Don King Cross-Examination Pt. 17

20 MR. BURSTEIN: I know we had that

21 Exhibit EH, which was -- I may have it right

22 here. I'm not sure.

23 EH was that earlier Acaries agreement.

24 MR. OLIN: The Betare agreement, the

25 step-aside?

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2 MR. BURSTEIN: No, no, no, it's the --

3 THE CHAIRMAN: It's EX.

4 MR. BURSTEIN: Yes, EX. I'm sorry.

5 Q. Looking at Exhibit EX, when this deal

6 was done, if you look, it was for an August 17

7 fight, correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And it was your -- this deal was

10 negotiated in the context of you telling Mr.

11 Betare -- Mr. Acaries that the fight was going to

12 be on Showtime?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. For this you only had to pay $275,000?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Now once the purse bid happened, were

17 you still obligated -- did you have to pay Mr.

18 Acaries or the fighter more than $275,000?

19 A. Yes. Once the purse bid happened,

20 either Mr. Acaries could live with that deal,

21 that is why you have to ask him, but the purse

22 bid in effect gave him more money for the fight

23 than his deal was, and so -- he had the right to

24 run off because the fight didn't take place on

25 October -- August 17, which the fight was

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2 contracted, and under -- and in the spirit of

3 renegotiating a deal with them seeing I had a

4 Showtime deal on August 17, that is why he

5 entered into the agreement, to get it done. But

6 after it was prolonged and then go to a purse bid

7 and then the purse bid in effect gives him more

8 money than the money I had previously negotiated

9 and at another date that he had not agreed to, he

10 pulled out and went for the purse bid.

11 Q. Once the purse bid was requested by

12 Mr. Joseph, in your view was Mr. Acaries bound by

13 this contract?

14 A. He was not bound by the contract and

15 in the spirit of how I made the contract and the

16 deal that I made with him is that I would put on

17 a fight on the 17th of October in Showtime, and

18 when Mr. Joseph did not deliver his fighter on

19 August 17, then it went to a purse bid, and now

20 it is a purse bid, the money, it is 25 percent of

21 the purse bid is more than $275,000, but plus the

22 fact it didn't come off on the 17th, he didn't

23 feel that he would maintain that agreement

24 because it may not come off again. So he opted

25 to go with the purse bid. Plus the fact we got

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2 that threatening letter from the WBC that said we

3 -- if I didn't put the fight on they are going to

4 give it to the Frenchmen.

5 Q. I was going to get to that. Exhibit

6 CB.

7 MR. BURSTEIN: Well, actually I think

8 you guys raised it, CB.

9 Q. All right. Mr. Hakkar ended up

10 bidding $1,411,000. And that meant, did it not,

11 that at the time he was prepared to make the bid,

12 he knew he had more money available to make the

13 fight -- there was enough money in the fight so

14 that one quarter of the amount would be more than

15 he was making on the original deal, isn't that

16 correct?

17 A. Yes, he had more than that on the

18 deal, plus if I had went to sleep, he could have

19 won the bid and took the fight to France where he

20 wanted it to be.

21 Q. What would have happened if you had

22 just assumed you had a contract with Mr. Acaries

23 and not submitted a bid on October 7?

24 A. I would have lost the fight to Mr.

25 Acaries and then he would have put in the purse

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2 bid rule. He would have told me that I signed

3 it, but you know, purse bid takes it out of

4 public auction, takes it out of the context of a

5 contract and takes the terms and conditions of

6 the organization, so I am lost, and if he did it

7 any other way the organization would take his

8 title from him.

9 Q. Now this letter, Exhibit CB, is dated

10 December 11, correct?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. And Mr. Hopkins and you and Mr. Joseph

13 met on December 13, correct?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. If you had not been able to do a deal,

16 Mr. Hopkins would still have been able to fight

17 Mr. Hakkar, right?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. But he ended up having to fight him in

20 France?

21 A. He would have fought him in France.

22 Q. Okay. Now you were also asked some

23 questions about an Ali Act disclosure, and that

24 was Exhibit 11. Now this disclosure gave

25 information about all of the guarantees for the

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2 fight except for pay-per-view, correct?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. Is there a practice in the industry

5 with respect to what the number -- the disclosure

6 of the number of pay-per-view buys by the

7 networks?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. What is that practice?

10 A. They make an announcement probably the

11 following Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday after

12 they have calculated the buys to tell how many

13 buys were bought on the following -- the earlier

14 -- the prior Saturday, and from that they make an

15 announcement to that effect of whatever has been

16 reported from the cable systems.

