Don King (boxing promoter) fighters in Cleveland and years of experience in boxing. In 1974, King negotiated to promote a heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, popularly known as "The Rumble in the Jungle". The fight between Ali and Foreman was a much-anticipated event. King's rivals all sought to promote the bout, but King was able to secure the then-record $10 million purse through an arrangement with the government of Zaire. Don King induced a Cleveland tycoon named Carl Lombardo to underwrite the show for $1.3‐million. Video Techniques put in $200,000 and that just about took care of the
George Foreman vs. Ken Norton winning the bout by first-round knockout. For his second defense, Foreman was matched up against Ken Norton for a March 1974 bout held in Caracas, the capital and largest city in Venezuela. Norton was coming off two successive fights against Muhammad Ali in 1973, winning the first fight in March by split decision (famously breaking Ali's jaw in the process), and then narrowly losing the second by another split decision in September. Norton's impressive performances against Ali made him one of the top heavyweight contenders for Foreman's titles, but the future hall-of-famer was installed as a 3–1 underdog against the