5 Live Boxing with Steve Bunce - Introducing... Powerplay: The House of Don King

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Veteran fight aficionado Steve Bunce is alongside Heavyweight Champion of the World Lennox Lewis to examine the early life and crimes of notorious Boxing promoter Don King.Listen to the full box set first on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hi, Buncie here. You're about to listen to my new podcast. Well, when I say my new podcast, Lennox Lewis joins me on my new podcast. It's called PowerPlay, The House of Don King. Episodes will be released on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full series right now. Just head over to BBC Sounds.

A warning. This episode of PowerPlaying contains... language that some may find offensive. Don King. A survivor. This is the most amazing story. It's Don King the wit, the grit, and the bullshit. In the boxing world, he ran for decades.

In King's world, facts, fiction, fights, and fear all blend together. I have no regrets. I only look forward to doing better and try to expedite for whatever. I sense that I may have committed. No one is perfect, you know what I mean? I'm not a perfect man. I'm just like any other human beings. Slim had the gun, and he was heading towards Don King's office, and we grabbed him.

We was grabbing him. He was like, Slim, no, don't do this. Don't do it, Slim. Don't do it. Slim was going to shoot Don King. In terms of Sam Garrett, Don beat him to death on the street. That's not subject to question. We know that as fact.

basically got us a meeting with an organized crime member who was instrumental and knew Don King very well and basically took us, took the FBI, an undercover FBI agent, a cooperating witness, and the organized crime member into Don King's office for the purposes of doing a co-promotion. Welcome to Power Play, the House of Don King. Episode 1, The Death of Sam Garrett, the Birth of Dawn King. This is the story of an extraordinary man, a giant of a man, and a man who dominated the boxing world for decades. So Lennox, if I say to you, Don King,

what's the first thing you think of? What's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Don King? I think of my mother, because she always... Bless her, by the way. Thank you. She always spoke about Don King and, you know, read about him, so she was always concerned about him and she was always saying,

never sign a contract without me or without a lawyer. This is when you're a boy? This is like when you're 14-15. Yeah, so she would always read these different things and that's what reminds me about Don King. Well, I tell what I think about Don King. It's just, it's not necessary to stuff with Ali and George Foreman

and all those big fights from the 70s. With me, it's those early Tyson years. You know when Tyson was a baby? I mean, at the same time, you were between Olympics, at that exact same period. And Tyson was just looked, like a child and him and Don in matching outfits.

You remember that when they used to dress the same? Yeah, that was the gimmick back then. And that's what, you know, we knew Don King for his electric hair, you know, sticking up in the sky. And, you know, anybody when they wanted to talk about Don King, you know, the guy with the hair sticking up, that's the guy. So that was a good thing that he did. Do you think, Lennox, for a period there in the 80s,

that he might have been one of the most recognizable humans on the planet? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody recognized the guy with the fuzzy hair, that he always carried the flags. And, you know, he's always talking about how great it is in America and how wonderful it is to be an American. Yeah, that's Don King.

Now, in this podcast series, we'll hear a lot about Don King, the man, the myth and the life, and his crimes. It would often be incredible. You might not believe some of it. You might not believe all that you're hearing. Because this is the story of Don King in many ways. That's the way his story is. is, he makes the remarkable happen, and by the way, by any means necessary.

Here's one of New York's finest writers, the one and only Mike Katz, on the methods King used. I've seen him intimidate other promoters. I mean, I've seen him, you know, take a guy and just shove him against the wall. I mean, he's an overbearing, huge man with an amazing presence. I mean, this guy didn't get to be number one in boxing because, you know, boxing. is a slimy game. If Don had been in General Motors or Chrysler, I mean, Chrysler never would have had the trouble. He is greedy. He is smart. He happens to be in boxing because boxing is one of the few businesses, open to the minorities. I mean, he could have been the president of the United States if he had been white. There is no doubt that Don King is the biggest, greatest,

and the most notorious promoter. His dine would president. presidents, kings and dictators. He staged the biggest fights in history. Muhammad Dahlia, Joe Fraser, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes. He's had all the greatest names. Now, he started his life in Cleveland, Ohio. He was one of seven kids. His dad died when he was nine, killed in an industrial accident.

Now, that's not a euphemism. He did actually die in an accident at work. King's mother Hattie used a 10 grand compensation that she was paid by the company to move the family to a better part of Cleveland, a place called Mount Pleasant. It was at that point a prosperous neighborhood for young black families. Now, King flourished, but not in school.

