Bill Cayton

William D. "Bill" Cayton (June 6, 1918 – October 4, 2003) was a boxing promoter. He helped to manage Mike Tyson early in his career, and acted as a film historian and producer to preserve boxing's legacy. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005.

Born in New York City, Cayton graduated from the University of Maryland in 1937 with a degree in chemical engineering and founded advertising agency, Cayton Inc. in 1945. He became involved in boxing in 1948 when he created and produced the TV program titled "Greatest Fights of the Century" to promote Vaseline brand hair tonic. Television was then in its infancy, and Cayton felt that boxing was the sport that lent itself best to the tiny black and white screens of the time.

To create the program, and many others that followed, he licensed, then later acquired, rights to vintage boxing film footage, and for nearly fifty years amassed and restored a collection of thousands of films going back to 1897. These films featured such legendary boxers as Jim Corbett, Jack Johnson (with a soundtrack by Miles Davis), Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Wilfred Benítez, and Kid Gavilan. Cayton even acquired rights to the first boxing film ever made, a sparring session filmed by Thomas Edison in 1894. His effort in collecting, restoring, and maintaining these films, many of which were rapidly deteriorating, is credited for preserving modern boxing's heritage and history.

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