by David P. Greisman
They are mortal enemies, and so it is only a matter of fate that they work against each other after less than two years of working with each other.
It is a matter of fortune – of millions of dollars – that has them working against each other again.
Golden Boy Promotions, headed by retired boxer Oscar De La Hoya, has sued Top Rank Inc., headed by longtime promoter Bob Arum. The lawsuit, filed last week at the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, charges that Top Rank engaged in racketeering – making money illegally – by lying about the profits it made in three fights involving Manny Pacquiao.
Those profits were to have been shared with Golden Boy, pursuant to a legal agreement the promoters made back in 2007. Last week’s lawsuit alleges that Top Rank’s books were cooked and so Golden Boy was underpaid its portion of the profits.
This changes everything. This changes nothing. They are back to where they were before. They are officially back to where, recently, they have been unofficially.
De La Hoya and Arum were once partners. Top Rank had promoted De La Hoya from his first professional fight in 1992 on into the later years of his career. De La Hoya started his own promotional company in 2002 but continued to fight under and work with Top Rank through 2004, when the companies cooperated for the third and final bout between Erik Morales (then with Top Rank) and Marco Antonio Barrera (then with Golden Boy).
Once collegial, they became competitive, then cutthroat.
They promoted against each other. They sniped at each other. They signed the same fighter.
Pacquiao.
Both claimed rights to the Filipino sensation in 2006. Both had signed contracts. They went to court and into mediation. Finally their cold war ended. They reached an agreement in 2007. They would work together.
That they did, starting in October 2007 with Manny Pacquiao’s rematch against Barrera, continuing with the fight between Miguel Cotto (Top Rank) and Shane Mosley (Golden Boy), Pacquiao’s rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez, the bout between Bernard Hopkins (Golden Boy) and Kelly Pavlik (Top Rank), Pacquiao’s fight with De La Hoya himself, Mosley’s fight with Antonio Margarito, and Pacquiao’s fight with Ricky Hatton.
Hatton-Pacquiao was the last time Golden Boy and Top Rank co-promoted a show. That was May 2009.
Under their agreement, Pacquiao was a Top Rank fighter, but Golden Boy got a share of the profits whenever Pacquiao fought, whether Pacquiao was facing a Top Rank fighter or a Golden Boy fighter.
The lawsuit says Golden Boy handled the accounting for shows in which Pacquiao faced a fighter in its promotional stable: the Barrera, Marquez, De La Hoya and Hatton bouts. Top Rank did the accounting for shows in which Pacquiao faced another Top Rank fighter, as was the case in his bouts with David Diaz, Cotto and Joshua Clottey.
Golden Boy claims Top Rank’s numbers were incorrect – and intentionally so, at that – keeping more money for itself.
Though May 2009 and Hatton-Pacquiao is the last time the two promotional banners hung alongside each other, Top Rank and Golden Boy subsequently sought to make the biggest fight either could make: a bout between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Those negotiations failed spectacularly. The sniping over that failure picked up. The rhetoric was heated. The cold war was coming back.
Neither has been too interested of late in co-promoting, be it with each other or with other promoters. The main fighters at Golden Boy and Top Rank largely fight opponents signed to their respective promoters.
Pacquiao, since knocking out Hatton in 2009, has faced Cotto and Joshua Clottey, and he will get in the ring with Margarito this November. Four of the six opponents Cotto has faced since he defeated Mosley in 2007 were Top Rank fighters at the time: Margarito, Clottey, Pacquiao and Yuri Foreman (a fifth, Alfonso Gomez, has since signed with Top Rank).
On the Golden Boy end, Mosley, since beating Margarito in 2009, has fought Mayweather and Sergio Mora. Juan Manuel Marquez, since his 2008 rematch with Pacquiao, has fought Joel Casamayor, Juan Diaz (twice) and Mayweather, and will face Michael Katsidis in November.
Many of these are good fights. But there are other good fights available, and they’re not necessarily going to happen. They definitely will not happen now if one fighter is with Golden Boy and one fighter is with Top Rank.
These are financial decisions. Rather than split profits between two promoters, the money made can stay in-house.
For promoters, it is not so much about delivering the best fights for the fans as it is about delivering the best fights for their bank accounts. Sometimes they do both.
Sometimes.
And so this lawsuit changes nothing. But it also changes everything.
