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If you thought Jeremy Corbyn divided opinion, take a look at Al Haymon, boxing’s most famous mystery man. He might be the new Don King, he might be Father Christmas.
Haymon collects fighters like writers collect quotes. However, unlike King, he is all but invisible. As far as we know, he is as clean as a dog whistle – and twice as hard to detect.
I ambushed him for a five-minute chat after a Floyd Mayweather press conference in Las Vegas once, and, smiling, he said four-fifths of bog all. His people have declined every interview request since then, the most recent a few weeks ago – as they have done on his behalf with any boxing hack wanting a few words on how he is taking over the sport.
With boxing's return to prime-time network TV, Al Haymon makes his move
Read more
Because, if you believe Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya, that is what he is trying to do. Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions enterprise has scooped up so many fighters (estimates vary between 140 and 200) from rival camps – Bob and Oscar being the owners of the most high-profile chicken coops – that contenders chasing a big payday rush weekly to do business with him. He’s a cash magnet.
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And that’s even when they know they might end up with zilch, as Amir Khan has learnt to his cost in his fruitless pursuit of Mayweather, boxing’s biggest bank. The latest boxers from these islands to fall for Haymon’s charms include world champions Carl Frampton and James DeGale. Wish them luck.
But is Haymon the devil incarnate, as Arum and De La Hoya paint him in their extant US Federal Court lawsuit, claiming he has violated the Ali Act, which (in theory) prohibits promoters doubling up as managers? They say he’s freezing them out of venues and fighters, creating a monopoly. Haymon’s lawyers describe the suit as “baseless”.
Or is Haymon the accidental saviour of a sport that lurches from amazing to dire in the space of a week?
What is the substantive difference between Haymon’s reductionist cornering of a part of the market – mainly on free-to-air TV and some cable channels you’ve never heard of – and the way Showtime and HBO, along with Arum, De La Hoya, King and a handful of others, have run boxing for decades?
The many ways to kill a boxing match
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Frank Warren, who knows more wrinkles about promotion and management than most people in the business, welcomes the rise of Haymon – with caution.
“What he’s doing is fabulous,” he tells the Guardian, “because he’s getting boxing on different channels in America, and that’s great. It doesn’t seem he’s interested in titles [no PBC boxer, whether or not a holder of a recognised belt, is introduced as such on his shows]. That I don’t agree with, because he suddenly can start owning everything and you can basically shut people out. If you’ve got title fights, guys can fight for a mandatory position and get a chance for a title. I think that’s important.
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“The rest of it remains to be seen how it works. He’s obviously got his game plan. He’s raised a lot of money, got a lot of financial backing to do it. It’s a very brave move. Only time will tell if it works or not.”
Would Warren work with Haymon?
“I’d work work with anyone. I’ve got no problem working with people. BoxNation buy fights from him, everybody, every single promoter that’s not tied in with other channels.”
That is the voice of pragmatism – the voice in boxing that matters most. There are no saints or sinners in the fight game, just pragmatists.
And Haymon has learned a simple lesson from his predecessors: control at least one weight division. For instance, by wrapping up 14 leading contenders at or around the 147lb classification that Mayweather has ruled for nearly a decade, Haymon has – as Warren suggests – virtually closed out his rivals. That’s why Andre Berto (who has lost three of his past six bouts) has been widely touted as Mayweather’s next opponent, although, at time of writing, the fading 31-year-old had yet to see a fight contract that proves it.
While boxers are fed up with being the property of faceless suits, they will follow the money. And the money is with Haymon, whose fighters become PBC champions without the encumbrance of sanction fees to any of the four main world governing bodies. After beating Manny Pacquiao in May, Mayweather declined to pay the $200,000 sanction fee demanded by the WBO for their title, and handed them back their trinket. Like, who wins that one?
Certainly, Haymon has livened up his sport. We might not hear what he says or see where he goes, but we know he is upsetting some people and pleasing others. And one group less pleased than most with the status quo are the fans, who are increasingly annoyed with the standard of pay-per-view fights, on both sides of the Atlantic. For too long, it’s a complaint Arum and others have been deaf to.
As the excellent Ron Borges observed in the Boston Herald this week: “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.”
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American boxing promoters and managers have always come in a kaleidoscope of shades and volumes. There were Doc Kearns and Tex Rickard, megaphone scam artists of the pioneer days a century and more ago; there was Frankie Carbo, his fellow mobster Blinky Palermo and their flash front man, Jim Norris, a gentleman crook who dressed as well as he spoke. Haymon, on the other hand, has a clean sheet, and his lawyers say the claims against him are, “entirely without merit”.
And, apart from those boxers in his employ, Haymon does have friends in boxing. “Al Haymon is the man,” King told Boxingscene.com. “His word is his bond... I love what he’s doing, but you have to understand that black success is unacceptable - because for 400 years it’s been deeply engrained into the psyche of America [that] people of colour are inferior, whites have supremacy … When they see [black success], it causes the problem because it differentiates from everything that they’ve been taught. The youth [are] not buying it, the young kids are not buying it. I’m proud of Al Haymon, he’s doing a great job.”
