Mayweather sues Showtime; owed ‘at least’ $340m
CALIFORNIA: ALTHOUGH Floyd Mayweather Jr. made hundreds of millions of dollars during his professional boxing career and topped the Forbes list as the highest-paid athlete from 2012 to 2014, the boxer said he has been shortchanged and filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Showtime.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday and obtained by ESPN, seeks to “recover hundreds of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds and damages resulting from a long-running and elaborate scheme of financial fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and conspiracy orchestrated by Floyd J. Mayweather’s former manager and advisor, Al Haymon, with the knowing and substantial participation and aid of Defendants Showtime Networks Inc. and Stephen Espinoza, among others.”
Mayweather, 48, says he is owed “at least” $340 million and cites a “complex web of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions and deliberate concealment of financial records” as the reason he believes he has been defrauded from those funds.
Haymon is not named as a defendant in the complaint. Espinoza didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
In 2013, Mayweather signed a 30-month, six-fight deal with Showtime that was, at the time, the richest for an individual athlete.
He fought Robert Guerrero, Canelo Alvarez, Marcos Maidana (twice), Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto during that deal and also faced UFC superstar Conor McGregor on Showtime PPV.
Mayweather fought eight times on Showtime PPV, with the Pacquiao bout still standing as the highest-grossing payper-view in history with over 4.4 million purchases and $410 million in revenue generated.