He worked shining shoes at two different country clubs. He then started to sell his mother's baking her cakes and her pies at something called policy houses. Now, these were basically illegal gambling and drinking establishment. Now, that is a king kind of word, establishment. They were often rat infested. old buildings. Let me ask you this,

did you know anything about the young Don King before you started doing any business with him later in your boxing career? Did you know anything about Don? No, I did know a lot about his previous life, you know, the fact that he was a numbers man and, you know, this is what he was doing in the ghetto.

And, you know, obviously my vision of the ghetto is like a low-income place and a rough place and, you know, where black people live. And he survived. And he was a great survivor. Yeah, he's a survivor. but to be a survivor, you've got to be, have some, like, some wickedness in you.

So, you know, definitely had a little bit of wickedness in him. Because he transformed himself from being the young kids shining shoes at a whites-only country club and working in those blind pigs, those illegal gambling dens. He transitioned quite comfortably into King the Criminal. In fact, it was amazingly easy. The kid, as he was known at that time, became a very successful criminal.

By the time he was 16, he started to make an impression. He also started to make a lot of money. He also started at 16 to carry a gun. The Cadillacs followed. The numbers racket, as you mentioned there in Cleveland, was making King a rich boy. So King ran one of Cleveland's most successful numbers rackets. It's like a black man's bingo.

Steve, what exactly is a numbers racket? It's interesting because I remember all those shows from the 70s, Star Skynh, Cojack, Hill Street, Blues, those great American cop shows. And there was always a numbers runner, someone from the numbers racket. It was like magic. They always appeared. They were generally in the station being interviewed by a detective. Now, they were baddies, but they weren't the worst.

And someone would say he runs the numbers. Now, I always loved the idea of a numbers racket. I had no idea really what it was. So I had to do a little bit of digging, and I remember once talking to King about this and him telling me one or two things, but not actually filling me in on the details. Now, this is my understanding of what the numbers racket was. Each day, the New York Stock Exchange would close. The final numbers were printed in the newspapers,

and people put money down, paid numbers runners, like King, a fee for selecting their number. Now, their number had to be the last three-digit used by the New York Stock Exchange. Other cities used other methods to derive the numbers, but in Cleveland, those numbers were from the New York. York Stock Exchange. And if they came up in the paper the following day, then you'd won. If they never came up the following day, then you lost. And that's how a teenage Donald King was making $300,000 each week as part of the Big Five, a syndicate of hustlers. King, you see, had a brain

for numbers. And he also had an edge. Bernard Fernandez from the Philadelphia Daily News. I was covering boxing prior to Don King, but, you know, Don King is a self-made guy. And he first got into boxing because of a soul singer named Lloyd Price, who was actually was born in New Orleans, but he was up in the Cleveland area as a good friend of Don King. And so he convinced Lloyd Price, and Lloyd Price convinced Muhammad Ali to do this charity exhibition in Cleveland to raise money for this hospital. Well, this started with a hospital in Cleveland, a black hospital that was suffering from financial woes, could not pay as pharmaceutical bills.

And so what happened is, I took it upon myself to initiate a fundraiser, a benefit to this hospital, and I had friends like Muhammad Ali, who I asked to come in and help me. And so from that day, Muhammad Ali told me, after that smashing success of that promotion, that I was a natural born promoter, and that I should come into boxing. He said, I've never seen anybody that could promote like you. and I was fortunate enough to make the right for him with George Foreman for him to regain the crown and I made the fight with him with Joe Frazier

and a thriller in Manila. And so it was been some phenomenal achievements that we have made together. But I said every head must bow, every knee must be, every tongue must confess. Thou are the greatest of all times. Mohammed Ali, three-time, heavyweight champion of the world. So it's a thing here that I love this young man.

This man has been an inspiration, a motivation, and a friend to me. And my motto is that people are my most important assets, innovation and imagination of my goals, working together for a better America is what we have to seek to do. And in so doing, we make the world a better place when we could take the two by four out of our eye before we could take the sprinter out of yours. Writer and Ali biographer Thomas Hauser. He was a very, very smart, shrewd operator.