17 Q. Now you were also asked some questions

18 about whether you told Mr. Cozen or Mr. Joseph or

19 Mr. Hopkins about whether you had told them about

20 the results of the Hakkar purse bid. How about

21 -- and you said that you hadn't. Is there a

22 practice in the industry with respect to how word

23 about a purse bid gets out?

24 A. Yes, the purse bid is announced

25 publicly and put on all the wire services,

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2 Reuters, AP, everyone else because it's a public

3 auction. It has to be put that way, otherwise it

4 would be some back room door clandestine

5 operation. They have to go public.

6 Every news agency gets it whenever

7 they open up the sealed bids and they read off

8 the sealed bids and nobody knows what's in the

9 sealed bids and they announce it to the world and

10 that way they keep -- otherwise you could never

11 take it out of a contract.

12 Q. Now you also were asked some questions

13 about that October 4 letter you signed with Mr.

14 Cozen.

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Before this hearing, did you know,

17 before you heard Bernard Hopkins testify at this

18 hearing, had you ever known that he did not know

19 about any such agreement and had never even heard

20 -- never even discussed such an agreement with

21 his lawyers?

22 A. I did not know that. I was under the

23 auspices and the assumptions that Mr. Cozen had

24 discussed it with Arnold and with Bernard and he

25 made the assumption that he could deliver the

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2 services of Bernard, and at this hearing I found

3 out that he couldn't have done that because he

4 didn't even know anything about it.

5 MR. BURSTEIN: What was that number on

6 Charles Lomax's letter. Let me find it.

7 136.

8 Q. You were asked some questions about

9 Exhibit 136, and this is the letter from Mr.

10 Lomax?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. Just to point this out, he also wrote,

13 as I am sure you know, "This letter does not

14 purport to be a complete statement of the facts."

15 Is that correct?

16 A. Yes. Just what he knew.

17 Q. You were asked some questions about

18 whether or not Mr. Goosen had reneged on the deal

19 for Toney. Were there two Toney negotiations?

20 A. Yes, it was.

21 Q. Tell the panel about the two different

22 negotiations.

23 A. The first Toney negotiation was that I

24 had offered 3 million 3 to Bernard and then

25 Goosen had offered a million whatever it is to

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2 his fighter. I don't know, but we put all these

3 figures together and Dan Goosen was on board.

4 That's why I said some were, some not. You know,

5 when I was trying to describe this.

6 Then in the second negotiation when

7 Bernard prevailed upon me to raise it up and I

8 said, Bernard, we can do this deal. Now you have

9 got a fait accompli. You have got your car, you

10 get the 3 million. He said try to get some more,

11 try to get some more. I say okay, I'll try, on

12 the proviso that if I can't get no more, then you

13 come back and make an adjustment so that we can

14 go do the deal.

15 All right, Goosen went along with all

16 of that. I kept talking to Goosen and he said,

17 you know, man, I ain't going down. The same

18 thing Bernard would be saying. So then I put

19 them all together. I put HBO, Goosen, me,

20 Arnold, everybody on the same phone. I said now

21 let's discuss what's here and what isn't here so

22 we can come to a compatible agreement so we can

23 announce the fight.

24 We went through the whole thing.

25 Goosen realized what it was. Goosen said, okay,

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2 I'll adjust. I call Arnold after the phone call

3 and say Goosen has readjusted his purse. We are

4 close, man, what can you do with Bernard. He

5 said, I will take a shot. On the phone he said,

6 I will take a shot, maybe. I can't get him to go

7 back to $3 million or 3.3 but maybe I can get him

8 to go to 3.8.

9 I said, listen, Bernard -- I mean

10 Arnold, if you can do that, I say because Goosen

11 has made a dramatic reduction. See what you can

12 do. He said I will go see if I can get that. And

13 so Goosen called me up and said, what is he going

14 to come down, you know, this guy is a crazy

15 sucker and you know, I don't like him anyway. I

16 said, Dan, leave that alone. I'm trying to get

17 it. He said you'll never do it. I say okay.

18 Arnold, I called Arnold back again and

19 got Arnold on his phone, he says he ain't going

20 to do it. So now Goosen don't know this and I

21 didn't tell Goosen. But what Goosen did is made

22 a deal and took his fight over to Showtime and

23 fought Evander Holyfield. He didn't just run off

24 and do it, he asked me is he going to do it.

25 I said I think he is. I got Arnold

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2 working on it, but I don't know. He said he

3 ain't going to do it, he ain't going to do it. I

4 said, well, give me a chance. You know. When he

5 called me, is it done, I said it ain't done. He

6 didn't tell me he was going to run off. He just

7 left. Because Arnold couldn't deliver the guy,

8 not even for the 3.8 that he said.

