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Demagoguery is a staple of boxing and a specialty of King's, a wild-maned former Cleveland numbers runner who served four years in the Ohio Penitentiary for killing an associate. King got into boxing with a lovable little Damon Runyon-type character named Don Elbaum, who once made a flourish of presenting Sugar Ray Robinson the first gloves he ever wore at Madison Square Garden; Robinson was moved to tears, until both gloves turned out to be righthanded. "Confusion is a promoter's plight and his ally," says King, who is co-promoting the show with Sam Glass and Tiffany Promotions from Cooney's side. "There's something you should know about boxing: lying is commonplace."
For being in such a harsh business and around such hard men, most boxers are incongruously gentle, including Larry Holmes. He is a child of both Cuthbert, Ga., and Easton, Pa. The seventh of Flossie Holmes' dozen children, he grew up lisping when he talked and lashing out when he was frustrated. One of his strongest motivations for not losing is the thought of the schoolyard taunting that he fears would await his children. He left school in the seventh grade, the year his father, a manual laborer, left home. Holmes laments his lack of education. In a dream he had before his 1980 fight with Ali, he is in the ring fighting when he hears the voice of Howard Cosell droning "Holmes is throwing a profusion punches." And panic seizes him. He does not know what profusion means.
Since the days when he was a sparring partner for Ali, Holmes has mimicked Muhammad, intentionally or not. "He even tries to talk like him," says Angelo Dundee, "but he can't." As Arcel puts it, "He has lived in the shadow of Muhammad Ali's mouth." When not trying to sound like Ali, Holmes sounds kinder. In his guttural, good-humored speech, he declares, "I'm the baddest thing since peanut butter and jelly," and laughs lightly. Then he stops laughing. "Earnie Shavers and Renaldo Snipes may have knocked me down, but I got up and took care of business. I'm proud. A lot of people want to know if I'm in the tank for this fight"—boxing's enduring charm, the suggestion of a fix. "That hurts me."
Accepting pay equal to the challenger's does not please him. Holmes Holmes and Cooney are are said to be collecting $10 million each. (Since "lying is commonplace" in boxing, their guarantees are probably considerably less, but their percentages may actually bring the amount to more if the sale approaches the buildup.) Technically, Holmes is only the master of all that the World Boxing Council surveys. Boxing titles flow from two Central American offices: the W.B.C. in Mexico and the World Boxing Association in Panama. However, by farsightedly knocking out W.B.A. Champion Mike Weaver before Weaver happened to win his title, Holmes eased the confusion.