Tonight, in Las Vegas, perhaps two of the dullest men ever to meet in a ring shape up for the world heavyweight title. Outside on the television screens, it's business as usual for their owner.
"Hey Don, I just shook hands with you and now I'm broke," says the talk show host.
"Huh. You're a funny guy," says Don.
Thank heavens for the sheer and wholesome dullness of Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield.
Don King has been everywhere this week. His adventurous vocabulary and two-storey hairdo haven't been available just to grazing hacks at press conferences: Don has been doing the circuit, cropping up on talk shows spooking the sports channels, defending the good name of boxing.
In terms of chutzpah, it has been the equivalent of financial advice from C J Haughey. The theme of King's chats to the American nation has been one with which he is familiar - jurisprudence.
Since his days as a young numbers runner, a time during which he felt compelled to kill a man over a $600 debt, Don King has been no stranger to the sensation of having his collar felt by the law. As such, he feels uniquely positioned to educate us as to the nuance, subtlety and sometime majesty of the law.
On the Chris Rock Show, he announced that America can rest easy. In the future - as in the past - when the jurors presiding over a King case do their duty as Americans and acquit him, they will receive tickets to all Don King promotions. Plus holidays to the Bahamas.
"Ain't a bribe," says Don indignantly, "it's just gratitude. Admiration for the system. Our great system." King doesn't need to have an immaculate sense of timing to know that the time has come to start making some agreeable noises about boxing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided King's Florida offices this summer. No word yet on charges, and King announced this week that he would be "amazed to be indicted".
A former accountant of King's, however, Joseph Maffia (no, that's his real name), has claimed (in a 1995 case against King) that fees paid to three major boxing bodies by King often included kick-backs. It is also alleged that in 1996 King actually paid for the entire International Boxing Federation (IBF) annual convention in Toronto.
In an affidavit, Maffia stated that "there were overpayments of sanctioning bodies by hundreds of thousands of dollars in Tyson fights".
In a sport where major events take place on the basis of entrepreneurial whim, rather than as a result of any objective merit, the commonly acknowledged practice of lobbying for, or just plain buying, rankings for boxers is likely to come under intense legal scrutiny in the next few months. One suspects that in the brotherhood of boxing, an injury to one is an injury to all.
Bad news for all, then, when the Feds came knocking on the door of the IBF a few days ago. Who would have thought it, but a 32-count indictment followed. The words "conspiracy" and "racketeering" cropped up in boxing circles this week as often as the terms jab and knockout.
The scaly little men who crawl about underneath the rock upon which King sits haven't his theatrical touch in times of crisis. In the light, they scurry uneasily. This week, as Lewis and Holyfield have strutted and tried to talk the talk, there has been a distinct sense that the collective brain of boxing is engaged elsewhere.
"I'm innocent of these outrageous charges," squeeked IBF president Robert Lee as the indictments landed on his shoulders like dandruff. Just think of Bill Clinton wagging his finger and talking about "that woman" and you have the picture of Lee's innocence. His confreres in the IBF reacted with no greater dignity.
The IBF is 15 years old, and if they ever get together for a group photo it will look like one of those sepia dagguerro-types from the Wild West. Robert Lee's son (also Robert) is indicted for drug charges as well as everything else, and the South American representative, Fransisco Fernandez of Colombia, who is missing just now, travels under aliases which include the names Pancho and Pacho.
It seems that Robert, Pancho and the chaps have to account for $338,000 in illegal payments from promoters and managers taken over a 13-year period to fix the rankings. Among these payments - a big one of $100,000 - is a wad which helped ease George Foreman into the ring against Axel Schulz here in Vegas four years ago.
The IBF belt is one of the three on the line tonight in the Thomas and Mack Centre when Holyfield and Lewis get togged out.
The IBF is the only one of the three boxing bodies involved which runs its business from the US. The World Boxing Association (WBA) operates out of Venezuela, while the World Boxing Council (WBC) calls Mexico home.
