Don King (right) and Bermane Stiverne celebrate the Canadian’s win over Chris Arreola in Los Angeles last Saturday.

Kevin Mitchell/theguardian.com


Don King is back in the heavyweight boxing business. Who’d have thought it? Nearing 83, the promoter who has ruled the sport for long stretches over the past 40 years by controlling its biggest prize has another champion, Bermane “B Ware” Stiverne. And there is an outside chance King could bring the Canadian to a UK audience this year.
Stiverne stopped Chris Arreola in the sixth round in Los Angeles on Saturday to take the WBC title recently vacated by Vitali Klitschko, who has more pressing concerns in Ukraine, where he has become a major political player.
King hinted strongly he will do his utmost to guide Stiverne away from his mandated challenger, the 31-0 KO monster Deontay Wilder, or a unification fight with Vitali’s brother, Wladimir, who holds the other titles. He wants his man to make some money against a less threatening contender first.
“We’ll talk about unifying the championships,” King said, “but this all takes its time.” Stiverne has power and speed, but King also knows he has a chin to protect, which he manifestly failed to do seven years ago in Bridgeport, Connecticut, against one Demetrice King, who got off the canvas to knock him out in four rounds and was last seen in 2011, posting his 20th loss, against David Tua in New Zealand.
Wilder, incidentally, has been getting in a little extra sparring with a punter who has been abusing him on Twitter. He opted for a variation on the Curtis Woodhouse solution.
So who will Stiverne fight next if not Wilder or Klitschko? There is a chance it could be either Tyson Fury or Dereck Chisora, who meet in Manchester on 26 July in what is billed as a final eliminator to take on Wladimir. If King does not want Stiverne to fight the formidable Klitschko, he has ready-made alternatives in the mandated contenders, Chisora or Fury.
If Chisora wins, we could see King doing business again with Frank Warren, who promotes the Londoner. Even if Fury wins, there might be a deal to be struck. Warren and King sitting down to work out a contract would be an event worth staging in its own right. They fell out years ago, with King winning a $12mn settlement but in boxing it’s all about the next deal.
If anyone can pull together the tangled strings of the heavyweight division it is the man who put on the Rumble In The Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila, even though he has been out of the big picture for a while. Many of King’s staff in Florida have gone, so have most of his fighters. He still has friends in high places, though, and occasionally takes a call at home from George Bush Sr, whom he backed for the presidency. (King also supported Barack Obama in his two terms, and once met Fidel Castro on the Cuban leader’s secret visit to Harlem, so he knows how to bend with the political breeze).
Now he has a champion to sell, a fighter with a decent back story: one of 14 children whose mother brought the family from impoverished Haiti to the United State, and then to Canada, when Bermane was 10.
As an amateur, Stiverne stopped Liverpool’s David Price in a 2004 tournament in Finland. Price, after two stoppage losses to Tony Thompson, is rebuilding his career in Germany, and his next fight is an eight-rounder on a Sauerland promotion in Schwerin on 7 June against the undistinguished Ukrainian Yaroslav Zavorotnyi. Perhaps Price would fancy revenge against Stiverne. Perhaps King saw the Thompson fights.
And how King would love to show his rival Bob Arum that there is life in the old dog yet. He was in his pomp again at the Galen Center in LA on Saturday night, taking the microphone for an extended performance at the post-fight press conference.
He regaled his audience with talk about world peace and women’s rights. And he said of his fighter: “Woooooo! Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. He’s Superman.”
He also spared a moment to rib his co-promoter, Dan Goosen, who looks after Arreola. They had promised that the losing promoter would shave his head, quite a gamble for King, whose coiffure is his trademark. “What I really want is to see Dan bald-headed!” King screamed.
Boxing has missed this crazy guy, whatever his past. “Tell the people,” he shouted at the end, “that at this time, from this place, let the word go forth that the heavyweight business is back in business again.” And with that, he trailed off, chuckling as he always did.
Warren, meanwhile, has the option of taking the winner of Fury-Chisora to the still active Klitschko brother, and that might well be what happens. Whichever way he goes, a big world heavyweight title fight would boost subscriptions on his BoxNation channel. Working with King again might be how to do it. Right now, he probably wishes he had his phone number. Or maybe he has...