Borges: Rival promoters file suit against Al Haymon
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Al Haymon
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Sunday, July 26, 2015
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By:
Ron Borges
Al Haymon must be doing something right. Everybody in boxing is suing him.
That’s the way it goes in this self-destructive sport whenever someone tries to do something right. Or even just something different.
Rather than challenge Haymon’s momentary takeover of boxing on free TV and lower-tier cable networks, rival promoters
Bob Arum and
Oscar De La Hoya chose to take him to federal court recently, claiming he violated the Ali Act.
They insist Haymon is not only creating a monopoly, but is also functioning as both promoter and manager, which is in theory illegal under the Ali Act.
To which I say, oh really? As if someone is actually managing
Manny Pacquiao or many of the young fighters boxing under Golden Boy Promotion’s promotional banner? Most of the guys serving as “managers” these days don’t know the word “no” exists, but they do know the words, “yes, sir!”
Without question Haymon is trying to duplicate the UFC model that swamped prize fighting because of mixed martial arts’ heightened bloodlust, marketing skill and ability to force fighters into matches they would rather avoid. UFC can do this because it has total control. You don’t want to take the match, have a seat.
Boxing is not so centralized and so avoidance is a major part of the game. So too is an unholy reliance with premium cable channels HBO and Showtime as well as pay-per-view. Many fights that in the past would have, at best, been on “HBO Championship Boxing” now masquerade as pay-per-view worthy when in many cases, they’re not even premium cable worthy.
In time, the result was a stultifying situation that began to choke the sport.
Haymon declines to speak publicly on any matters, so few people fully know his plans or his strategy. While Arum stomps his feet and acts like
Donald Trump with less hair, Haymon goes about his business, using a $400 million war chest from the investment firm Waddell & Reed to buy time on both free TV (NBC and CBS) and cable to present his stable of 200-plus fighters to a public starved to see them but tired of needing a bank loan to do so.
Last week, Haymon’s organization, Premier Boxing Champions, began circulating T-shirts with the logo “#FreeBoxing4 All.” That double entendre speaks both to the present business model, which is designed to put premium cable out of the boxing business by loosening its stranglehold on the sport’s financing, and to the federal lawsuits Haymon and Waddell & Reed now face.
The early result of Haymon’s efforts has been a number of good bouts, and while ratings have been encouraging, attendance has not, often resulting in arenas being wallpapered with free tickets. Haymon, nevertheless, believes eventually attendance and viewership will both grow as fans begin to know more of his fighters.
Arum sees it differently. His lawsuit claims that Haymon & Co. “are engaged in a sophisticated scheme to gain control of the boxing industry. As the lawsuit explains in detail, they are violating federal law, defying state regulators and absorbing significant short-term losses to drive legitimate operators out of the business.”
Haymon’s rebuttal was to term the lawsuit “a cynical attempt by boxing’s old guard to use the courts to undermine the accessibility, credibility and exposure of boxing that the sport so desperately needs.”
Among the allegations are that PBC blocked Top Rank from leasing venues for fights and prevented it from doing fights with Haymon fighters while freezing the company out of the television market. It also accuses the former music industry millionaire of reviving an old music business scheme: payola.
The suit alleges Haymon paid broadcasters to air fights involving his contracted boxers while taking large financial losses to try and put Arum and other promoters out of business. While the financial losses are real, the result, if it works, may be a radical new way of doing business in boxing. That does not preclude guys such as Arum and De La Hoya from going into their pockets as well but they continue to search for television rights fees and pay-per-view sales instead to support them and their fighters.
Whether Haymon is on to something or not remains to be seen because his investors won’t be willing to hemorrhage money forever, but that the old model that enriched Arum,
Don King and many other promoters was broken cannot be denied. While a few fighters got rich, the majority were starving and the sport’s market share was shrinking.
Boxing hadn’t been on network television for over 20 years for an assortment of reasons, but an unwillingness to match the fees premium cable would pay to air the sport to a limited audience was one of them. Haymon got around that by paying to be on national television rather than asking for a check, his theory being that over time viewership would grow and along with it ad revenue, new stars, increased leverage and probably the ability to stage his own pay-per-view shows without having to deal with HBO or Showtime, keeping more of the profits in-house.
