Don King's MMA Venture and Why He Will Fail in the MMA Business

Don King is one of the most flamboyant, most controversial and most polarizing figureheads in the history of the sports world.

His hair-do is the stuff of legend, his voice sounds like that of a man who one easily could pick out of a crowd of sports promoters, and he's promoted a slew of boxing legends throughout the course of his career—from Muhammad Ali to Larry Holmes, and even Bernard Hopkins and Ricardo Mayorga.

Things only get sour with the mention of King's name if one mentions his venture into MMA, but rest assured that it is not because he is a former boxing figurehead trying to capitalize on MMA's success.

Remember, Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions tried their hand in the MMA world through Affliction Entertainment and, really, nobody complained about those cards.

The same can go for King's venture into MMA, but don't bet your neighborhood on him succeeding enough to where his promotion is a true UFC competitor.

Right now, you're probably asking yourself, "why shouldn't I count on him making it in the MMA business?", and the answer is multi-fold but it is obvious.

First off, even if you're Don King, you can't get away with pulling off the same stuff at press conferences or weigh-in days for MMA cards that you can during boxing pressers or boxing weigh-in days, and King might not be young enough to handle questions about a pre-fight brawl the way he might have been able to when he was promoting Evander Holyfield or Felix Trinidad.

Second, he's a great promoter and he's Hall of Fame status as far as the greatest fight promoters in the history of the game, but he also knows where some of the best talent in the world are.

Some are in Japan, some are in the United Kingdom and some are here in the States through Bellator, Tachi Palace Fights or the rest of the other non-Zuffa promotions.

I don't think I need to text Mr. King and let him know that the rest of the best are under the Zuffa umbrella, and that's really the only issue that stands out more than any other issue, but it's not the only reason why King might fail.

He can start the promotion as whatever he wishes it to be and wherever he wishes it to be, but unless he breaks into a market the UFC has not yet touched and promotes each fight as if it were the Fight of the Century, it'll be tough for him to claim to have all—if any—of the best fighters in the world.

If another issue is to contribute to King's failure in the MMA business world, obviously two questions arise, with one question about the true amount of money King's fights might be worth, and the other question not so much pertaining to monetary worth but nonetheless related to the fights themselves:

Does Don King know what the MMA world's fans really want to see, and how could King possibly be giving us the fights we want to see when he's not working with a UFC roster or a matchmaker that can help the 80-year-old promoter see what they see and feel what they feel at the prospect of a certain fight?

It is a difficult task to become a top promotion in MMA without working with the best fighters in the world, especially when DREAM, ONE FC, Bellator, Strikeforce, the UFC and other promotions all have their share of the guys widely seen as "the best in the world right now in MMA."

King can always prove us all wrong at any given think, but without may elite names to promote or any fights to hype up, or even a star to create and mold into King's top draw, how can King hope to survive in the business side of MMA?

Unless he comes up with the answers to these questions and the many others surrounding King's involvement, King is going to have a difficult task ahead of him in the form of figuring out how to give the fans the fights they want to see without having a roster full of the "who's who" of the sport right now.

Only in America could something of this magnitude go down, but it's up to Don King to prove us all wrong and prove he can make his MMA organization work; otherwise, he will be an 80-year-old businessman with no real business in the world of sports anymore.