Now there’s an endorsement.
Haymon collects fighters like writers collect quotes. However, unlike King, he is all but invisible. As far as we know, he is as clean as a dog whistle – and twice as hard to detect.
I ambushed him for a five-minute chat after a Floyd Mayweather press conference in Las Vegas once, and, smiling, he said four-fifths of bog all. His people have declined every interview request since then, the most recent a few weeks ago – as they have done on his behalf with any boxing hack wanting a few words on how he is taking over the sport.
With boxing's return to prime-time network TV, Al Haymon makes his move
Read more
Because, if you believe Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya, that is what he is trying to do. Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions enterprise has scooped up so many fighters (estimates vary between 140 and 200) from rival camps – Bob and Oscar being the owners of the most high-profile chicken coops – that contenders chasing a big payday rush weekly to do business with him. He’s a cash magnet.
Advertisement
And that’s even when they know they might end up with zilch, as Amir Khan has learnt to his cost in his fruitless pursuit of Mayweather, boxing’s biggest bank. The latest boxers from these islands to fall for Haymon’s charms include world champions Carl Frampton and James DeGale. Wish them luck.
But is Haymon the devil incarnate, as Arum and De La Hoya paint him in their extant US Federal Court lawsuit, claiming he has violated the Ali Act, which (in theory) prohibits promoters doubling up as managers? They say he’s freezing them out of venues and fighters, creating a monopoly. Haymon’s lawyers describe the suit as “baseless”.
Or is Haymon the accidental saviour of a sport that lurches from amazing to dire in the space of a week?
What is the substantive difference between Haymon’s reductionist cornering of a part of the market – mainly on free-to-air TV and some cable channels you’ve never heard of – and the way Showtime and HBO, along with Arum, De La Hoya, King and a handful of others, have run boxing for decades?
The many ways to kill a boxing match
Read more
Frank Warren, who knows more wrinkles about promotion and management than most people in the business, welcomes the rise of Haymon – with caution.
“What he’s doing is fabulous,” he tells the Guardian, “because he’s getting boxing on different channels in America, and that’s great. It doesn’t seem he’s interested in titles [no PBC boxer, whether or not a holder of a recognised belt, is introduced as such on his shows]. That I don’t agree with, because he suddenly can start owning everything and you can basically shut people out. If you’ve got title fights, guys can fight for a mandatory position and get a chance for a title. I think that’s important.
Advertisement
“The rest of it remains to be seen how it works. He’s obviously got his game plan. He’s raised a lot of money, got a lot of financial backing to do it. It’s a very brave move. Only time will tell if it works or not.”
Would Warren work with Haymon?
“I’d work work with anyone. I’ve got no problem working with people. BoxNation buy fights from him, everybody, every single promoter that’s not tied in with other channels.”
That is the voice of pragmatism – the voice in boxing that matters most. There are no saints or sinners in the fight game, just pragmatists.
And Haymon has learned a simple lesson from his predecessors: control at least one weight division. For instance, by wrapping up 14 leading contenders at or around the 147lb classification that Mayweather has ruled for nearly a decade, Haymon has – as Warren suggests – virtually closed out his rivals. That’s why Andre Berto (who has lost three of his past six bouts) has been widely touted as Mayweather’s next opponent, although, at time of writing, the fading 31-year-old had yet to see a fight contract that proves it.
While boxers are fed up with being the property of faceless suits, they will follow the money. And the money is with Haymon, whose fighters become PBC champions without the encumbrance of sanction fees to any of the four main world governing bodies. After beating Manny Pacquiao in May, Mayweather declined to pay the $200,000 sanction fee demanded by the WBO for their title, and handed them back their trinket. Like, who wins that one?
Certainly, Haymon has livened up his sport. We might not hear what he says or see where he goes, but we know he is upsetting some people and pleasing others. And one group less pleased than most with the status quo are the fans, who are increasingly annoyed with the standard of pay-per-view fights, on both sides of the Atlantic. For too long, it’s a complaint Arum and others have been deaf to.
As the excellent Ron Borges observed in the Boston Herald this week: “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.”
Advertisement
American boxing promoters and managers have always come in a kaleidoscope of shades and volumes. There were Doc Kearns and Tex Rickard, megaphone scam artists of the pioneer days a century and more ago; there was Frankie Carbo, his fellow mobster Blinky Palermo and their flash front man, Jim Norris, a gentleman crook who dressed as well as he spoke. Haymon, on the other hand, has a clean sheet, and his lawyers say the claims against him are, “entirely without merit”.
And, apart from those boxers in his employ, Haymon does have friends in boxing. “Al Haymon is the man,” King told Boxingscene.com. “His word is his bond... I love what he’s doing, but you have to understand that black success is unacceptable - because for 400 years it’s been deeply engrained into the psyche of America [that] people of colour are inferior, whites have supremacy … When they see [black success], it causes the problem because it differentiates from everything that they’ve been taught. The youth [are] not buying it, the young kids are not buying it. I’m proud of Al Haymon, he’s doing a great job.”
Now there’s an endorsement.
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