Other than that, you really, you can't capture Don King in one story, in one fight, in one anecdote. You have to put it all together. I remember in 1992, I was approached by a man named Joseph Mafia, who was the former chief financial officer for Don King Productions. Joe had had a falling out with Don. He wasn't there anymore. And he had been subpoenaed to testify before a United States Senate subcommittee that was investigating corruption and boxing and wanted to know if I would represent him in the proceeding. I asked Joe two questions. Number one, will you tell the truth? He said he would. Number two, do you have a vested interest in protecting Don? And Joe said, no, he didn't. He and Don had a falling out. He was no longer working for DKP. He was just willing to go in there and tell the truth.

So I took the case. I represented Joe. He testified. He was eventually brought into the United States Attorney's Office, not as a target, but for questioning about Don. And on the basis of what Joe told the U.S. Attorney's Office, Don was indicted for insurance fraud. He was tried. He was acquitted.

He does have a way with jurors. He charmed everybody. Over the years, King came to control the courtrooms. The jurors loved him. He signed autographed. He posed for pictures. He took them out to eat. He once flew some over to a fight in London.

This is documented. I sort of got the message when one day during trial. We were up in the courthouse cafeteria for lunch and happened to be in the same line. I actually went through the line right after Don. And everybody there was Gaga over Don. And he got to the cash register and the woman behind the register refused to charge him. Said, no, your lunch is free. It's on us.

And I said to myself, there's no way a jury in this court is going to convict Don. Fast forward years. I was out in Las Vegas for the Roy Jones versus John Ruiz heavyweight championship fight, which Don was involved with Don promoted that. There was some woman who wanted to interview Don for a documentary, and she kept bugging him and bugging him, and he kept saying no. And finally he turned to her and pointed towards me and said, why don't you interview that guy? He's the one who got me indicted. and she said to him, well, you're very friendly towards him, considering the fact that he got you indicted.

And Don looked at her and said, well, he had a job to do, and he did it. And I respect that. And then afterwards, he let it go. And I respect that too. When King started, he was known as the kid. But the latest nickname was The Mouth. Now the Big Five flourished, but there was extra scrutiny from the police and the mob were taking a much closer look at the way this group were making so much money. The Kid and his associates were doing fabulous business.

They were making too much cash to go under anybody's radar, especially the radar of the crooks that owned the city. Now, a gangster called Alex Burns, and trust me, when I say he was a gangster, I'm telling you, he was a proper gangster. Now, he tried to extort some money from the Big Five. King said no, and in 1957, a bomb was planted under King's house. It exploded, wrecking the porch. Now, King decided to testify against Burns. This broke protocol. King was then shotgunned outside the house.

The pellets are still in his neck, even 50 years later, and every time he flies, they aggravate him. He comes off the plane in terrible pain. There was a trial. King gave evidence, but Burns walked free. King was in many ways not so lucky. The Big Five dissolved and King was renamed The Mouth. King's marriage also collapsed. Incidentally, in 1975, Burns was killed when a bomb exploded in his car. So that is why he was known as the Mouth because, well, he testified against some of his old partners. The Big Five was in tatters. It was 1957.

Cigars and Cadillacs and Fortune were under threat. The police were clamping down on numbers rackets nationwide. It was an unholy time to be a criminal. I've always loved the indignation from criminals when they're under severe investigation. It's almost like they're saying, it's an outrage, Governor. Why can't we just go on without business? King was also living a double life. He was married to a churchwoman called Levina Mitchell,

and he bounced between the place of worship and his own business. policy house. It was at the height of his numbers and gambling fame that King killed his first man. It was 1954 and it was deemed justifiable homicide. Four gangsters had driven from Detroit to hold up one of the famous policy houses in Cleveland. The city had a reputation. There was a lot of money in those policy houses. They picked the wrong house. The house of King was not going to be robbed. Trust me. King shot Hillary Brown and he walked to way free. That is how you build a street reputation.

It then got very serious with King. On the 20th, April 1966, King killed a man called Sam Garrett. Reports are coming in that a man has been rushed to hospital and is fighting for his life after being attacked outside a Cleveland bar.

Police who witnessed the attack arrested Donald King at the scene. King was armed and taken into custody. News headlines and five days after being attacked outside a bar, a man named as Sam Garrett has died in hospital. Garrett was attacked by Donald King,

who has now been charged with Garrett's murder. It is believed that King made the attack over an unpaid gambling debt. He stomped him and pistol whipped him to death on a Cleveland street corner. It was daylight and the police watched the murder.