Each of the bodies has come under suspicion in recent years.
The WBA were forced to deny the undue influence of King in hurtling Orlin Norris down its rankings scale in 1997 after he refused to fight Tyson. The WBA settled with Norris, who, incidentally, fought Tyson last month: he got punched after the bell on another great night for the sport.
KING sought this week to assure those gullible members of the public who might fret over the image of boxing. The indictments are a triumph for America.
"In Germany, when the Gestapo came to indict you, you were gone. Innocent or not. This is America. An indictment is a question which you must answer."
Another pillar of boxing high society, Jose Sulaiman, president of the WBC, told wire reporters that the news of the indictments "is indeed shocking and it might hurt the image of boxing".
So here we all are in Las Vegas for the rematch of one of the most nakedly crooked heavyweight title fights of all time.
The US Senate has recently approved the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act to protect boxers from the bacteria which infest the sport. The Bill is designed to usher in an era of openness and transparency.
Senator John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, has been the most visible foe of the fight game in recent times and helped to push the Ali Bill through the Senate. The words he uses describe conditions to which boxing is allergic: full disclosure, transparent rankings' system, one governing body (non-profit).
There is little hope that the best efforts of the US Senate, combined with the rigour of law enforcement, will create a brave new world for the honest pugs who do the real work in this business.
The machine is still greased by the people who, in the words of boxing writer and historian Bert Sugar, "take money under the table, above the table, around the table until eventually they take the table".
The best hope is perhaps that self-regulation will spring from the people who hold the money. Home Box Office's (HBO) Lou Di Bella looks a tired man these days. Pay-per-view purchases for tonight's bout have been selling slowly, his major investment in Naseem Hamed has produced nothing but drear and cheap fireworks and HBO's relationship with the boxing fraternity is in danger of becoming a liability.
The urging from politicians and the small, courageous (or bitter) group of people who have sued within the boxing fraternity is for HBO and Showtime to give the muscle to legislative efforts and refuse to invest in organisations which lack a legitimate rankings system.
It was four years ago in Las Vegas, at the time of the Foreman versus Schultz fight, that the alarm bells began to ring, setting in train the events which have led boxing to this situation.
The IBF had just lost its number two and three contenders, and Michael Moorer was next in line for a lucrative crack at George Foreman. Don King somehow hop-scotched South Africa's Francois Botha over Moorer. Botha couldn't shuffle his way through a revolving door. He never made it into the ring against Foreman. Schulz ended up with the gig. Moorer launched a civil suit. Things have been unravelling ever since.
Tonight's fight needs to be good, honest and spectacular if boxing is to begin the long walk back to respectability. When was there last a heavyweight fight with those three qualities?
The first subject of scrutiny in the new era will be the scoring by the Nevada judges at tonight's bout. Last March, when Lewis pummelled Holyfield to a draw, the celebrity du jour was one Eugenia Williams, a Don King creature and a former bankrupt who scored the bout in Holyfield's favour. It is in Eugenia's honour that the boxing world will gather in Vegas tonight.
In one corner is Lewis, a decent boxer if a little on the placid side who got caught up in the little sideshow of the British scene too long for his own good and then never had the chance to mix it with pugs like Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson when they were in their prime.
In the other corner, Evander Holyfield, small for a heavyweight but a man of God fighting off paternity suits from two women neither of whom is the wife he took five years ago.
They will fight the rematch of a bout which Muhammad Ali described as "the biggest fix in fight history" when it unfolded in New York last March, and which launched three separate legal investigations before the ring had been mopped.
They fight with the music of slot machines in their ears, boxing against a backdrop of Runyonesque skullduggery. Officials of one of the sanctioning bodies whose title is on the line tonight have been arrested or are on the run, Don King is presenting himself as the guardian angel of the sport and Mike Tyson, late-punching, ear-biting, woman-raping Mike Tyson, is skulking on the sidelines.
Ah, it's a wonderful world. And for now it still belongs to Don.