Arum’s attorney,
Daniel Petrocelli, claimed the real intention of the suit is “to ensure that Al Haymon and Waddell & Reed play by the same rules as everyone else.” That, of course, is just the point. They don’t want to. They don’t want to sit by and allow short term profits to blind them to the disappearance of boxing from the public eye.
When Arum was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1999, he gave a powerful speech about the troubled future of the business and admitted he and King had contributed to boxing’s problems by always selling out to the moment. It appears he may have forgotten he ever gave it.
Froch’s parting shot
Carl Froch, the widely respected WBA/IBF super middleweight champion, couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t avoid throwing one last jab at
Joe Calzaghe on his way into retirement.
Froch, 38, made official last week what many had seen coming for months, which was a decision that he had no more worlds to conquer after knocking out countryman
George Groves with a crushing right cross on May 31, 2014 in front of 80,000 roaring witnesses at Wembley Stadium. Froch has not fought since and had become growingly aware his time had passed, as had Calzaghe’s before him.
Froch repeatedly challenged Calzaghe when he was coming up, but was ignored, Calzaghe seeing no need to face someone who presented little opportunity for gain. If he beat him, he would have gotten little credit. If he lost, Calzaghe’s hard-earned place atop British boxing would have dissolved.
The bad blood between them never receded, even after Calzaghe retired. Calzaghe gave his heir little credit for his accomplishments and that only served to further raise the ire of a man who made a career out of being simply tougher than almost everyone he faced.
Froch was not the most skillful of warriors, but he had a gladiator’s spirit and the gift of numbing power. He was a workman, always fit for the job and ready to engage in its more unsavory parts, which is how he ended up 33-2 with 24 KOs. His only losses came to
Andre Ward and
Mikkel Kessler, the second avenged.
“It’s difficult to compare my career to Joe Calzaghe’s because there are only a couple of names on his record that stand out,” Froch said. “I’ve beaten more world champions. I’ve beaten more people who have gone on to become world champions.
“My statistics smash his to bits on every angle, apart from the fact he retired undefeated (46-0, 32 KO). Worse fighters than Joe Calzaghe retire undefeated. An undefeated record doesn’t really mean a great deal if you don’t face everybody.
“I’ve had a far more classy and satisfactory and more entertaining career.”
Froch’s one regret is never having fought in Las Vegas, where he was willing to travel to face
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. before sustaining an elbow injury in training that forced him to withdraw. The only other match that seems to still interest him is one with the 43-year-old Calzaghe, whom he said he’d be willing to face “on the cobbles,” meaning in the street.
That won’t happen. Whether Froch’s retirement will last is, he admitted, less assured.
“I would never say never because I’ll probably want to fight until the day I die,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a drug out there, I don’t think there’s anything that I could do that would give me that exhilaration, that natural high, that rush, that feeling of winning and defending a world title. I don’t think that gap will ever be filled, but all good things must come to an end.”
All things but a good feud.
Short jabs
Rhode Island junior middleweight champion
Demetrius “Boo Boo”
Andrade may have made a boo-boo. The WBO is threatening to strip him of his title for inactivity. Although never injured, Andrade has not defended his title in 13 months, refusing several fights for career high purses he seemed to feel were beneath him. With his boring style, if Andrade loses that belt he may find out what he’s really worth. Which isn’t anywhere near what he thinks he’s worth, especially without a quarter of a world title coming with him. . ..
Apparently, like father like son. Middleweight prospect
Shane Mosley Jr. was suspended by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for testing positive for amphetamines after his 51-second KO of
Jason Kelly on June 27. You may recall his father
Shane Mosley Sr., testified under oath to a grand jury investigating the
Victor Conte BALCO scandal that he had taken undetectable steroids “the clear” and “the cream” and injected himself with EPO sold to him by Conte during training camp for his 2003 rematch with De La Hoya.
......floyd just trying to get a good fight on his undercard cause he knows his next ppv will most likely bomb. same thing when he told broner to get his undercard, but broner hit him with the
Kkkovalevs a boxing star 
...aj has weak resume though.
...
hmmm ............CORRECT
if Adonis gets KO'd by Kovalev
