Interesting question on IFL tv Q and A interview with Eddie Hearn
Should boxing promoters across the board set up pension schemes to help aid fighters if they get injured/retirement? We always hear of fighters going broke after boxing.
Sounds like a good idea to me, what you guys think?
They just need to form some sort of union like basketball has.
Unions work in basketball and football because there is a single entity to effectively bargain with.
You can't unionize in a sport where everyone is essentially a contractor and promoters provide a service of promotion.
You can't have an effective union where 2/4 are signed w/ Haymon, 1/4 with TR and 1/4 signed to everyone else.
And you guys are making this a promoter's issue - which in itself just isn't feasible. They are agents - not employers. This to me falls in the realm such as drug testing that should be done by state and federal governments e.g. the Commissions.
Imagine Top Rank wanting to pay into a pension fund for Al Haymon's guys and these guys can't even negotiate a deal to match their fighters. Why would they wish to do this?
Then you run into issues where promoters offering all these perks like pensions/healthcare or whatever and then locking these guys into lifetime contracts for example, you are signed to Goosen promotions and in order to draw out from the pension plan - you have to fight under Goosen's banner for 10 years. So you are in year 6 - and you can't go across the street to Top Rank because you have to be there for 10 years to draw a pension, but TR is only willing to sign you up for 3 years and you are already on the downslide of your career. Do you go to Goosen and make less money for a pension that pays say 20% of your median net income?
I think a better use of time and money is to invest in actual financial education for these guys. Boxers by and large are just money illiterate. Keep giving them money without a educational foundation in finance will keep them broke and desperate regardless pensions.
I mean I have some real generic questions for something like this:
- And what is the calculation on how much each recieves?
- Do multi-million earning fighters like Pac, Money or Cotto etc pay into a pension, but don't receive pensions?
- What is the minimum amount of fights/years/rounds does a fighter have to engage in to be eligible to draw a pension?
- Who will be the fund manager/trusted agent that overseas the program? The feds?
- Is this open to foreign fighters or are they left to their own devices from their respective governments? Our political landscape is such that giving pensions to athletes would not be stomached - you could potentially have a situation where more socially liberal societies with substantive social nets could provide a program and US fighters or countries like Mexico with broken governments unable to provide
All in all - that's just a few questions that popped up within 20 seconds - nevermind legal issues and other complex questions and issues such as unions and such.
To be fair, its the fault of the boxers themselves that they get into situations where they blow their millions. You just have to be smart with your money. Now, this probably only applies to that select elite few who make the big $$$, so I feel perhaps those guys should be exempt, but the guys fighting on the lower tier, who make a hard living and hardly make any money to survive on but risk their health, then yeah, a pension scheme COULD work. Hard to implement effectively though.
manny and especially floyd need to do what allen iverson's advisers did for hm and set up trust fund that they cannot touch till they are 50 or something.
the way both guys spend their money, they better do it now before its too late. that's the only financial saving grace iverson has.
I was just about too bring up Iverson. I think every athlete should do that
Interesting question on IFL tv Q and A interview with Eddie Hearn
Should boxing promoters across the board set up pension schemes to help aid fighters if they get injured/retirement? We always hear of fighters going broke after boxing.
Sounds like a good idea to me, what you guys think?
They should be able to file workers comp for an injury take a look at Gerald Mccleam the guy is broke and disabled don't you think he should have got like a 5 million dollar settlement , medical care for life and a monthly salary for life like 5000 a month
The club show promoters would be crippled with the burden of paying in to a pension fund, they should be excluded.
However, put a 5% tax on the major promoters any time their promotion grosses over $1Million for a show and it would be a good start.
Let's just say that May and Paq grosses say $150Million, $7.5million would go directly in to the fund. Figure in the other big fights of the year at 5% and the fund grows even bigger. Do that year by year, with compound interest and the fighters would have something to fall back on.
That sounds good, yeah small club promoters would have a problem and the fighters also as they would be earning a small amount of money also.
Ok so maybe not the promoters then but if the managers do it then like in the video the guy asking the question said to put the money into an account which cannot be accessed until they are retired from boxing.