Top Rank and Golden Boy had already gone nearly a year-and-a-half without putting on a fight together. There were no immediate plans for them to do so. The détente had degenerated into hostility.
The lawsuit guarantees that they won’t work together again in the near future. Active litigation doesn’t cultivate cooperation. Top Rank had refused to work with promoter Gary Shaw for a time while Shaw had a lawsuit out against Top Rank over Jose Luis Castillo’s failure to make weight for his third fight with the late Diego Corrales.
Arum has told reporters that Golden Boy’s lawsuit was the wrong route to take, that their 2007 agreement called for them to return to the mediator in such a situation as this. The 19-page complaint Golden Boy filed in Las Vegas is akin to shots being fired in a demilitarized zone.
For mortal enemies, it is a matter of fate. For rival promoters, it is a matter of fortunes.
Boxing fans want fights between Top Rank and Golden Boy to take place in the ring. The only battle pitting the two against each other for some time will be restricted to the courts.
The 10 Count
1. “I’m not going to waste my time litigating in the media,” Judd Burstein, attorney for Golden Boy Promotions, was quoted as saying by Lem Satterfield of AOL Fanhouse/BoxingScene.com. “In my experience, virulent outrage is the traditional response of the guilty persons.”
So on one hand: Judd Burstein is not going to waste his time litigating in the media.
But on the other hand: Burstein uses the media to say that any outrage on the part of Top Rank is indicative of their guilt.
2. Please don’t sue me, Judd.
3. Why is “Sucra” Ray Oliveira being allowed to face Joey Spina this Saturday?
When he was at his best, Oliveira was a very good, tall junior welterweight who just never reached the top. He beat a young Vivian Harris in 2000, out-pointed Vince Phillips that same year and then lost to Ben Tackie in 2001. His record also includes a loss to a welterweight Vernon Forrest back in 1997.
Oliveira’s final two fights were a knockout loss to Ricky Hatton in 2004 and a scary stoppage loss to Emanuel Augustus in 2005.
In the eighth round of that Augustus fight, Oliveira began to paw at the back of his neck. The referee, Steve Smoger, showed immediate concern, taking Oliveira to the ringside physician in the corner and pressuring the doctor to stop the fight.
The physician let it continue. Oliveira was in obvious pain and distress, and in the remainder of the round Augustus did little offensively, jabbing to the body but never going upstairs, letting the time tick off until Smoger did the right thing in halting the match himself once the round ended. New Hampshire’s athletic commission issued a medial suspension for Oliveira for 90 days afterward, according to a report obtained by BoxRec.com.
Fortunately, what looked like signs of a serious brain injury weren’t actually symptoms of what was bothering Oliveira. In an article last week by BoxingScene’s own Thomas Gerbasi, we learned that “three vertebrae in his neck were fusing together due to a lack of fluid between them … and the injury worsened in the fight.”
Still…
Oliveira is now nearly 42 years old. He has not fought in five years. He is coming back now in hopes of getting three more wins so as to bring his win total to 50. And facing this former 140-pounder is Spina, a 33-year-old who has fought at super middleweight and light heavyweight. Their bout, originally slated as a light heavyweight fight, will instead be held in the 168-pound division.
Granted, Spina’s never going to be on the level of a world-class fighter, but he’s an active fighter whose only loss came four years ago against Peter Manfredo Jr.
It’s a travesty that the promoter, Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Entertainment and Sports, is putting on what seems to be such an apparent mismatch, capitalizing on each fighter being an attraction in New England (the bout is being held at the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut).
It’s a travesty that the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Athletic Commission is allowing such a mismatch.
I hope I’m proven wrong, that Oliveira, who in his prime had more skills than anyone Spina’s ever faced, is in good shape and makes a good accounting of himself. But there are good reasons that some in the New England-based boxing media have been concerned about this fight ever since the day it was announced.
This one just doesn’t pass the smell test.
4. For those of you saying that Mayweather could get 34 years in prison, please do a favor:
Stop.
Even if Mayweather were to be found guilty of all charges, jail and prison sentences don’t work on basic arithmetic. You don’t just add the sentencing guidelines for each charge together and come up with a final, possible sum.