Nobody in Cleveland was surprised. It was inevitable. Here's Thomas Hauser. In terms of Sam Garrett, Don beat him to death on the street. That's not subject to question. We know that as fact. He was tried and convicted of murder. The judge then reduced the finding to manslaughter. He served three and a half years in prison in Ohio for that crime. After his arrest for Sam Garrett's murder, there were claims that some witnesses were approached

and asked to not testify. I was approached two different occasions, somebody trying to bribe me with the offer of money or Don King can help me. And one of the main witnesses who made a statement at this time of what she described, they never found that witness. They searched for her, look for her,

and they never found her. I never could understand it. A man had committed to murder, even got invited to the White House for dinner at one point. But when he got out of prison, he just became a millionaire. I can't explain it. One of the many witnesses talking about what happened after he came forward.

And here's Bert Randolph Sugar, writer and boxing raconteur on King's Troubles. He was summarily arrested, arraigned, convicted, and sentenced to jail for manslaughter, reduced from murder one, and served four years in jail, and it's a well-documented incident. It was a second killing. The first was in self-defense, or at least it was so pleaded. Gowett's last words were as pitiful as the public execution. Don, I'll pay you the money. The killing was about more than just the $600 King was owed for selecting the number.

743, by the way. King had a system for guessing the number, or so he claimed. He actually called a broker in New York, just before the stock exchange closed. to get an indication, to get a steer on what the last three numbers might be. King always had a play. No matter what he did, he had a play. The death of Garrett was about his position inside the Cleveland numbers racket

and his reputation on the violent streets. The 600 bucks, well, it was a convenient excuse for a bit of retribution and an easy way to send a bloody warning. Let's how about this, okay? when he was arrested for killing Sam Garrett, okay, it was his 35th arrest, okay, since 1951. And he hadn't been to prison yet. Wow, wow.

Now, King believed he would walk free, believed he'd walk away with this one, get off this one, like he'd got off things in the past. King claimed Garrett had threatened him. King, by the way, was a hundred pounds heavier. And then he had acted in self-defense. Now, Bob Tunn, the policeman who arrested King, and watched the end of the assault.

He saw the mismatch for what it was. It was a bloody slaughter. I turned to grab the gun. He goes over and kicks that guy right in the head. I mean a kick. Right in front of me. That's when I grabbed his hands, put him behind his back.

And even as he was handcuffed, he got him one last final fatal kick to the head. And the victim, were you able to do anything for it? Well, the victim, he was laying down there. I could see the blood come out of his mouth, his ears. I bent over and kneeled over to see if he'd say anything. And the only thing he said, I'll pay you, Donald, I'll pay you Donald.

And that was the last word he said. He just passed out. So, Lennox, how much did you know about the death of Sam Garrett? Because that's the famous one, where he stomps the guy to death. And it seems there's a crowd. It's almost like a spectator sport on a street corner. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is where boxing come from. You know, many things can be happening on a street corner,

but everybody will be watching the fight. Even if it's an unfair one. Even if it's a mismatch. Even if it's a mismatch, everybody's watching the fight. And then when it's brutal like that, you know, and Don King's trying to send the message, you know, you get a reputation from that, and that reputation lives long.

Hey, he's brutal, he's a wicked man. I think the reputation lives right through to the present day, to be perfectly honest for you. A king on king, his crimes and acknowledge troubles. Not the rumors, the facts. Does he have regrets? I have no regrets. I only look forward to doing better.

try to expiate for whatever I sins that I may have committed. No one is perfect, you know what I mean? I'm not a perfect man. I'm just like any other human beings. Only God can judge by what you're saying is and what the circumstances that evolved and made it happen. You must let him be the judge and the jury and the prosecutor. I'm constantly being harassed and chased, but it's for a reason.

People that would come and say what they want to do, you know, I might have been indicted four or five times. I don't know what for. King was actually freed on bound. He went and attended the Muhammad Ali Ernie Terrell fight in Earl. fight in early February 1967. That was when

Ali beat Terrell very badly. In fact, I think it was Ali's most vicious performance. The fight was in Houston

and King Bragg to everybody he spoke to during his stay in Houston that he would not serve a day in prison.

Can you remember that fight? That's the one where he's asking him what his name is and he's rubbing his face on the ropes.

A bad fight that. Terrible fight. I think, you know, Muhammad Ali was very serious in that fight.

