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Kevin Iole: Don King almost signed Tito Ortiz for MMA. What if he signed Fedor in the future?
By Zach Arnold | May 21, 2010
Kevin Iole & Steve Cofield of Yahoo Sports talked about the fallout from last week’s canceled Shine Fights PPV event from Fayetteville, North Carolina. The focus is on why Don King went for an injunction to stop Ricardo Mayorga from fighting Din Thomas and if King has any long-term interest in getting involved in the MMA business.
STEVE COFIELD: “So why do you think (Don) King did this? Why was this so important for him?”
KEVIN IOLE: “I think plain and simple several hundred thousand dollars he claims that (Ricardo) Mayorga owes him. I asked Mayorga that, Mayorga doesn’t speak English so it’s all translated and I got a bunch of curses in return, so it’s hard to know the real answers but King says he owes him several hundred thousand dollars and King’s actions would back that up, Steve, I mean King’s actions would indicate to you because what does he care about a Shine fights card? Really what does he care about Mayorga because you know let’s face it I mean Mayorga’s lost two of his three, he’s a whackjob, you know I think in my story I called him the Nicaraguan Wildman and I think you know is very true. This guy, who knows what he’s liable to say, what he’s liable to do and you know given that he’s lost so frequently in boxing I don’t think he has that much value but King has worked really hard to try to get him a title fight because that’s where the most money’s going to be so King can get his money back. I think plain and simple that was it.”
STEVE COFIELD: “Earlier I said that Shines fight kind of freaked out on this. I know that North Carolina canceled the card but Shine Fights did back down on the Mayorga thing and there was a real fear here, right, that I mean you could levied major fines and guys could have been thrown in jail.”
KEVIN IOLE: “Yeah, I mean… when I first heard it you know I was working on the story Friday and then Saturday when I first heard that Shine was going to go forward, I thought ‘well, the Florida court you know has no jurisdiction,’ because I was under the impression that Shine was incorporated elsewhere but I come to find out that they were incorporated in Florida so they very well did have jurisdiction and that was a big problem for them so yeah they could not have gone forward with that fight without facing some severe penalties including contempt of court. So, you know, I don’t think anybody wanted to spend a night in jail or more over Ricardo Mayorga. He’s definitely not worth spending a night in jail over. I’m not sure he was worth $24.95 to buy the PPV, I was going to buy it but he’s definitely not worth going to jail over.”
STEVE COFIELD: “He turned out to be worth about five stories between yourself and me up on Yahoo. You know I put in one little nugget and I know you had told me about this a while back and I don’t know if anyone picked up on it but I was talking about Don King and MMA and you know if he has interest in it. He actually in the past did meet at once with Dana White, is that right?”
KEVIN IOLE: “Uhuh, yeah. And he’s interested in promoting in MMA. He was very close to signing Tito Ortiz. The first time Tito and the UFC had a split, Don King was in Vegas and made Tito an offer, he was going to work with Ross Goodman’s organization the WFL and he was looking in doing a thing there and he was going to try to sign Tito to a personal services contract and put him in that and Don in fact when I talked to him the other day, 78 years old, he said ‘when I get into MMA,’ not if I get into MMA, when I get into MMA I’m going to do it right. You know, so, we’ll see if he does but he’s certainly interesting and it makes sense only from this standpoint: you know King is a huckster and he’s got the name and he really you know I think he always has to have that hustle going and he wants something to keep him active and he really doesn’t have a deep roster of boxers any more, he has very few marketable boxers at this point. You know it’s amazing 10 years to now the difference in where King is you know he was at the top of the world in 2000 and you know right now you know he doesn’t really have much to offer so you know that’s how I think where his interest in MMA is.”
STEVE COFIELD: “All right, we just had a lot of viewers on Yahoo probably have their heads explode with the combination of Don King and MMA. So, when you weren’t in the room, but from what you gather on both sides, when he met with Dana White what was discussed, what would even be the possibilities there?”