Here are the sentencing guidelines for Mayweather’s charges: Two felony counts of coercion for allegedly threatening to beat two of his sons if they called 911 or left their house (1 to 6 years each); one felony count of robbery for allegedly taking his ex-girlfriend’s cell phone (2 to 15 years); one felony count of grand larceny (1 to 5 years); one misdemeanor count of battery constituting domestic violence (2 days to 6 months); and three misdemeanor counts of harassment for allegedly threatening his ex-girlfriend and the two sons (a maximum of 6 months each).
Here’s the thought of those that are wrong: 6 years + 6 years + 15 years + 5 years + 6 months + 18 months = 34 years maximum.
Nope.
Sentences aren’t necessarily consecutive – where one sentence ends and the next one begins. More often they are concurrent – where all the sentences run at the same time.
OJ Simpson’s sentences for kidnapping and armed robbery in Nevada are running concurrently, for instance (though he did have an additional, consecutive sentence of 1 to 6 years tacked on).
Not that Mayweather’s alleged crimes (while serious) are comparable with Simpson’s. The point being that if Mayweather were to be found guilty, his sentences probably would be concurrent.
One also must consider the alleged crimes. Not all felony robberies are going to lead to 15 years in prison, for example.
This seems like a prosecutorial stacking of the deck against Mayweather. He can either try to fight the charges and work to convince a jury of his innocence, or he can look at the legal case that is being mounted against him and choose to work out a plea deal that would see him face far less punishment than the sum of those sentences.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Former welterweight beltholder (and all-time-great nickname owner) Andrew “Six Heads” Lewis has been charged with assaulting a man in September in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown, according to that country’s The Stabroek News.
The 39-year-old has pleaded not guilty, is out on bail, and is due back in court Oct. 4. He hasn’t fought since October 2008, a loss that brought his record to 23-4-2 with 1 no contest and 20 knockouts.
Lewis captured a world title in 2001, losing it a year later to Ricardo Mayorga. He then got stopped by Antonio Margarito in 2003, prompting Larry Merchant to quip that Lewis has six heads but no chins. And back in 2006, Lewis quit a fight he was winning against Denny Dalton because he desperately needed to go to the bathroom.
6. All that still doesn’t give the newspaper the liberty it took to seemingly mock Lewis for the way he talks in what is an English-speaking country. He was quoted as asking for his bail amount to be lowered with this: “Ah could afford ten thousand meh worship, duh is all ah gat.”
Excuse me? Did they really write that?
You know, I worked as a reporter in New England for three years. In that time I heard tons and tons of Boston accents. I still used the letter R in their quotes…
7. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: We might very well have the worst fighter record ever to grace the esteemed ranks of Boxers Behaving Badly.
Robin Deakin, he of the one pro victory in his debut followed by 22 consecutive pro losses, is on trial for a spring assault, “accused of gouging the eyes of a 15-year-old boy by using his thumbs after a fight broke out,” according to British newspaper the Crawley News.
Well, that’s one way to win a fight. Attack a teenager (Deakin is 24). And don’t use your fists.
Deakin has said he did not gouge the kid’s eyes and that he was defending himself. His trial is scheduled to conclude this week.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly, part three: Wrapping up our holy trinity of boxers charged with assault is one Jamie Speight, an undefeated lightweight/junior welterweight who has been accused of attacking a man, according to British newspaper the Herald Express.
The article didn’t have much more information. The alleged incident dates back to October 2009. Speight, 22, has pleaded not guilty and is out on bail. No trial date has been set.
Speight turned pro in April 2009, winning all six of his fights, all of them by referee’s decision.
9. So, the British Boxing Board of Control has punished Ricky Hatton for the video showing him abusing cocaine and alcohol, taking away his boxing license as a punishment for “bringing boxing into disrepute.”
One: Taking his boxing license away? Have you seen him? He’s not going to be boxing anytime soon.
Two: Bringing boxing into disrepute? You do understand that this is boxing we’re talking about…
10. The rescheduled Super Six super middleweight tournament bout between Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham will be in Helsinki, huh?
Needless to say, this bout should be marketed as “A Fight to the Finnish.”
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com.
Follow David on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2 or on Facebook at facebook.com/fightingwordsboxing, or send questions and comments to fightingwords1@gmail.com
Follow David on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2 or on Facebook at facebook.com/fightingwordsboxing, or send questions and comments to fightingwords1@gmail.com
