Daniel Dubois, Don King and 'the strangest world title fight'
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Don King (R) numbers Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Mike Tyson among the array of boxing legends he has promoted
"You know what this reminds me of?" said 90-year-old Don King as he assessed Daniel Dubois' challenge for Trevor Bryan's secondary WBA heavyweight title in a disused Jai Alai Court a few miles from Miami International Airport.
"This is like 1776 over there in Long Island when we battled for our independence. The British are coming! The British are coming! They say this guy Dubois is like dynamite and he wants to come over here and take what belongs to Trevor, but he better fight for it."
It is not surprising that in nearly half a century of promoting boxing matches, King is not afraid of hyperbole here and there. But it would be no exaggeration to describe this entire promotion as one of the strangest for any version of the world title in modern times.
It all started in March when King won the purse bid to stage the fight with a surprisingly hefty offer of $3,116,001 (£2.55m) with no discernible TV deal. In the end the fight would be shown via a stream on King's website for a pay-per-view fee of $29.99.
King's offer beat that of Frank Warren, Dubois' promoter, by more than $600,000. Under the terms of the purse bid set by the WBA, whose 'world' heavyweight title was on the line, Dubois would receive 45% of that sum - more than £1.1m at the current exchange rate.
King had proposed South Florida has a potential venue that day and, despite the start of hurricane season here in June, Miami was decided as the host city.
The aforementioned venue, meanwhile, required some work.
Up until recently the hall had been two feet under water. The limescale line left by the flood was visible on the seats as the crowd began to file in during the early evening on Saturday. Two men were stationed a few feet from ringside with mops and buckets to stem the steady flow of water which seemed to be coming from beneath the stage.
The promotion was billed as 'The Fight for Freedom and Peace', a direct condemnation of Russian advances into Ukraine and an opportunity, King decided, to raise awareness for the Ukrainian people affected by the conflict. The irony, then, that he had compared Dubois' position here to 1776 was palpable.
At 90, King is no longer the force of nature he had seemed during his heyday in the sport. But, that being said, he held court for 90 minutes at Wednesday's press conference and barely missed a step. After sitting through the entirety of it, Dubois said: 'That was weird."
His experience of Miami all round was thus. He spent two weeks in the fight hotel, across the road from the casino in which he later dismantled Bryan inside four rounds, and it was a stint not without drama. Only a few days after arriving, his trainer Shane McGuigan gave CPR to an elderly guest at the hotel and managed to revive him, only to hear that he later died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Dubois said he spent most of his time in his room "getting mad".
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By the time the fight came around he was beyond ready. Nobody had booked him a car to the venue, so it was left to McGuigan to order one himself, making Dubois perhaps the first man to win a version of the world heavyweight title having arrived by Uber.
Once in the ring, at around 06:30 local time, there were three national anthems to get through first - Ukraine, Great Britain and America - before he could finally get his hands on Bryan.
It was a methodical beatdown and a testament to his temperament that he did not let any of the outside factors affect his performance. The few in attendance, which sadly can't have been many more than 500, seemed to enjoy it. Even the men with buckets stopped mopping to watch.
"It was all just an experience," Dubois said. "Beforehand my dad had told me just to use it all as a learning experience. That's exactly what it turned out to be.
"We don't know how much longer Don King has left but it was great to finally meet him and do some business.
"I've had two in a row here in America so now I want my homecoming. Joe Joyce, Dillian Whyte, all these guys, they have to come through me now.
"I'm ready to get home now. These two weeks have felt like forever, being out here just in my hotel room getting mad. But we've pulled it off."
Thankfully someone has booked him a flight back to London.
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