Commentary -- The Self-Invention Of Don King, Pro Boxing Promoter

Seven days following the last heavyweight boxing extravaganza, the one in Las Vegas for two of the three existing world championships, a two-hour documentary movie showed up on television entitled, "Don King: Only in America."

The film was produced and presented by Home Box Office, a Time Warner company, and the timing was right. The fight had been between Evander Holyfield and Michael Moorer, with Holyfield the victor by a technical knockout after eight rounds.

The 35-year-old Holyfield, a lay preacher who has claimed close links to God, is a wholesome type needed by boxing. But Holyfield's promoter, the one who decides whom he will fight next and for how much, is King.

Don King is boxing's foremost impresario, and he defies common description.

Jack Newfield, a renowned investigative reporter from New York, wrote a defining biography of King that William Morrow & Co. published in 1995 and one that HBO followed rather faithfully in making the TV movie.

The book's title was more pointed, "Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King."

Newfield traced King's flamboyant life beginning with his street days in Cleveland, where he was convicted of murder in 1967. A life sentence was reduced by a cunning judge, and King served one month short of four years in an Ohio penitentiary.

King, now 66 years old, applied the time well by indulging in self-education. Subsequently, he used the prison sentence well, too, creating a martyr image as a black ex-convict trying to make a living.

King has used the race card so many times, he has run through the deck. But he will try the 53rd card at any time.

As a promoter, manager, owner and exploiter of many fighters, including former champions Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson, King has dominated boxing for two decades. His role is still strong despite countless lawsuits and evil exposures.

Newfield came to admire King from the objective distance of the biographer. The author enabled his readers to appreciate King's enormous skills in manipulating people, in cheating them and getting away with so much.

King remains under indictment for allegedly defrauding the insurance group Lloyd's of London in a case involving false claims. Lloyd's paid following postponements of two fights due to supposed injuries to the combatants.

Why isn't he back in jail? Because he is so smart, so slick.

Viewers of the TV film, moved by the masterful performance of King by Ving Rhames, see him at the end saying he will be in their lives because they need him. "I'm the American dream," he says. "I am entertainment. If you didn't have Don King, you'd have to invent him."

Fortunately, HBO will show this movie again and again.

And what did King think of it? He has declared Newfield to be an enemy and dismissed the film as propaganda put out by HBO, which programs many fights in competition with Showtime, the similar cable channel favored by King for his shows.

There is more to come. Tyson will return from a one-year suspension, for biting Holyfield's ear in their June bout, and there remains enormous curiosity about him. Soon to be 31, Tyson has probably lost most of his ability in the ring and may lose the remainder of his fights.

King, who owns all parts of Iron Mike, appreciates and will squeeze this pitiful person to a pulp, like he has so many others.

Holyfield is less dependent on King and more resourceful. He is the champion of the International Boxing Federation and the World Boxing Association but not the World Boxing Council.

England's Lennox Lewis is the WBC champ, and it makes sense to have a Holyfield-Lewis fight next, a so-called unification match, so there would be one champion as in less confusing times. (The last single champ, before these governing bodies began competing with one another, was Muhammad Ali, 1974 to 1978.)

But Lewis has no appeal to the huge U.S. pay-per-view audiences, say the sport's soothsayers. These fights by satellite, mostly from Las Vegas or Atlantic City, can attract over a million viewers who pay as much as $50 to watch.

The rewards are huge. Holyfield received $20 million for his last fight and Moorer $8 million. King is certain to get his share.

Newfield's book and HBO's movie offer an optional view of this bombastic conductor - and one that King has carefully nurtured.

He is the proud black man who survived among the white sharks in a world controlled and dominated by the white power brokers.

He wrested boxing away from them. And boxing only reflects what America is all about: self-invention and avarice. ------------------------------------------------

William N. Wallace has viewed the American sporting scene in various poses, chiefly as a daily journalist for New York City newspapers, and as a book author and curmudgeon essayist for specialist publications. He is also a sportsman of the outdoor kind: a hiker, jogger, paddler, sailor, skier. His base is Westport, Conn.