NEW YORK - OCTOBER 28: (L-R) Donald Trump, Reverend Al Sharpton and boxing promoter Don King attend the roasting of Don King at the Friars Club on October 28, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump compared the impeachment inquiry hearings against him in the House Intelligence Committee to a “prizefight” and said if it were a real boxing match “they’d stop it!”
Trump has a storied history in the boxing world and has worked with boxing legends Don King, Mike Tyson and others.
Here’s what you need to know.
On the Third Day of Testimony Into His Impeachment Inquiry Hearings, President Trump Said ‘If This Were a Prizefight, They Would Stop It!’
If this were a prizefight, they’d stop it!
After Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that “If this were a prizefight, they’d stop it!”
Trump has a long history in the ring, long before he entered politics. According to Gareth A. Davies for The Guardian:
Boxing promotion can be a murky business. Just like politics. Forgotten in the mists of time, newly inaugurated US President Donald J Trump once offered himself as financial adviser to Mike Tyson, promoted a clutch of the world’s biggest fights and names in the late Eighties and early Nineties, and even suggested Tyson’s rape conviction and jail sentence could be held over so that the heavyweight could fight Evander Holyfield with the proceeds going to rape victims.
In boxing’s cut-throat world of deals, and smokescreens, the real estate mogul Trump excelled, even teaching seasoned promoters a thing or two, some of his crass practices still remembered today by those in the industry.
President Donald Trump Attended a UFC Championship Match in New York City Earlier This Month
Trump’s seat at the MMA fight was close enough to hear the kicks land and the thuds of the bodies hitting the floor. “If there’s blood that’s spilled and it’s not his, it’s thrilling to him.” @noahweiland
On Nov. 2, President Donald Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship match at Madison Square Garden in New York City. His visit came just after he announced that he was changing his permanent address from New York to Florida. He was met at the match with a mix of boos and cheers, according to several media reports.
President Donald Trump Has a Long History With Boxing
After President Donald Trump was elected, legendary boxing promoter Don King said his victory was historic.
“No one has carried the type of lightning rod activities since the 13 colonies wrote a letter to King George saying they wanted to discharge so they can be eliminated and independent Americans,” King told Fox Business in 2018.
“The first thing that Donald Trump said that touched my heart and it should touch every American’s heart is, ‘We will create a whole new system. We will take this system apart. I want to make America great again and America first,’” King said.
Donald Trump has a long history with the casinos in Atlantic City, and according to the Baltimore Sun in 1991, he “had put Atlantic City on the boxing map with a number of multimillion-dollar matches in the past four years, including Mike Tyson’s brief encounters with Michael Spinks and Carl Williams and Foreman’s knockout of Gerry Cooney.”
But when he overextended himself in the casino-hotel business, Trump became a casualty of the recession. To keep the Holyfield-Foreman fight, he had to obtain concessions from promoters Dan Duva and Bob Arum, who agreed to reduce his site fee to $6 million from $11 million.
Arum and Duva were willing to make the $5 million concession in an effort to continue to auction their major fights between Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Arum told the Atlantic City Press: “We did let Trump off the hook. We were aware of his financial problems.” Shelly Finkel, Holyfield’s chief adviser, said, “We just didn’t want to get into litigation over the money.”
In October 2018, President Donald Trump Said He Would ‘Do Very Well’ In a Boxing Match With Russian President Vladimir Putin
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After President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, many criticized him for disagreeing with his intelligence reports and saying during the meeting that “my people came to me … they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”