Following his unprecedented successes promoting Ali and Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle and Ali and Frazier's Thrilla in Manila, the flambouyant Don King sought to create a new nationally televised championship tournament with ABC Sports to establish an American belt holder in every professional weight class. In January of 77, Sports Illustrated ran a long article detailing the plan, noting participation from many contenders: "The heavyweight entrants are Larry Holmes, Dino Dennis, Johnny Boudreaux, Tom Prater, Leroy Jones, Scott LeDoux and alternates Jeff Merritt and Kevin Isaacs. The lightheavies are Cassidy, Taylor, Len Hutchins, Richie Kates, Vonzell Johnson, Ray Elson, Biff Cline, Tony Greene and Tom Bethea; and the middles Mike Colbert, Tony Chiaverini, Bobby Watts, Willie Monroe, David Love, Ike Fluellen, Roy Edmonds and Johnny Baldwin. Randy Shields and Harold Weston are among the names in the welter division, while Edwin Viruet heads the lightweights. The list of featherweights is not completed."
  Building on the exceptional patriotism of 1976 around the nation because of the Bicentennial celebrations and the Olympics, King's 1st event, staged aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Lexington in January was a marked "extravaganza," according to a Time Magazine article from the late spring of that year.  The second series of elimination fights at the Naval Academy in Annapolis ended in the most comic fashion when an enraged heavyweight loser Scott LeDoux charged into the middle of Howard Cosell's interview with the winner, Johnny Boudreaux, slinging a passel of abuse and karate kicks that left Cosell's hairpiece askew.  At the series' outset the wheat-stalk-haired King made protestations that the tournament would clean up the sweet science's image as "the sport of the dispossessed (climbed) the mountain."  The backroom deals, strings pulled, and records fabricated in the once respected rankings of The Ring Magazine quickly came to light, though, after complaints of scoring irregularities were made and investigations began.  The scandal shamed ABC's Roone Arledge into pulling out of the TV contract, and the series was then cancelled prior to the semi-finals, scheduled for Miami Beach in early April.
  This prison entrance authorization for Lyn Whitehurst of the King promotion team provided access for the more successful card of quarter-final fights put on in early March at the State of Ohio's Marion Correction Institute, which included an exhibition bout between inmate and undefeated middleweight Arthur "Tap" Harris and Johnny Heard.