Dispute between Chris Algieri and promoter Joe DeGuardia carries on
Kevin Iole
Yahoo Sports
Apr 26, 2016 2:32 PM
Boxer Chris Algieri, unhappy with promoter Joe DeGuardia, said he assumes a great risk every time he walks into the ring and that without him, DeGuardia makes no money.
DeGuardia, unhappy with Algieri, said he assumes a risk every time Algieri fights and that without him, Algieri would have no one to pay him to fight.
The risk that Algieri faces in the ring is obvious. Despite the best regulatory efforts to enhance safety measures, boxers can and still do die in the ring, as well as suffer serious brain injuries.
The risk DeGuardia alludes to is financial. Promoters invest in boxers, often significantly, and if they don’t pan out, the promoter can lose large sums of money.
The dispute between the two is a long simmering one and cuts to the core of the boxer-promoter relationship.
Algieri is upset because DeGuardia takes a 50-50 split, which is extremely high in favor of the promoter for a fighter on Algieri’s level who fights on HBO or Showtime. Algieri agreed to a $325,000 purse to fight Errol Spence Jr. on April 16 in Brooklyn, a bout that was televised in primetime by NBC.
Per the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, a federal law signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, a promoter must disclose to any boxer who is in a 10- or 12-round fight all sources of income he obtains from a bout. However, the promoter isn’t required to provide the disclosure until the night of the fight.
DeGuardia provided Algieri with the information at the weigh-in on April 15, though Algieri had been asking for the information for months, as detailed in a Feb. 26 story on Yahoo Sports.
The issue from a boxer’s standpoint is how would he be able to fairly negotiate a purse unless he knew how much money was in the pot.
In the case of Algieri and DeGuardia, DeGuardia knew there was $650,000 in the pot, but Algieri did not until long after he’d signed the contract to meet Spence. He went through a complete training camp and incurred significant expenses only to find out at the weigh-in that DeGuardia would be earning the same amount as he would.
“It was a 50/50 split [but] a 50/50 split on paper,” Algieri said in a statement to Yahoo Sports. “I say on paper because after my expenses, I'm making significantly less than him. I have to pay my head trainer, my assistant trainer, my cut man, my attorney, my accountant, my camp coordinator, my sparring partners (weekly salary plus housing plus food), my strength coach and my physical therapist.
“None of that includes all of the other expenses I incur during training camp on a day-to-day and weekly basis. What expenses did he occur from this fight? Being he wasn't the lead promoter, did he have any expenses directly related to this particular fight? I spent nearly six figures on this fight alone, what did he spend?”
For the four biggest fights of Algieri’s career, against Ruslan Provodnikov and Manny Pacquiao in 2014, against Amir Khan in 2015 and against Spence two weeks ago, DeGuardia did little or no promoting.
In 2014, Provodnikov held the WBO super lightweight title. Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, was interested in matching Pacquiao with Provodnikov in Macau, China, later in 2014, after Provodnikov defended his title in the summer.
Art Pelullo of Banner Promotions promoted Provodnikov for the fight that was to be on HBO.
DeGuardia negotiated a deal with Banner and HBO to make Algieri Provodnikov’s opponent, though both Pelullo and Arum figured Provodnikov would win.
DeGuardia is one of the few who felt otherwise.
“I expected [Algieri] to win,” DeGuardia said. “So you know, I lobbied and pushed to get the Provodnikov fight. Originally, [Provodnikov] was set to fight Emmanuel Taylor. We put Chris in the ring with Taylor, thinking he would do well, which he did.
“Then I lobbied HBO, which didn’t want to give Chris the fight [against Provodnikov], even after he’d beaten Taylor. I got the fight. I got it done. The reason I lobbied so hard for Provodnikov is because I felt that from a style perspective, Chris could win that fight.”
HBO relented and Algieri got the bout against Provodnikov, which he won on June 14, 2014, in Brooklyn to become the WBO super lightweight champion.
Top Rank was promoting a bout between Miguel Cotto and Sergio Martinez in New York the week prior, and so Top Rank’s Fred Sternburg handled the vast majority of the public relations efforts for the Provodnikov-Algieri fight. DeGuardia, whose Star Boxing is based in New York, had little to do in terms of marketing or promoting that bout.
One promoter who asked for anonymity that Yahoo Sports spoke to about the situation said the only expenses DeGuardia incurred were either gas and parking or for a driver.
Arum and Top Rank handled all of the public relations duties for the Pacquiao-Algieri fight. And DiBella Entertainment was the lead promoter for Algieri’s fights with Khan, Erick Bone and Spence.
DeGuardia did a deal with DBE’s Lou DiBella for the Khan-Algieri bout that is known as a provision of services agreement, where he essentially loaned Algieri to DiBella for DiBella to promote for a specific fight. That arrangement was repeated for fights against Bone and Spence.