KEVIN IOLE: “Well I think he was just trying to kind of get an idea of the MMA landscape from the UFC you know, Don knows Lorenzo Fertitta very well and so I think that was really you know kind of what it was doing and I think you know he wanted to say to the UFC, hey look I’m not stepping on your toes here, you know I think Don understands you know the order of things in MMA and I think you know the first thing he wanted to do is go out there and (not) create this big rift with the UFC. I think if anything Don’s the kind of guy that would try you know to push very hard to work with the UFC, get his own small organization, get a fight with the UFC, get one big name fighter, then push for that fight, push for that fight. You know as an example, wouldn’t this be crazy and this is just total, I’m making this up but I’m saying this as an example — if Don King gets Fedor, signs Fedor to a promotional contract, now all of a sudden he goes back to the UFC you know where M-1 wanted part of it all, Don King is going to want his five things – m o n e y, want those five letters and he’s happy so that’s what I think Don talked to Dana about, you know kind of how would the possibilities be, if I did this would you be open to it, if I did that would you be open to it?”
STEVE COFIELD: “All right, you sure you want to throw that out there? Again, that just was a possibility, not a real possibility, it was just kind of…”
KEVIN IOLE: “An example!”
STEVE COFIELD: “A hypothetical. Don’t scare people. Next headline, Fedor signing with Don King!”
KEVIN IOLE: “It’ll be out there somewhere, you know it.”
Topics: Boxing, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 7 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
See that’s the threat to Strikeforce. Someone like King getting into MMA. Like I said yesterday, I could see Showtime giving the book back to Gary Shaw. But they could give it to a guy like King too.
SF doesn’t bring too much to the table beyond simply putting on MMA shows. If you get another promoter to come in and put on shows with some big names, CBS/Showtime can switch promoters. As is they’re billing it as MMA or Saturday Night Fights and not SF, so the switch is easy.
I don’t know about that. Elite left in complete disgrace with the pay-to-stand deal so I don’t think Showtime wants anything to do with Shaw. I know he wasn’t there when this happened, but he’s still heavily associated with the blunder and while Coker isn’t doing a great job by any means, I’d rather have him than Shaw coming back in and dealing with fight legitimacy controversies.
Nobody in the sport wants Shaw involved with it. As clueless as Coker has been on the national stage…. He is still 100X’s better then Shaw was. Keep in mind Shaw was the same guy who pushed Kimbo Slice like he was a World Champion. The same guy who used women’s MMA as a pretty face campaign instead of as a real sport. As much as people liked Carano, she had no business being the face of women’s MMA.
The guy did not care about top talent. Just about selling fluff and trying to pass it off as legit.
Shaw still runs Showtime boxing. Don’t count him out to reemerge doing MMA.
I know he does. But boxing people don’t follow MMA closely enough to remember what went down in the end so it’s a non-issue to stay in boxing. But a return to MMA would bring 10,000 press articles reminiscing about the Kimbo-Petruzelli ordeal and the next time something looks suspicious in Showtime’s MMA events the speculation will begin again that Shaw is working fights (even though he was kicked out of Elite by that show.)
Plus he had about as bad of an experience as you can have in MMA so I don’t even know if he’d want to do it if they did make an offer. Does he really want to suffer low ratings, bitching about his matchmaking and Dana’s barbs all over again?
If Don King was doing to get into MMA, he would have done it already. He is getting up there in age. I don’t think he is ever going to do it at a high level at this point.
And I don’t think Fedor Emelianenko would ever sign with Don King. In fact, I’m 99.9% positive of it. Don King likes one sided contracts that favor King. Fedor Emelianenko likes one sided contracts that favor Fedor. Each requires a weak party in order for that to happen. King requires fighters with no power and a lack of business sense. Fedor requires organizations with no power and a lack of business sense.
But if h#ll froze over…. And that relationship did happen…. Fedor would end up in the UFC…. because King only cares about money and Zuffa would just pay him off to get Fedor for multiple fights.
Agreed. King is a master con man but his magic won’t work on M-1. Those guys don’t even know the meaning of making a concession during a negotiation. I’d pay good money to see the talks though. Put that on pay per view.