Tom English: ‘What does boxing thinks it’s losing. Its reputation? Its dignity? They were sacrificed years ago’

IN HIS biography of Don King, the American sportswriter Jack Newfield describes a scene from the Cleveland ghettos in April 1966 with King, “a street Machiavelli, a ghetto Einstein” as the centre-piece.

Donald The Kid, big in the numbers racket and grossing $15,000 a day, had already killed a man by then, a guy called Hillary Brown who tried to rob one of King’s gambling houses in the 1950s. King shot him with a Russian revolver. Justifiable homicide, said the county prosecutor.

King left his house that morning in ’66 with a wad of cash and a loaded gun and headed to the Manhattan Tap Room for a drink, where he saw a guy called Sam Garrett. Garrett owed King $600 and King was in the mood to collect. The two men argued. The row spilled out on to the street where King knocked Garrett down and kicked him in the head. And kept kicking him. By the time the cops arrived Garrett’s eyes were closed and the blood was oozing out of his mouth and ears. He spent five days in a coma and then died. His last words were: “Don, I’ll pay you the money.”

It took the jury four hours to find King guilty of second-degree murder. He was going to prison for life. Well, in theory. In the privacy of his own chambers, Judge Hugh Corrigan cut King’s sentence. Nobody heard the reasons why, but everybody had a pretty good idea. King did three years and 11 months in jail. When he took ownership of the fight promotion game nobody batted an eyelid about his past, nobody mentioned Sam Garrett. King became the greatest hustler in world sport, the master negotiator and powerhouse behind some of the most storied contests in boxing history. His presence looms large over the game even now at the age of 80.

We mention King’s story in response to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the likely meeting of David Haye and Derek Chisora in July, a bout brought on by their brawl in Munich following Chisora’s defeat by Vitali Kiltschko in February. Ugly scene, that. Two giant idiots mouthing off and flailing in a conference room. It caused uproar. It was a scandal. A disgrace to boxing. The game’s good name was badly tarnished was the gist. For the damage to boxing’s reputation, Haye and Chisora had to pay for it with their licences.

As sure as night follows day, a contract followed Haye and Chisora. Neither man has a licence to fight, but fight they will. And it’ll be a big event, too, at Loftus Road, home of QPR. This is boxing. This is the way it’s always been since Jack Johnson’s time. Boxing has been trading on notoriety for a century, it’s been feeding off the infamy of some of its fighters for the longest time. It’s hard to know what the sport thinks it is actually losing, that it hasn’t long since lost, when it stages Haye versus Chisora. Not its reputation. Not its dignity. Those things were sacrificed many moons ago. Boxing lost a lot the day King was allowed to go from his prison cell to the very top of his profession without anybody thinking to raise an objection or ban him for his crimes.

Of course, Haye versus Chisora is unpleasant, but boxing can’t get enough of that kind of action. This is a sport that allowed Mike Tyson back in the ring after he was found guilty of rape, a sport that allowed Tyson back in the ring again after he bit off a part of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Tyson had his licence revoked after the Holyfield episode. Less than a year later, they gave it back to him. Money talked and, really, there weren’t that many people in the game who objected. What Haye and Chisora did in Munich was a teddy bears’ picnic compared to Tyson and the idea that boxing wouldn’t try to exploit the animosity between them was laughable. As soon as the first blow landed in Munich, it was a roaring certainty that somebody would find a way of getting them together in the ring. Frank Warren has and the boxing establishment doesn’t like it.

Like he cares. It’s a giant hypocrisy. If it wasn’t Frank Warren putting on this fight it would be somebody else.

Boxing has had so many scandals that it’s amazing there’s any indignation left in the sport. Where do you start with this stuff? How about Antonio Margarito and his fight with Shane Mosley in 2009. Margarito went into the ring with a white powder seeping out of his gloves, a powder that would have hardened into a plaster of Paris during the course of the fight had it not been discovered beforehand. Margarito was intending to hit Mosley with a concealed plaster cast. For his cheating – and God knows what damage he might have done had he got away with it – Margarito was banned for a year. In 2003, Mosley admitted using the banned performance-enhancer, EPO, before a fight with Oscar De La Hoya. He said it was unintentional, said he had no idea what he took. Mosley fought on without punishment. In 2009 he admitted that he knew exactly what he’d taken.

Still no ban for Sugar Shane. Seven months after revealing that not only had he taken EPO but that he’d lied about taking it, he fought Manny Pacquiao for the WBO welterweight title. He’s still fighting. He fought for the WBC light middleweight only a few weeks ago in Las Vegas, but nobody gives a damn.

Boxing’s story is full of scandal – proper scandal. Mafia and murder and boxers taking bribes and taking dives, bent promoters, bent referees, fraud and money-laundering and racketeering and it’s all part of the grisly appeal. It’s glorified. King is a storied character in boxing’s intoxicating yarn. If it was a game with a conscience he’d have never been allowed to own it the way he did and the way he does.

This thing with Haye and Chisora? It’s a bit late to go looking for the moral compass.