NEWARK, N.J. -- Boxing promoter Cedric Kushner said that although he had influence with IBF founder Robert W. Lee because of regular payoffs, Don King had even more.

"I always knew I was second fiddle, or fourth. No matter what happened, Fuzzy Wuzzy, as he was called, came first," Kushner testified Tuesday during Lee's racketeering trial.

At mentioning a nickname for King, prosecutor Jose P. Sierra asked the heavyset and mustachioed Kushner if he also had nicknames. "Fat man" and "walrus," he replied.

Jurors have heard some of those names in covert FBI tapes of conversations between Lee and his longtime ratings chairman, C. Douglas Beavers, who cooperated with investigators and testified that he brought money from Kushner and other promoters to Lee.

Prosecutors maintain King, the most influential promoter in boxing, was a prime beneficiary of Lee's manipulations of rankings but have not charged him, describing him as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Beavers, a longtime Virginia boxing commissioner, testified in April that King made regular payoffs so his fighters got special consideration. King, based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., has denied that.

Kushner did describe a 1991 incident when King and Lee were not getting along.

The IBF, at its annual convention, was considering whether to give its approval, a "sanction" in boxing terms, to championship fights in South Africa as its apartheid system began to crumble.

Kushner, a native South African and naturalized U.S. citizen, said he told Lee he favored the change.

"He was somewhat ambiguous," Kushner recalled. "On the one hand he was for it, and on the other he said he was under a lot of pressure, that there were people demonstrating (against it)."

The outcome of the deliberations was not immediately disclosed, but Kushner said he refused Beavers' suggestion that promoters pay $100,000 for each title fight sanctioned in South Africa.

Kushner said he believed King arranged for the Rev. Al Sharpton to bring demonstrators to the convention, in New Orleans.

King spokesman Greg Fritz said King opposed apartheid, but could not immediately say whether he had a role in any Sharpton protest. A Sharpton spokeswoman had no immediate response.

Kushner had testified earlier that in 1987 he persuaded the IBF to break with other boxing groups and rank South African fighters. He testified he paid $10,000 for that change.

Kushner said that most of his payments to Lee were "preventive medicine:" efforts to ensure good treatment for his boxers, not for any specific action.

"If Bob was happy, someone else's fighter might not jump over my fighter, or if I needed more time for a mandatory (fight), that might be granted," said Kushner, 51, who gained fame in the 1970s as a promoter of rock 'n' roll concerts before turning to boxing in 1982.

Three to four times a year, from 1987-1994, Beavers would drive from his home in Portsmouth, Va., to Kushner's home in East Hampton, N.Y., and get cash ranging from $2,500 to $10,000, Kushner said.

Kushner is the fourth big-time promoter to testify against Lee. All have said payoffs were required to do business with the East Orange, N.J.-based IBF. As one of three major sanctioning bodies for boxing in the world, its rankings and decisions play a large role in the purses earned by boxers, of which managers and promoters get a cut.

Kushner is expected back on the stand Wednesday, where he is to discuss a $100,000 bribe other witnesses have said he funneled to the IBF for a rematch between heavyweight champion George Foreman and Axel Schulz.

Lee and other IBF officials are accused of taking $338,000 in a span of more than a decade in exchange for favors and rigged rankings, but the bulk of that money stems from the machinations regarding Foreman and Schulz.

Lee, 66, of Fanwood, N.J., and his son, Robert Jr., 38, of Scotch Plains, N.J., are the only defendants on trial. They face multiyear prison terms if convicted of conspiracy, racketeering, fraud and tax charges.

Former IBF championship committee chairman Bill Brennan, 86, of Warsaw, Va., past president of the U.S. Boxing Association, a group that became the IBF, was severed from the trial because of ill health.

The IBF's South American representative, Francisco "Pacho" Fernandez of Colombia, remains at large.

The Lee trial is in its 12th week and is expected to last into August. In the meantime, a court-appointed monitor is overseeing the IBF, and Lee is barred from participating in IBF affairs.