The Life and Crimes of Don King

by Jack Newfield

Pg 31 Putting his jailhouse insider-trading aside, there is no question that King used his 4yrs in prison to his advantage. As he repeatedly said “I didnt serve time, i made time serve me.” King did read his way through the prison library, absorbing ideas from historys heavyweight thinkers, including Frederick Douglass, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Sartre, Nietzsche, John Stuart Mill, Tolstoy, Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, Mark, and Hitler

Pg 47 Boxing is the only jungle where the lions are afraid of the rats

Pg 54 King demonstrated one of his basic gifts- talking to black fighters. He knew how to to it. He knew how to ingratiate, con, charm, brown nose, befriend, impress, amuse and seduce fighters. He knew their language, their weakness, their psychology. He knew how to give them a self-image, an idea of their role in history, how much money they could make if they only had “proper management”

Pg 72 Boxing is the one sport where even the deepest expert cant always tell what is going on, who is winning a fight in progress or who prepared best for the match. No one can really see from the outside the ring how much a punch has hurt; no one can really tell how fatigued a fighter is; no one can know how much will to win a fighter has left

Pg 90 Boxing is not just unregulated, it it unstructured. There are no leagues with schedules enforced by a commissioner. Boxing has always been closer to 18th century piracy than to an organized sport. In football, the playing field is 100yds, but in boxing the size of the ring can be negotiated. In football, the Cowboys have to play the Redskins. But in boxing no champion ever has to fight a particular contender unless a ad-hoc deal is made

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