By Rick Reeno

On Wednesday morning, Golden Boy Promotions officially announced that their company had filed a $300 million lawsuit against manager/adviser Al Haymon and related companies and Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. and its related hedge funds.

Golden Boy's lawsuit alleges repeated violations of antitrust laws and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act.

The lawsuit alleges that Haymon - through his Premier Boxing Champions series - "has entered into agreements to restrain trade in a substantial portion of the market for promotion of Championship-Caliber Boxers." And the papers further claim that Haymon is exploiting fighters by violating the Ali Act.

"During my 25 years in boxing, I have watched far too many fighters be chewed up, spit out and left with nothing to sit idly by while Mr. Haymon flaunts a federal law meant to protect those who put everything on the line to entertain fans of our sport," said Oscar De La Hoya, Founder and President of Golden Boy Promotions.

"The Muhammad Ali Act was passed to help fighters avoid the fate that bedeviled so many of our predecessors; and I will do everything in my power to ensure this crucial piece of legislation is upheld and followed."

According to the lawsuit: "By ignoring the 'firewall' established by the Ali Act, the Haymon Defendants are essentially sitting on both sides of the bargaining table. While purporting to act in their clients' best interests, the Haymon Defendants have obtained direct and indirect financial interests in promoting their boxers - thereby creating the very conflict of interest the Ali Act sought to remedy."

"At the age of 50 and after spending most of my adult life in boxing, I thought I'd seen every trick in the book aimed at undermining those who actually step into the ring," said Bernard Hopkins, a co-owner of Golden Boy. "Having personally been refused a lucrative fight with a Haymon-managed fighter, I have felt first-hand the impact of Haymon's attempt to form a monopoly. These practices are detrimental to boxers, fans and the sport as a whole."



The bulk of Haymon's vast stable was once promoted by Golden Boy. Earlier this year, an undisclosed financial agreement was reached where Haymon broke away from Golden Boy with nearly every fighter under his guidance.

Golden Boy's lawsuit, and press release, not only took aim at Haymon, but also took aim at the promoters who work with Haymon.

"Haymon is, not only pushing out other legitimate promoters in favor of ineffective puppets that he controls, but locking out top fighters who dare to not join his stable of boxers," the press release noted.

The actual legal documents broke down Golden Boy's allegations, which claim Haymon is locking up all of the television dates, and venues, with the use of "sham" promoters to do his bidding.

"With respect to some of the boxing events they promote, the Haymon Defendants seek to create the false impression that they are not really the promoters by employing licensed promoters, controlled or dominated by them, to “front” for the Haymon Defendants, posing as the nominal promoters of such events for a fixed fee, while, in fact, the true promoters are the Haymon Defendants. By such use of such “sham” promoters, the Haymon Defendants not only take a “direct or indirect financial interest in the promotion of a boxer” in violation of federal and state law, they are, in every sense, the true entrepreneurs and promoters of the bout, taking the profits, making the decisions and paying a fixed fee to the sham “promoters.” The sham promoters do not make the key promotional decisions and do not even have promotional contracts with the boxers they purport to promote."

"Just as they act to “lock up” network air time in order to lock out their competitors, the Haymon Defendants have acted to “lock up” all desirable dates for bouts in major arenas, doing so, here again, to render Golden Boy and other legitimate promoters unable to arrange attractive and profitable bouts for their Championship-Caliber Boxers at such arenas. And the Haymon Defendants have attempted, by other unlawful means, to prevent legitimate promoters from arranging desirable boxing matches, so that, by such schemes, defendants can induce boxers to sever their relationship with other promoters and such legitimate promoters will be driven from the business."

Promoter Lou DiBella of DiBella Entertainment, has worked closely with Haymon for over a decade.

DiBella erupted when the read the statements, and allegations, that were made in Golden Boy's press release. He was very offended with Golden Boy labeling him as an "ineffective puppet" that Haymon controls.

"I want to address this in three different ways. The first is the part of me who is a Harvard educated lawyer who knows more about the Ali Act than they do and their lawyer does. I haven't even read the lawsuit. I just read the press release because the lawsuit is not my concern. The press release showed such a misunderstanding of the law - but also the incredible, unadulterated, ridiculous, over the top hypocrisy by De La Hoya, Hopkins, and Golden Boy to be suing on this basis. It's a friggin joke...it's the ultimate joke and I'm going to list the reasons why,' DiBella explained to BoxingScene.com.

"First of all, let me address the Ali Act. The Ali Act was designed to prevent the exploitation of fighters. The firewall that they are talking about is to stop managers from working for promoters or being controlled by promoters. And this is what writers don't get, what most fighters in boxing don't get, and even most managers and promoters - is the purpose of the act and why it exists. And its probably no accident on why there has been so few prosecutions or lawsuits under the Ali Act, because most people don't friggin understand it. Clearly Oscar, Bernard and their lawyers don't."