9 Q. Now you were asked some questions

10 about Roy Jones and he asked you did you ever

11 tell them Mr. Jones was willing to fight for a

12 60-40 split. Now let me ask you, did you ever

13 discuss the possibility of a 60-40 split with

14 Bernard Hopkins?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. At any time did Bernard Hopkins say he

17 was willing to take anything less than complete

18 parity?

19 A. That is all he kept saying, parity,

20 parity, parity. I went to -- I begged Roy Jones

21 to get him the 60-40. Then I said to Roy, I

22 said, listen, he said why don't you and me

23 promote the fight. I told that to Arnold. He

24 said I will give him -- let's give him the 6

25 million and get him out of there. He said he is

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2 nothing but a headache anyway. Let's pay him off

3 and get him 6 million. And that's how that 6

4 million got in there from the beginning.

5 Roy said I gambled on my end. I told

6 Arnold and Bernard that. I said you got 6

7 million. That's more than you ever got. Let's

8 take the 6 million because you're going to beat

9 the guy. I still believe that he would have beat

10 the guy because two guys haven't beat him since

11 then. He wouldn't do it.

12 All right. So now I got Roy Jones and

13 HBO took it over--

14 Q. I think the answer to my question was

15 he never said 60-40.

16 A. No, he wouldn't go with 60-40.

17 Q. Looking at Exhibit 20 now, you were

18 asked some questions about this HBO proposal, and

19 Mr. Olin on a number of occasions suggested that

20 the offer from HBO at the back had gone up from

21 $2 million to $3.5 million for Daniels bouts.

22 Isn't it in fact -- what would have been the

23 up-front money under this proposal?

24 A. 3.5.

25 Q. What ultimately happened? Am I

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2 correct that they just folded the 1.5 into the

3 license fee for the Daniels fight?

4 A. The Daniels was always 3.5. They were

5 bookkeeping it for $2 million and 1.5 as me

6 signing a signing bonus. It was always that. But

7 they didn't want to go out and look loose face

8 and give the company's money away for somebody

9 that everybody agreed is no good. So they had --

10 and they were only buying Bernard because Bernard

11 had won the tournament and this is the first

12 fight out the chute.

13 They didn't want to have a tournament

14 and invest all this money in the tournament and

15 get the champion of the tournament and then throw

16 him away. So they had a lot of pressure on that

17 first fight, so they made it clear to me if we do

18 that first fight and they figured it out and this

19 bookkeeping manner, then we ain't going to do no

20 more of those mandatories. So to try to get that

21 first fight through without having a whole

22 consummate deal done, I said okay, okay, let's do

23 it, let's get Bernard in there and do it.

24 Q. You were asked some questions about

25 $14 million, the estimate of the money and

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2 whether it was for everything or just for HBO?

3 A. It was for everything.

4 Q. Let me just ask you this question. Am

5 I correct that if it had just been HBO, that

6 would have meant that HBO was guaranteeing the

7 fight at about 600,000 buys?

8 A. Exactly. They would be guaranteeing

9 $14 million and that would be 600, maybe close --

10 maybe between 6 and 700,000 buys. They wasn't

11 going to do that. But what they did is they

12 counted up everything that they could do and they

13 were willing to go based on what they figured I

14 could get from the site and from the foreign

15 sales as an educated speculation of what they

16 have known the business to be and then they put

17 it differently.

18 They put me at a conservative figure

19 of $6 million that I could go out and get from

20 other sources, and then they put in the $8

21 million that would make it the $14 million so we

22 could do the event, and he turned that down.

23 Q. And that was about a guarantee of

24 about 350,000 buys?

25 A. Yes.

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2 Q. And Roy Jones had never done 350,000

3 buys, had he?

4 A. No, Roy Jones -- maybe about 360, 370.

5 Q. At the time?

6 A. No, he had not done that.

7 Q. And Bernard Hopkins, other than the

8 Felix Trinidad fight, had never fought on

9 pay-per-view, correct?

10 A. That's correct.

11 Q. And you had no idea whether he could

12 draw, is that correct?

13 A. That's correct.

14 Q. Now you also mentioned a couple of

15 times if Bernard had fought Felix Trinidad, he

16 would have made $15 million. What did you mean

17 by that?

18 A. I meant by that, I would have made

19 somewhere around $25 million off that fight, but

20 what I did was when I seen Bernard wasn't going

21 to end his commitment, he definitely said he

22 breached his contract, and what I told Arnold is

23 I would give Bernard the third. In other words,

24 when I had sold the deal to Felix Trinidad, I

25 made the deal with Felix Trinidad getting a third

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2 --

3 Q. We are late. What you meant, am I

4 correct, was if he had taken you up on your offer

5 for a third of the upside --

6 A. The upside. He would have made $15

7 million, but he wouldn't even take that. He

8 didn't have any money in his purse. His

9 purchases was done.

