SPECTATOR SPORT
King of the ring
Frank Keating
POW! OUCH! When the unconsidered one-time sparring partner Oliver McCall reached up at Wembley on Sunday to switch off Lennox Lewis's landing lights, at the same time he let that old pantomime genie, the Demon King, out of the bottle.
Even as the referee was leading the grog- gily complaining champion to his corner, the winner's manager and phenomenal American imp. (as in impresario) was already preening around the ring, jewels glinting, repartee gloating, and ferocious frizz of a hairstyle looking more than ever like that of a cartoon cat with his tail plugged into the light socket.
Lewis's all too predictable melting mandible lets King reclaim his territory. The loose cannon is back on the rampage. Or as he would put it — and did: A rematch for Lewis? None, and slim. And slim is out of town. For I am not a promoter. I am The Promoter. First there was the Prophet Isaiah, then there was that old fore- castin' dud Nostra — Dee — Muzz, then P.T. Barnum, yeah, then Mister Mike Todd. Then there was, is, and always will be Me.
As King cavorted up there, those who know more than me around the ringside could only groan. 'He is back in the driving seat,' said John Rodda of . the Guardian, and he is demented at the prospect of much more money.' King and the televi- sion moguls will now move all the pawns around Mike Tyson's release from prison, and untold political shenanigans will fol- low,' said the Telegraph's Paul Hayward. `The title will only be risked against ranked heavyweights who owe allegiance to King, so it will be kept in the family till Tyson is ready,' sighed Ken Jones of the Independent.
A couple of years ago I 'took tea' with Mr King in the Park Lane Hotel. 'Only in America,' he hollered, 'could a Don King happen.' I hastily agreed. He is, quite sim- ply, indescribable. Well, you must have seen the vertical hair, and the gold and diamond rings as big as matchboxes, and the bejewelled Big Ben of a wristwatch they could start the News at Ten by. Then there's the voice, like a tractor on piece- work in a gravel-pit. But most of all there's the words, which flutter in an unceasing swarm out of his 24-carat mouth in an often quite thrilling thesaurus of thoughts and ruminations culled 'from quotes, books, sayings of the century, old Bibles, New Testaments, and Ripley's Believe It or Not King says he swotted up this undammed torrent of borrowed wisdom in the Ohio State Penitentiary 'back in my beginnings' when he was serving time for alleged manslaughter. 'I began with the Bible, lying down with the Lord, of necessity too 'cos I could only read by the chinks of light from under my door of my cell in Solitary.'
And he at once rolls his eyes and hoists the knuckled rings towards the ceiling before beseeching the Mayfair lampshade — `Lordy, Lordy, they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them doth the light shine.' Then, declamation briefly over, out of the corner of his mouth, he gives you the text — 'Isaiah, boy, Chapter nine, Verse two, yeah' — before pumping him- self up again for 'Adversity is ugly and ven- omous like a toad, bay, yet wears a precious jewel in her head' — 'that's your Shake- speare, boy, heck of a cat your Will Shake- speare, yeah?' On Sunday morning, after his man McCall had done the deed, King claimed to have taken his Las Vegas bookmaker for a £700,000 ride on McCall at 11-2. He beamed — 'Though He sometimes slay me, yet I love Him. That's really Job talkin' about the Lord — but also me talkin' about my bookmaker this morning, yeah.'
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