"The manager has a duty to the fighter, what they call a fiduciary duty. A promoter doesn't. A promoter just has a duty to negotiate with the fighter honestly and to make sure certain disclosures are made to the fighter. That's it. A manager has a duty to look out for the fighter, to maximize a fighter's money. A manager is not supposed to be controlled by a promoter or work for a promoter. There is nothing in the Ali Act that that says a manger can't hire a promoter on a case by case basis, nothing."

"Here is where the joke comes in - these clowns, clowns - Oscar and Golden Boy - they just got paid a huge settlement to release all of these fighters. So now they are going to save all of these fighters from being exploited - when [these fighters] are making more money and fighting in front of more people than they ever did with Golden Boy. What a joke."

DiBella says it was Golden Boy who worked closer with Haymon, for several years, than anybody else. Even some of DiBella's own fighters who were managed by Haymon, like Andre Berto, left his company to fight under the Golden Boy banner in order to face other fighters being promoted by Golden Boy. Berto's departure was obviously influenced by Haymon's close relationship at the time with Golden Boy.

The majority of the Golden Boy/Haymon relationship was handled under the rule of former Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, but after Schaefer's departure last June, Golden Boy continued to do business with Haymon and co-promote his fighters until the two sides reached their agreement to break their business ties in January.

The Golden Boy/Haymon relationship was very lucrative for all of the involved parties. Golden Boy's successful run was a deciding factor in extending Schaefer's contract as company CEO with a multi-year agreement in 2012. That very agreement was the basis for Golden Boy's lawsuit against Schaefer when he stepped away from the company two years later. That lawsuit was also settled in January.

"I'm asking you this question and I'm asking all your readers. Who was the first company that was the promoter for hire for Haymon? Golden Boy. So [De La Hoya is] now pissed off now because his company is not making the money. I'm promoting shows for PBC and I'm promoting shows with fighters managed by Haymon, but I'm not the only promoter doing it. There are a bunch of other promotional companies promoting shows [with Haymon fighters]. Algieri, who fights Khan, is with Star Boxing. Sampson Boxing has a kid fighting Edwin Rodriguez. Murphy's Boxing has Danny O'Connor who is fighting Malignaggi. Eddie Hearn has a few fighters [facing Haymon fighters]," DiBella said.

"When Oscar was the only game in town promoting for Haymon. Where was Oscar's complaining? Where was Oscar and Bernard complaining then? Where were these great saviors for the fighters? And now they are getting exploited because they are making more money and being shown to more people. How dare these clowns call me an ineffective puppet under Haymon's control. How dare they. If I'm ineffective then they must really be ineffective because I just promoted a show on April 11th that set a record for the gate at the Barclays Center, it set the record for number of people who bought tickets, it set the record a for the number of people at a boxing show in Brooklyn."

"And they had an exclusive with the Barclays Center for three years. An exclusive. They shut out every promoter in the United States and every promoter in New York couldn't promote at the Barclays Center because Golden Boy had an exclusive - but I guess that was okay for Bernard and Oscar - because they were the ones benefiting from it. And even with that giant advantage, that great promotional company never did a million dollar gate, never put more than 10,000 people in the arena. I did on my first try."

"And I got damaged, every promoter in the business got damaged, when HBO's budget was totally co-opted by Golden Boy because they had an output deal with HBO. But these holier than thou assh**es are suing everybody for non-competitive behavior and all of this other crap when they were the kings of it. And I'm not going to get into Oscar's personal life, but what's he going to claim that he was just screwed up and had no idea what was going on - or maybe he was just enjoying the money."

"They got millions of dollars to release these fighters. But now they send out this press release that they want to protect these fighters. They have never been out to protect anyone but themselves. The whole thing, there is line after line in here [in the press release] that is complete horse sh*t. And I'm not responding on behalf of PBC or on behalf of Haymon. I'm responding because they are going to make reference to ineffective puppets. I'm not controlled by anybody. I work for me. I'm not controlled by any network, any individual. And if I'm infective then they are totally incompetent."

"Maybe these holier than thou guys should be paying more attention to the Canelo Alvarez lawsuit, where you have a small promotional company [All Star Boxing] and they stole a fighter and now they are in court being sued [in Florida], and in my opinion they are probably going to have to ante up quite a bit of money...in my opinion. But I guess that's good competition, when you steal a fighter from other people. I think its fair competition when you sign an exclusive deal with the Barclays Center. I guess its fair competition when you have an output deal with HBO. The hypocrisy is mind blowing."

"No one stopped me, no one stopped Kathy [Duva], no one stopped Bob Arum and Top Rank, and certainly no one stopped Golden Boy from going out and buying time on TV networks. There is money raised and time buys being purchased on networks. Nobody is being exploited. Why doesn't Oscar produce the numbers if he wants to protect all of these guys that he released - which by the way, from what I read and I don't know this, Oscar got millions of dollars to release these fighters and now he files a lawsuit because he and Bernard are so troubled that they want to protect these fighters?"

"Show me numbers of what Oscar was giving them when they were promoted by Golden Boy compared to what they are getting now. There is nothing worse than hypocrisy combined with stupidity and this press release is a monument to hypocrisy combined with stupidity."