By Victor Salazar
In an article reported by BoxingScene.com, it cited that The Association of Boxing Commissions has asked the Attorney General of the United States to investigate “Alvin Haymon and various companies associated with him” for allegedly breaking numerous provisions of the Muhammad Ali Act.
On Wednesday, Golden Boy’s Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions filed a lawsuit against the high-powered adviser and his financial backers on the basis of a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The company sent out a press release that it was seeking 300 million dollars in damages.
Last week during the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight week festivities, WBO President Francisco Valcarcel tweeted that the WBO was willing to cooperate with an investigation of the US Attorney General for the betterment of the sport of boxing
BoxingScene.com spoke with The WBO President to get an in depth explanation of his tweet.
“Boxing, every 10 years and couple of certain or years, there should be hearings because we have a lot of moving components in the sport,” Valcarcel told BoxingScene.com.
“We want to clean the image and keep the good image of boxing. Boxing is a huge family but you always have 1 or 2 people on the other side of the fence and not doing something right and we want to convince everybody that boxing is a clean sport.
Valcarcel feels that the cleaner the image of the sport, the more it will get people attracted to the sport, including future fighters
“We want it to be a sport in which people have the opportunity to raise their family because as you know we don’t draft fighters from Universities,” stated Valcarcel. “A lot of fighters are from the most disadvantage communities. I think an investigation of the sport is very good. Now maybe they can used that to make amendments to the Muhammad Ali Act.”
What Valcarcel is calling for is the definition of the “advisor” role is in the Act.
“Al Haymon is doing something that should be clarified,” explained Valcarcel. “He’s an advisor and in our convention we discussed that an advisor should have a definition in the Ali Act. Now they don’t have a definition and they are doing whatever being promoter/managers, whatever.”
Valcarcel wants the punishment to be stricter. At the moment a violation of the Ali Act penalties are one year in prison and a fine of $20,000. Valcarcel says, “The law should clarify who an advisor is. We should increase the time in prison for anyone that makes a violation to the law, should be in prison for five years and the fine should be increased to $250,000.”
Valcarcel made it clear that his organization is willing to cooperate with anyone in the matter.
“We are willing to cooperate with any investigation regardless of where the investigation comes from whether if it’s the Attorney General, comes from Congress it’s welcome, comes from the Senate, we’re willing to cooperate with any investigation.”