You know, he wanted to prove a point. Is that a diplomatic way of saying he was horrible in that fight? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. It was. You know, you got to be mean. And he definitely showed his meanness in that fight.

What's my name? Like, he wanted respect. And I know what that is trying to get respect out there. You know, I've written several times over the last 30 or so years that there's a lot of you in Arlene. And there's a little bit of that sense that everyone considers you a really nice guy. But when you were nasty, you were nasty in all fights you had to win. but when you were really nasty, there was a different Lennox head on.

There was a little bit of that nastiness in you. Yeah, it comes out once in a while, you know. Came out a few more times and once in a while. Yeah, don't be talking about my children. Yeah, that's true. You don't be talking about other children or anybody else in my family, right? Or my mum. Or your mum, especially not your mum, yeah.

Yeah. Now, Garrett's crime was taking a number from King. The number came up and Garrett owed him $600. King was finally sentenced in October 1960. to serve from one to 20 years in prison. King's lawyers had managed to get a second-degree murder reduced to manslaughter on a pill. The prosecution wanted the death penalty.

King got an easy ride. He might have been going to prison, but he wasn't going to be killed. He went off to Marion Correctional Institute to serve his time and transform his life. Now, in prison, he buried his head in books. He needed to be a new man for his new life, and his new plan.

I mean, you can't judge a book by, it's cover you. You have to read a little bit to find out what the chapters are. To see what the substance of the book is. I'm working in boxing, but I'm really a people person. And boxing is just an instrument

that continue to let me go out and promote. But I promote people. I'm a promoter of the people for the people and buy the people. And my magic lies in my people ties. So that was King going off to prison, reading, studying, learning all those quotes he used to use Lennox.

In your time with King, the times you were around him, did you ever have polite normal conversations? It was always about how you were wasting your career and how lovely your mum was and how incompetent Frank Maloney was. Did you ever have a conversation? Did he ever talk about his early life? Yeah, I mean, some of his stories would be about his early life, the experiences he went through, stuff that I didn't know, but I'm hearing it from the horse's mouth, which, you know,

if you're hearing it from the horse's mouth, it must be true. Except we're king. Well, you know, he's telling you these stories for a reason because the history of what he's being through and what's going on around him at the present time would have been, you know, important. It definitely was important. It shaped him all of this, didn't it?

The violent, vicious, horrible life, those two deaths, all those arrests, the prison time. Yeah. That's what made the king that we know. Yeah, well, two different kings. I tell you what I learned about him. I learned this is, you know, everybody always says, oh, stay away from King. He's the devil.

They'd stay away from me. He's so bad. And until I met him, he said to me, well, everybody's talking about me being the devil. I'm a promoter. What about the other promoters? They're just as bad as me. But they always put me out there. And I'm like, yeah, that's right.

They always put you out there. I'm always hearing about King. Yeah, it's because I'm black. That's why? So, you know, I listen to him. And I'm like, yeah, you know, that makes sense. Why are they putting you as the bad guy all the time? And all the promoters do the same thing.

All the promoters are promoters. You know, they do all don't make the same decisions? They are the same breed, aren't they? Yes. Whether you're a kid of 18 turning pro or man of 38 retiring, you've gone through the hands of different promoters, but all the same. Yes. And one of the things, Lennox, that I'm interested in is that we know how falseful

and how vicious king could be in his life. When you were with him, when you were talking to him, or when you were in negotiations with him. Did you ever see the other side of Don, if things weren't maybe going right? Did you ever see a nasty side? I never really seen that. He never showed that around me,

but I could hear him. I could hear him. I could hear him on the phone. He's always showing out somebody on the phone. And I was always wondering, you know, why is this man talking about million-dollar deals loud on the phone? And I'm like, this guy's talking about this. If you were someone on the other line,

Well, it kind of made you want to listen, even if you had nothing to do with it. You want to listen. And when you hear a million dollar deal and this and that, I give you a million dollars and 10 million and 3 million and all these numbers passing by his mouth. And verbally, they sound interesting and you want to be a part of it and see how you can get some of this money as well. So it was good. And it must be some rhyme and reason why he did this.

I think it was just to create business, create talk about the deal that he's doing. So basically you could be sitting in his office or you could be somewhere at a press conference backstage and Don would be on the phone saying, well, I managed to get him 10 mil. Of course I can get him 10 mil. I'll get your boy 10 mil.

