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Does Fighting Pacquiao in Court Make Legal Sense?
Making $100 million for a day’s work is a pretty good deal, but if you’re Manny Pacquiao, there’s a downside. Everyone will know that you just made $100 million — and someone will want a piece of it.
Fans who watched the fight on pay-per-view are trying to sue Pacquiao because they thought the fight was boring. After losing to Floyd Mayweather, Pacquiao claimed that he couldn’t use his right hand effectively because he’d suffered a shoulder injury while training for the fight. So the plaintiffs want us to believe that if Manny had said, “Hey, my shoulder hurts,” they wouldn’t have paid to watch. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Hypotheticals are hard to prove. What we do know is that Pacquiao lost two of his last five fights. There was a time when he was considered one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, but 2015 was not that time.
Then there’s his opponent, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. The undefeated Mayweather is a great tactician, not a brawler. His style is conservative, and he doesn’t take chances. That’s why many of his fights seem boring, and why his last six fights were all 12-round decisions. Could we sue Mayweather for being a counterpuncher? The fact is that this was a typical Mayweather fight. If you follow the sport, such an outcome should be no surprise, whether or not Pacquiao was injured.
The lead plaintiff is a bar that paid $2,600 to show the fight. Now, a bar doesn’t pay money like that out of a love of pugilism. They show the fight because they want to draw in customers. Those customers come in before anyone knows if the fight will be interesting. A fight that goes 12 rounds keeps those patrons in the bar for a much longer time than a first round knockout would, even if the first round knockout is more exciting. So what exactly are they claiming as damages?
The people joining the suit just wanted to watch a good fight. With sports, though, there’s never a guarantee that you’re going to get the outcome you hope for (unless you know some legitimate businessmen from Jersey). In a few weeks, people will flock to Belmont in the hope of seeing a Triple Crown. If American Pharaoh gives a weak effort, do we sue the horse?
I was once a Jets season ticket holder, so I know what it’s like to feel like you got ripped off after paying to see a sporting event. But if you really believed two middle-aged guys were going to give you a fight worthy of the $100-to-$2,600 price tag, you should have looked up the phrase caveat emptor.
You just spent a minute reading this. Think it was a waste? You can sue Rob Long.
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So I click on the “Sue Me” button on Rob Long’s profile page. Now I have been upgraded and he sends me a congratulations e-mail. What do I do now? Go for a full refund and become a Reagan Member.
I agree that suing for damages because the fight wasn’t entertaining is absurd. But what about people who bet on it? He did sign the Nevada Athletic Commission medical questionnaire, and he did say his shoulder was fine. It was untrue, apparently.
I’m going after the real money. I’m suing Peter Robinson.
How do you define “fine”? Does it have to be 100%? He was able to fight even though it was not optimal. At what percentage does it become “untrue”?
I have heard that he is well-heeled.
Since the fight was in Nevada and Nevada allows sports betting, I would think bookmakers and gamblers have a much stronger case to make then PPV customers. I do not know what the laws and regulations are in Nevada, but this is kind of like investing in company only to find out that their earnings estimates were bogus. Good question.
That is something a sock would be worried about I guess.
Shoulder is probably fine, he just needs a reason he lost, and a shoulder injury fits the bill as something rather hard to say he had it or not.
Sometime it is hard to say, “I got beat. The better man won.” But that may have been a cheaper explanation.
I will say that on the surface there is a nagging problem. I think if Pacquiao fought at less than full strength and failed to disclose that to the promoters, etc., they may have a contractual claim against him. (They didn’t pay him to go into the fight injured.) It seems strange that the promoters would take back money from Pacquiao, plus keep their share of the ticket sales, etc. It seems like double dipping.
I would think the promoters are the ones with the biggest incentive to hide an injury. It took years for them to put this together and there was huge financial incentive to make sure it didn’t get cancelled or postponed. Promoters only care about being able to sell the fight, they don’t care if the fight is any good (which is why Gerry Cooney got two title shots)
Pacquiao had pain-relieving drugs cleared with the US Anti-doping agency three weeks before the fight, and had surgery from one of the most renowned shoulder specialists in sports medicine four days after the fight. There is no doubt that the injury was legit.
They did declare all of the anti-inflammatory drugs and pain relievers that Pacquiao was taking for the injury on the same form, so their omission is puzzling.
Max Kellerman basically said the same thing on HBO a week after the fight. If the fight had been cancelled, a) there would have been at least as many lawsuits, and b)as difficult as this thing was to negotiate and stage, it almost certainly would never have happened at all if not when originally scheduled. Pacquiao probably figured his best chance to fight and win was to fight on May 2, injured or not.
The sport of boxing should go sue itself at this point.
Finally all eyes were off MMA and on boxing. The sport finally had its chance to make us remember why we used to love it.
It instead reminded us why we left it – boredom.
Clinching used to be a foul. It’s still a foul – they simply stopped enforcing it like a foul (warning, point, disqualification).
So we have slow dance competitions with men hugging one another after the first punch of every exchange.
Good grief. What a blown opportunity to get us excited about boxing again.
I would love to see Mayweather in a fight where they didn’t let him clinch. Pittypat-grab, pittypat-grab, is a good way to score points without getting hurt, but it is not fighting.
The promise of this fight was that Manny would force that.
I wish with all my might that Tommy Hearns was still boxing.
I have never seen excessive clinching from Floyd except in his last two fights, the rematch with Maidana and Pacquiao. Floyd could generally stand right in front of you and seem to have a sixth sense for when, and from what direction, a punch would come. A defensive master…
My son who is the Sanja Gupta of sports medicine wrote this article about the injury and controversy. From what I know I think there is standing for the lawsuits.