Tyson Sues King For $100 Million
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson filed a $100 million lawsuit Thursday against Don King, alleging the promoter cheated him out of tens of millions of dollars over more than a decade.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan named King and his companies as defendants, alleging they acted as one entity to enrich King at the expense of a vulnerable, unsophisticated boxer who could not understand contracts.
"Despite his gross conflicts of interest, King approved one-sided, unconscionable and oppressive agreements between his companies and a boxing industry that wanted to benefit from the huge value of Tyson's fights," the lawsuit alleged.
Peter Fleming Jr., a lawer for King, said he had no comment on the lawsuit.
Tyson is currently banned from boxing until at least July for biting heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield in the ring. He has earned an estimated $140 million in six fights since he was released from an Indiana prison in 1995 after serving time for rape.
The boxer has been cheated out of fair participation in deals worth more than $100 million and has been subjected to a "pattern of fraudulent conduct" that has been "financially devastating to Tyson," the lawsuit said.
King had even surrounded the boxer with an entourage of accountants and advisers that were actually "King puppets acting in the interests of the promoter and his companies," it alleged.
The true loyalties were proven when Tyson recently separated himself from the King camp and a new accountant asked Tyson's former bookkeeper for Tyson's records.
"I can't (hand them over) because the files are in cabinets owned by Don King," the lawsuit alleged the new accountant was told.
The fraud began almost as soon as King entered Tyson's life in 1986, when Tyson was being managed by Jimmy Jacobs and Bill Cayton, the lawsuit said. Jacobs died in 1987 and Tyson fired Cayton in 1988.
King and his companies then served as Tyson's manager, confidant, adviser and promoter from 1988 to 1998, directing and developing every aspect of Tyson's career, the lawsuit said.
At the time, the lawsuit said, "Tyson was a young professional fighter without any formal education, and King was an experienced boxing promoter and manager with a veritable army of professional advisers."
"King knew that Tyson had a fundamental inability to read and understand contracts and fully appreciate the effect of business transactions on his life," it alleged.
King found ways to carve up Tyson's purse so that little of the fight money made it to the boxer, the lawsuit said.
Tyson was required to pay consulting fees to King's wife, son and son-in-law and other fees to King's daughter, who was president of the Mike Tyson Fan Club, the lawsuit said.
Tyson also paid for travel expenses incurred by King and those who traveled with him to meet Tyson as well as the cost of security, corporate cars, renovatons at King's businesses, unusually large purses to other undercard fighters promoted by King and fees for King's legal battles, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleged that King even took advantage of Tyson's imprisonment, visiting him and persuading him to sign contracts when he knew the boxer had no access to an attorney. The last visit was five days before his release.
Next week, King is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Manhattan on charges that he and Don King Productions had faked a contract with Lloyd's of London insurance company to collect $350,000 in non-existent training expenses for a canceled 1991 bout between Julio Cesar Chavez and Harold Brazier.
In an earlier trial on the insurance fraud charge that ended with a deadlocked jury, Chavez, the former World Boxing Council super lightweight champion, testified that King paid him only $80,000 to train and never told him about an insurance claim.
During that trial, Tyson sat in the courtroom in a show of support for King.
King's other companies named in Tyson's lawsuit include DKP Corp. and Kingvision Pay Per View, Ltd.
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