You're listening to that. Your highest pay, they might have been 300,000. Yeah. You're fencing the 10 mil. Oh, absolutely. Until I worked with him one time, I think it was a Holyfield fight, you know, where Holyfield got 15,000.

million, I got 10 million, and Don King got five million. And I was scratching my head. I'm like, I wonder if that was my five million each of. Well, it wasn't at Holyfield. Yeah, because he wasn't holy fields. Now, let us, one man who did know an awful lot about Don King and then started to work with Don King. He knew about Don King in the 60s, but he never met him. He just knew about his reputation was another Cleveland native, and in fact, an equally colourful man, Richie Giagetti, who was known by the FBI as the torch. Now, am I right in thinking that there was a point in 1994? He was on a short list to take over from Pepe Carrillo

when before Mani Stewart got the job, is that right? You know, we looked at him because he's known as a good trainer and we went to meet with him. And, you know, great guy, great stories, you know, great history, great experience. man, but very loud, very loud. And you know, you definitely know that he's the trainer and he'll definitely know who you're training. So it's a bit too loud for you?

Yeah, he was a bit too loud for me. And it's really chemistry for me. And I didn't feel the chemistry with him. Did you also think, or maybe Frank stroke Kelly Maloney around you and Panos and whoever else is in the room, Do you think they maybe thought this guy's too close to King? He's been working with King for at that point over 20 years since the early seven years. Yeah, I mean, that definitely had something to do with it.

You know, you've got to be careful in the boxing business on who your friends are. I think Richard Giergetti needed to be careful because he was in the same bar. He tells the story on the same stool, separated by four years. When a guy walks in the bar, it sounds like a bad joke. Guy walks in the Cleveland bar, really bad, tough bar, and says, who's the toughest guy in here? And as Giergetti said, some idiot pointed at me, or he pointed at him.

So the guy came over and stuck a glass in Giergetti's face. Giaci knew he lost his left eye. And then the guy tried to stab Giergetti. But unfortunately, the guy ended up being stabbed and dying. Gear Getti spent seven hours being operated on. Four years later, he's back in the same bar. He's in the same chair. He gets an altercation with another guy he'd never met,

and the guy stuck an ice pick through his ribs, just missed his heart and just hit his lung. And I said to him, and said, what did you learn from that, Richie? he went to change bars. Yeah. Also, I remember Giegetti was famous for that ridiculously long relationship

with Larry Holmes when the two of them used to bicker like an old married couple, but they got the job done. And there was no doubting how well Gia Getti had come to no King. He didn't know King in the 60s, but they knew each other's reputation. And here's a great line that King said.

I've always liked this line. He said, I've been shotguned, knifed, had my car blown up, my house blown up, my club burned down. Yep, I did know some mean guys. So that's episode one done. Now before we end, here is the report from the time on the death of Sam Garrett. This was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It's a tough listen, Lennox. Right. I'm going to quote. Yeah. Donald the Kid King was arrested yesterday in the beating of an east side man, police said. Members of the police department's green business. Bére squad saw King kick his victim three times in the head. The victim, Samuel Gareth,

underwent surgery last night at Lakeside Hospital. He suffered a punctured ear drum and head injuries and was in poor condition. Witnesses also told police they saw Gareth beaten with a gun. Wow. Robert Tun and John Horvath of the Green Berets said they saw a pistol in King's hand as they left their car and approached. They drew guns and ordered King to drop his. King was handcuffed and taken to the central police station. That's testimony, Lennox, to the life he lived. He was lucky the policeman never shot him dead. Coming up, King is released from prison and enters the boxing business. He's got a new job. It's the 70s and King wants to take over boxing. And he's got the plan. In fact, Don King's got several plans.

The music you're hearing now is by Fights. It's a track called Tripping and it's produced by Urban Dub. Powerplay, The House of Don King was a shooting shark production for BBC sounds. Boxing greats. We're very fragile beings. So we ought to be gentle with ourselves. To the ring's current superstars. I want to take their song and I just want to get the job that it'll walk out.

Plus analysis and previews. buildup was being madness and the fight was a little bit mad as well. Everything boxing, every single week, crammed into just one weekly podcast. I won my first national title as 16. And I was burnt out by the time I was 20. Five live boxing with me, Steve Bunce. Job done, what's next? With new episodes every week.

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