Keeper Of the Famed

Before her first meeting with King, she got some pointed coaching: "I told her that basically, there was going to be an awful lot of drama," says Masters Barry, who was then serving on the boxing commission.

As Bain recounts it, there was drama aplenty. There she was, the only woman in the room, trying to get King to pay up, surrounded by his minions, who didn't take kindly to a woman telling them what to do.

"They yelled, they screamed, they threw a pitcher of water in my face," she says, with just a hint of relish at the memory. "Don King was . . . trying to intimidate me."

Her legs were shaking, she says, but she walked out with Camacho's check. For the next 12 years, she represented boxers in various ancillary capacities: Ali. Hearns. Hagler. Olijade.

In the '80s, women were an anomaly in boxing management. Radio One's Hughes, a big boxing fan, remembers that Bain was "inconsistent with what I'd imagined a woman manager of a boxer to be like. She was wearing a waist-length weave, she had all these braids all the way to her waist, a light-colored suit. I said, are you sure that's not the girlfriend rather than the manager?"

Boxing taught Bain to fight -- even if that meant scrapping with her own clients, like "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler, whom she sued for $9.9 million for breach of contract. (The case was settled in 1990 and both are bound by a gag order.)

"Boxing prepared me," she says. "I'm not intimidated. When you're cursed at, screamed at . . . That builds your resolve. I've got a strong spiritual resolve. No matter what happens, whether it's good or bad, God is ordering my steps."

Tough but Tender

One bad thing involved her defaulting on her law school loans to the tune of $67,000, including penalties and interest, for which she was sued by the U.S. government in 1999. She fields questions about this patiently, giving Marshall pointed looks as he scribbles notes.

(She says she paid the loans off through a third party who claimed to be representing the government in 1988, and after 10 years, had thrown away all the records and canceled checks. Because of this, she says, she decided to settle with the government and is still paying off the loan.)

She bristles when asked for comment on how some reporters during the Jackson trial found her frustrating to work with. That afternoon, she e-mails a list of about 20 journalists for The Post to interview, including Katie Couric and Larry King.

Later, she calls to back out of the story. "I'm not interested in participating in a hatchet job of me," she says. She describes how The Post should approach her profile: Talk about how she "inspires" people with her risk-taking in business, about her transition from publicist to business manager.

Three days later, she's standing at the door, holding out her arms for an embrace.