Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions is seeking more than $10 million in damages from Vergil Ortiz Jnr’s manager Rick Mirigian, claiming the veteran representative has interfered with its contract and the economic advantages of the agreement.

Amid reports that unbeaten WBC interim junior-middleweight champion Ortiz 24-0 (22KOs) is in the advanced stages of fight negotiations with recent unified welterweight champion Jaron “Boots” Ennis 35-0 (31KOs) for a bout that could fall on April 25 on DAZN, the January 29 crafting of this lawsuit casts a shadow over the process.

In the Golden Boy lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles by lead attorney Ricardo P. Cestero, the promoter claims Mirigian is interrupting efforts with the most successful of his 26 fighters in order to ingratiate himself with the new Zuffa Boxing promotion headed by UFC CEO/President Dana White.

“Unfortunately, Mirigian has embarked on a campaign of self-promotion … in an effort to ingratiate himself with the newest player in the boxing world – Dana White … and Zuffa,” Cestero wrote. “In a transparent effort to curry favor with Zuffa, Mirigian has deliberately and willfully interfered with Golden Boy’s contracts for his own personal interest. … He is acting for himself only.”

Mirigian and De La Hoya declined to respond to the lawsuit in interview requests from BoxingScene.

The lawsuit alleges Mirigian engaged in “a campaign of self-promotion” and has disclosed private details of Ortiz’s contractual situation with competing promoters, including Zuffa, Canelo Promotions and Matchroom.

Ortiz has alleged in his own lawsuit against Golden Boy that the promoter’s expiring union with streaming partner DAZN provides Ortiz, 27, the freedom to leave Golden Boy.

Golden Boy counters in the lawsuit that it signed Ortiz to a three-year deal in August 2024, when he won the WBC interim belt by defeating Serhii Bohachuk, clinching the right to exclusively negotiate all of Ortiz’s boxing activities and matches.

Any other offers by third parties were to be presented to Golden Boy, the lawsuit claims. 

And Mirigian is alleged to have shared terms, minimum purses and the importance of the DAZN union to rival promoters, weakening Golden Boy’s position, the lawsuit said.

That continued through these Ortiz-Ennis talks, with the lawsuit claiming that while believing it was making good progress on the talks, Mirigian was “working behind the scenes to interfere with these negotiations.”

By talking to Ennis’ promoter Matchroom, Mirigian was “undermining” talks to arrange a different deal.

That, according to Golden Boy, has resulted in sabotaging the promoter’s ties to Ortiz and DAZN, triggering the lawsuit to confront his alleged “misconduct.”

Golden Boy seeks injunctive relief to stop the alleged interference and disclosed it is in danger of having its 2026-2027 license fee from DAZN reduced because of this dispute.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.