10 Q. You were asked some questions about

11 when the discussions about Ottke and Joppy were.

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Okay. I am going to show you Exhibit

14 118, which is a letter from Mr. Joseph saying so

15 that there is no confusion, Mr. Hopkins was

16 always willing to take $1.5 million for the bout.

17 Does that help you refresh your recollection and

18 pin down when the Ottke-Joppy negotiations were?

19 A. Yes, they were in June because the man

20 told me that I want to do in December, he said I

21 want to do a fight with Ottke. Now this is the

22 German, his name is Wilfred Solomon. And I said,

23 well, we are going to have to do after this

24 mandatory, they have got Joppy. He said, we'll

25 do that. Because he wanted his champion who also

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2 was a super middleweight champion where Bernard's

3 title is not even at stake, but he would have

4 gotten 1.5 million for Joppy, which is another

5 pushover fight, and got 3 million for Sven Ottke,

6 and he would have beat them both. With no risk.

7 Q. Now, you were also asked some

8 questions about these August 22 agreements and

9 whether or not they were bogus agreements or not

10 bogus agreements, and more particularly, why you

11 paid $100,000 for both agreements if they were

12 bogus agreements.

13 Take a look at Exhibit 77, which was

14 Mr. Smith's letter enclosing $100,000. Look at

15 the second paragraph. Am I correct that as of

16 the time Mr. Smith sent this $100,000, he was

17 also informing Mr. Hopkins through Mr. Joseph

18 that HBO -- that there was only $6 million on the

19 table for Jones and that they weren't interested

20 in putting the Hakkar bout on?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. When he says HBO is willing to pay,

23 that meant that's how much they're willing to pay

24 --

25 A. Yes, that meant HBO would pay the 6

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2 million in its entirety to Bernard Hopkins so he

3 don't have to go through no argument about this

4 checks going to bounce, this, that, anything he

5 could conceive, they put it in writing that that

6 they appeared to.

7 Q. Now if you had an agreement for $10

8 million that required a payment of $100,000 and

9 you already knew that HBO was not willing to do

10 any better than a license fee that would pay $6

11 million, and you also knew they weren't willing

12 to televise the Hakkar bout, which meant that you

13 couldn't pay $2-1/2 million for it, why were you

14 still sending Bernard Hopkins $100,000?

15 A. Because as I stated before, it was a

16 bogus situation, and me and him were working

17 together with that, and I did it based on what he

18 said and he sent the money back based on what he

19 said. He's always been honest up until the last

20 part about sending me my money back. The last

21 time he kept my money and he owes me right now

22 that $100,000 that he did not send back on the

23 James Toney event.

24 Q. Okay. You were also asked some

25 questions about Exhibit 116, which was a World

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2 Boxing Association memo to -- which had Mr.

3 Joseph, but doesn't it say to all bona fide

4 promoters?

5 A. Exactly.

6 Q. Is Mr. Joseph a bona fide promoter?

7 A. No, he is not a bona fide promoter.

8 Q. Looking at 117-A, which was the one

9 without Mr. Joseph's name on it, did you tell the

10 WBA not to send the money?

11 A. No, I did not.

12 Q. Send it to Mr. Joseph?

13 A. No. They just send it out to the bone

14 fight promoters, but the reason they put his name

15 on the first one is because -- he wrote him a

16 letter asking for it, so as a courtesy they

17 billed him out.

18 Q. Mr. Joppy had a manager, didn't he?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. They didn't send it to Mr. Joppy's

21 manager?

22 A. They don't send it to managers. But

23 they will send it to a lawyer if a lawyer

24 requests. They will give the lawyer back a copy

25 of whatever the response is.

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2 Q. You were also asked some questions by

3 Mr. Olin suggesting the WBA had canceled the

4 purse bid.

5 MR. BURSTEIN: I'm just going to point

6 Mr. Carter to Exhibit 120 where the WBA says

7 that wasn't the reason. They had an

8 independent reason for canceling the purse

9 bid.

10 Q. Now you were also asked about Exhibit

11 EY, which was the -- it's Exhibit 122, I'm sorry.

12 "Why didn't you tell Mr. Hopkins that you were

13 extending, seeking to extend the time for the

14 purse bid?" Do you remember those questions?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Okay. I am going to show you Exhibit

17 126. Mr. Hopkins, as of, if you look at the fax

18 header, September 3, 2003, knew that the date had

19 been extended to December 13, correct?

20 A. Correct, we called and told him.

21 Q. And he signed the agreement, correct?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. Now when you were negotiating with Mr.

24 Jones with Mr. Ruiz --

25 A. Yes.