Don King admits having seen John Gotti - "on television."
"Categorically I never met John Gotti," the boxing promoter said Tuesday at a news conference."Let me categorically deny any association with the mob," said King, who once ran a numbers game in Cleveland and served four years for manslaughter.
Gotti is the reputed boss of New York's Gambino crime family.
"People are trying to assassinate my business life," King said Tuesday at a news conference at a mid-Manhattan hotel.
Allegations of King's ties to organized crime were made Tuesday night on the PBS television show Frontline, reported by Jack Newfield, and in a Sports Illustrated story last week by Joseph Spinelli, a former FBI agent, as told to William Nack.
"Jack Newfield (an investigative reporter for the Daily News and Village Voice) has had a vendetta for years trying to bring down black success," King said.
He called Spinelli a "frustrated FBI agent. Here's a guy who is incompetent. He's dreaming."
Spinelli investigated King while he was with the FBI, which he left in 1985 to become inspector general for the State of New York. King was indicted on federal income tax charges, but was acquitted on all counts.
"They're rehashing news of 10, 20, 30 years ago and bringing it up like it was a current affair and I'm connected with the mob.
"He (Spinelli) keeps talking about how boxing should be put in a national organization. He wants to be czar."
Spinelli related an account of an informant reporting King becoming "engaged in what appeared to be a `heated conversation' " in a restaurant with Gotti.
"I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy," King said. "Arguing with John Gotti . . . in New York!"
King also said he saw HBO televison as being behind the allegations on the television program and magazine article.
King staged many boxing promotions on HBO before splitting with the cable television network after Mike Tyson's upset loss to James "Buster" Douglas Feb. 11, 1990, at Tokyo. HBO is a Time-Warner company, as is TVKO, which puts on pay-per-view fights in competition with King's KingVision. Sports Illustrated is also a Time-Warner property.
"A high executive told me that if I left HBO I'd better watch my back 24 hours a day," King said, declining to name the executive.,
"That is a complete and utter fantasy," said Bob Greenway, vice president-sports programming for HBO. "HBO was completely unaware of the article before it appeared. There's never been an occasion where HBO has told Sports Illustrated what to do."