Something didn't sound quite Kosher about this to our resident Professor Emeritus of Smellogy, Nat Gottliev, although former NBA giant Artis Gilmore, the 7-2 inch center for the Chicago Bulls actually had parents shorter, but that's another story. Dr. Gottliev went to his Fistic Smellogy Library, located in his vast, temperature-controlled basement next to his collection of fine wine (and some mediocre Pinot Noir he keeps on hand for when Michael Marley comes over), to look up the Tartar Sauce invasion of Russia in the 13th century, an occupation, he found out, that lasted for two centuries and was marked by extreme cruelty, and much cross-breeding, none of it voluntary. Here is what he dug up on Don King's tall weenie tale:

From:

Buffon's Natural History: General and Particular --Translated by William Smellie (8 volumes, 1781) 

This site contains William Smellie's 1781 English translation of Buffon's Histoire naturelle:

All these people have broad large faces and flat noses. Their eyes are of a yellowish brown colour, inclining to black +; their eye-lids extend towards the temples, their cheek-bones are very prominent; their mouths are large, and their lips thick and reflected; the under part of their face is narrow; they have a squeaking voice; the head is large, the hair black and smooth; and the skin of a tawny or swarthy hue. Their size is diminutive; but though meagre, their form is squat. Most of them are only four feet high; and their tallest men exceed not four feet and a half. 

The following description of the Tatars was written in 1243: 

.They are hardy and strong in the breast, lean and pale-faced, rough and hug-shouldered, having flat and short noses, long and sharp chins, their upper jaws are low and declining, their teeth long and thin, their eye-brows (THIS IS DEFINITELY VALUEV)extending from their foreheads down to their noses, their eyes inconstand and black, their countenances writhen and terrible, their extreme joints strong with bones and sinews, having thick and great thighs, and short legs, and yet being equal unto us in stature: for that length which is wanting in their legs, is supplied in the upper parts of their bodies.

BUT, ANOTHER HISTORICAL ACCOUNT SAYS:

Tartar Giants

In 1575, when the Tartars invaded Poland, Jacobus Niezabilo-vius slew a warrior of enormous size who fought in their ranks. After the battle, Polish soldiers marveled that as he lay dead on the ground "his body was of so prodigious a bulk that... his carcass reached to the navel of any ordinary person standing by the side of it." 6 (See Graveyards of the Giants) 

And James Paris du Plessis, in his Short History of Human Prodigies, Dwarfs, etc., reports that a 

Hungarian, known as the "Monstrous Tartar," was exhibited at "Ye Globe in the ould Baily in February 1664. He was taken prisoner by Count Serini and was a creature of extraordinary strength and valour, who, having spent all his arrows in fight against the Christians, was taken alive and so continues being carefully kept in those parts."7

SO OBVIOUSLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT VALUEV'S SIZE IS HE WASN'T THE PRODUCT OF A RACE OF GIANTS, BUT MUST HAVE GOTTEN SOME GENES FROM SOME FREAK GIANTS AMONG THEM. So he is a freak show, Mr. King! But of course we all knew that anyway...

Only in America!