Don King shows he still has his old tricks in wooing of Mayweather
This weekend was a huge one for boxing. On a Don King card in St. Louis, the world was treated to three title fights—two of which were shown on national TV—but that’s not even the biggest story of the weekend. It’s that Don King, not long ago one of boxing’s biggest promoters, is back at the top of his game. His recent wooing of Floyd Mayweather Jr. has the boxing world is a frenzy.
First various sources confirmed that the two were wining and dining last week, with King picking up tabs on thousand-dollar lobster and inviting “Money” Mayweather to attend his Saturday card. Then King spoke publicly and honestly about his pursuit of the No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter, and said that he understands Mayweather since he shared a similar background with him in his upbringing. The comments spurred others by Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, who said that Mayweather should be “embarrassed” by King’s words.
What everyone is really wondering though, aside from who’s going to win the promotional war currently shaping up in boxing, is whether King stands a chance obtaining Mayweather. And many think he does.
If you look purely at strategy, King is focused on selling Mayweather a package he can’t get out of Golden Boy Promotions. That’s really what makes him attractive as a business partner. It’s that, paradoxically, he can appear as something other than a business partner to Mayweather. Because of a plea to similitude, he can appear a guy genuinely interested in identifying with Mayweather and improving his image. And it really doesn’t matter if he is that guy, which he probably is not. What matters is that he can sell the image.
“If Floyd wants me, then he's got me. And if he don't want me, then I still love him because it's more than about me and him and some prize fight,” he recently said. “Floyd is a generous guy, and a lovable guy. They [other promotion companies] don't understand that. They make him look like a piece of s**t, but he ain't no piece of s**t. So this weekend, wherever I'll be, he'll be there also.”
The main ingredient of King’s attempt to ‘identify’ with Mayweather comes in the form of an implicit appeal to their respective blackness. This is really what all of King’s talk about Golden Boy Promotions failing to understand Mayweather’s “ghetto-ese” is really about. As King confirms:
“They [Mayweather's promoters] don't speak ghetto-ese like Floyd Mayweather does, do you understand? [...]They look at him like he's an indentured servant when in actuality he's the hottest thing on the planet. It's a disrespect of cultures. I happen to speak ghetto-ese because I'm one of them. Because you know what? We understand. Many people can't speak hieroglyphics, because that's what ghetto-ese is to them. They can't speak it. If you can't communicate, relate and identify, how are you going to make a deal?”
As a selling point, King appeals to the one thing Golden Boy Promotions cannot. And while it remains to be seen if the attempt will be successful, it’s a refreshing addition nonetheless to the negotiating car-crash that has cursed Mayweather – Pacquiao so far between Top Rank and Golden Boy.
Make no mistake: King, despite meaningful words, isn’t in this for Mayweather. He’s in it for himself. At the same time, he can gross Mayweather a much higher figure than if Mayweather was to promote himself for a fight of this magnitude. So if the two can decide on the terms of mutual gain, it’s well within reason that we could have a bout with Pacquiao by the end of the year. One thing is worth betting on: if anybody can capitalize on current conditions and get Mayweather, it's King.
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