Floyd “Money” Mayweather made more than a billion dollars in his boxing career — but he doesn’t think he received his fair share.
Mayweather, 48, has filed lawsuit in California against Showtime — the network which aired his biggest pay-per-view events — and former Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza, alleging aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, conversion and unjust enrichment. He is seeking at least $340 million in misappropriated funds and punitive damages.
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TMZ first reported news of the suit.
The suit claims that revenue which should have been distributed to Mayweather was instead sent to his then-advisor, Al Haymon. Haymon is not named on the lawsuit as a defendant, despite the claim appearing to suggest wrongdoing on his part.
Mayweather says his new management team requested to view Showtime’s financial records, but were told those records were lost in a flood and inaccessible.
“Floyd is one of boxing’s biggest pay-per-view draws,” Mayweather’s attorney Bobby Samini said in a statement to TMZ Sports. “He generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Showtime. Mr. Mayweather now takes this fight to the courtroom to recover what he rightfully earned. Retiring undefeated at 50-0, Mr. Mayweather will go the distance in the courtroom just as he has in the ring.”
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Mayweather was involved in two mega-fights in particular, with Manny Pacquiao in 2015 and Conor McGregor in 2017, which made hundreds of millions of dollars in pay-per-view revenue. The fights still sit as the two most lucrative fights in combat sports history.
Mayweather fought eight pay-per-view events under the Showtime umbrella, which are estimated to have generated around 15 million buys and more than a billion dollars in revenue.
Showtime Sports no longer exists after its parent company, Paramount, shut down the division in 2023. Paramount now has deals with TKO for the UFC and Zuffa Boxing.
Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) retired from professional boxing in 2017 but has continued to compete in various exhibition matches since. He most recently faced John Gotti III at the age of 47 in August 2024.
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