DeGuardia admits that his out-of-pocket expenses were negligible but said he was doing what Algieri wanted him to do in an effort to further Algieri’s career.
“Look at the Bone fight,” DeGuardia said. “In the Bone fight, I rolled the dice. I took a chance that Chris would win and I gave up all the money that I otherwise would have made on that fight so I could do that fight and satisfy Chris and satisfy Artie because that’s what Chris asked me to do. I did what he asked me to do.”
Algieri earned just $75,000 for the fight with Bone. He accepted the relatively low fee, he said in order to get out from under the option that Pelullo had gotten on him when he beat Provodnikov.
Because Provodnikov was the champion and the bigger name at the time he fought Algieri, Pelullo as Provodnikov’s promoter asked for options on Algieri. That meant that if Algieri won, Algieri agreed that Banner would be able to promote his next several fights with DeGuardia.
Top Rank had options on Provodnikov dating back to when Provodnikov met Timothy Bradley, which was why Top Rank was so heavily involved in promoting that Provodnikov-Algieri fight.
Algieri said he accepted the $75,000 purse for the bout with Bone as a way to complete his and DeGuardia’s obligations to Pelullo. Algieri said $75,000 represented 30 percent of the pot. That meant that DeGuardia and Pelullo had $175,000 to split.
Citing confidentiality agreements in his contracts, DeGuardia refused to discuss any purse specifics or splits.
“It was my understanding that by taking the Bone fight and getting rid of Banner Promotions, all future bouts would be negotiated openly – ALL future bouts,” Algieri said.
Algieri said that prior to the Bone fight, he was approached about fighting Spence, a rising star who was a member of the 2012 U.S. Olympic team.
And he said that he was offered the same money to fight Spence then – $325,000 – while Pelullo was still involved.
“What's most frustrating is the fact that the [Spence] fight was offered before, when Banner was still involved, for the same number,” Algieri said. “So when Banner was still involved, I would have made the same amount and Joe and Artie would have split the remaining number.
“With Banner out, the remaining amount all goes to Joe [and] I don't even get a cent more? Even if Joe split that remaining number, I still would have been making significantly less, percentage-wise, than is the industry norm, yet I wasn't given a dollar more from the entire pot.”
Yahoo Sports spoke to several promoters, none of whom were willing to speak on the record, who said it was unheard of for a fighter at Algieri’s level to take a 50-50 split with his promoter. And they were unanimous in saying that if a fighter asked for the Ali Act disclosure earlier, they would give it.
In a pre-fight story in Newsday that looked at Algieri’s complaints, DeGuardia said Algieri was trying to look into his pocket.
That line greatly irritated the boxer.
“He says, ‘I'm trying to look in his pocket,’ ”Algieri said. “Yes, [because] without me, he doesn't make a dollar. So yes, I think it's totally fair and totally in my right to know what he's making off of my fight. Off of me stepping in the ring and risking my life. Isn't that exactly the point of the Muhammad Ali Act?”
DeGuardia said that Algieri and attorney Eric Melzer negotiated hard for three weeks to land the $325,000 purse.
“They said nothing about splits,” he said.
DeGuardia attempted to use the 1999 negotiations between Oscar De La Hoya, who was then boxing, and Arum, as a comparison. For De La Hoya’s pay-per-view fight with Felix Trinidad, Arum offered De La Hoya two choices:
A higher guarantee and a lower percentage of the pay-per-view profits, or a lower guarantee and significantly more upside from the pay-per-view profits.
De La Hoya opted for the higher guarantee, which was around $20 million, and became upset when Arum hit it big because the pay-per-view performed extraordinarily well.
But that doesn’t really apply to the DeGuardia-Algieri case. There was no risk in DeGuardia-Algieri. DiBella paid DeGuardia a fee and DeGuardia used that to pay Algieri and make his own profit.
Arum, by contrast, had no idea how big the pay-per-view would do. At the time, 1.4 million was the largest ever done by non-heavyweights. By guaranteeing De La Hoya so much, Arum risked losing millions of dollars.
DeGuardia had no way of losing anything, so long as he didn’t pay Algieri more than the $650,000 he received from DiBella.
Most of the promoters Yahoo Sports spoke to said the fighters commonly get 75 percent or more of the pot and that the risk of loss is a risk a promoter must take to do business.
These cases are relatively rare, and the only way to change them is for Congress to amend the Ali Act and require disclosure much earlier, which isn’t expected to occur.
Dispute between Chris Algieri and promoter Joe DeGuardia carries on
But Al Haymon & PBC is what's wrong with Boxing
Take a 50% split of the entire pot from your fighters brehs
Al Haymon only gets a 10-15% fee
