Pacquiao can generate. I dont think its money thats holding the fight back because both guys know how much they can make both from fighting each other and fighting elsewhere. PPV has given them the luxury of earning massive amounts without needing to take the risk of fighting each others. Lets be honest, if both guys really were keen on making the fight it wouldnt take Don King to make it happen.

And King will know how much he could earn so he'll make that fight happen.

azania wrote:And King will know how much he could earn so he'll make that fight happen.

Well technically speaking hes still around and promoting as far as I know. However I just wonder was his waning influence as much to do with the changing times in boxing and his infamous reputation as much as simply age. I cant think of why a top boxer would want to get involved with King these days. He has a reputation for ripping off fighters and being corrupt thats second to none even in the murky world of promoting. Certainly if I was Mayweather I wouldnt let him anywhere near my contracts. I think the Pacquiao/Mayweather scenario is just one of those situations where not even King could force the two guys into the ring together given how much power they have as fighters in their own right.

He is still around but his poweres have diminished. Old age and all that. Heck if Arum is still around and with influence, were King younger and fitter,, he would still be dominating boxing.

If I were a boxer I wouldn't let him anywhere near the state or country I'm in. I'd certainly keep him as far as possible from me. But as a fan, I miss the bloke. Loved the way he near on bankrupted Warren also. He tried to play with the big boys and the biggest taught him a lesson.

At the peak of his powers and influence, he would have made the fight. Lets not forget, he had showtime in his back pocket and if he could make Ring bend its rules, making that fight would not have been a problem.

Boxing misses King. Boxers probably dont.