What to Make of Golden Boy's Settlement with Richard Schaefer
The golden divorce has been finalized.
Ending months of speculation about the future of the company and its former CEO, Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions reached a settlement with longtime company head Richard Schaefer on Friday.
Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports first broke news of the deal, which will force Golden Boy to surrender promotional rights to a number of notable fighters.
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That group includes light welterweight champion Danny Garcia, middleweight titlist Daniel Jacobs and former champions Marcos Maidana and Adrien Broner, all of whom are signed to managerial deals with uber-adviser Al Haymon.
ESPN.com's Dan Rafael had a more thorough list of fighters no longer working with Golden Boy:
Golden Boy will retain the right to promote Haymon fighters Amir Khan, Leo Santa Cruz and Lucas Matthysse, each of whom is believed to owe the company at least one more fight on their current deals.
Canelo Alvarez, the Mexican sensation who recently returned to HBO on an exclusive contract, is not part of this deal. He has a separate contract and isn’t involved with Haymon.
Neither De La Hoya nor Schaefer were available for comment, but the ramifications of this settlement are obviously huge for all the major players and the sport as a whole.
What does this mean for fans and followers of the sweet science?
Another round of landscape-shifting changes is on the way, and it's going to hit everybody: Golden Boy, Schaefer, even the sport's pound-for-pound king and universally recognized top draw, Floyd Mayweather.
Schaefer will be barred from promoting for a specified period of time (as yet unknown), but you have to expect that he’ll be counting minutes until he can officially link up with Mayweather and Haymon as part of Mayweather Promotions or some new company the triad will form.
That writing has been on the wall from the minute reports of dissension in the Golden Boy ranks began to surface, and it only escalated with Schaefer’s sudden departure in June.
Throw into the mix the recent public tensions between Mayweather and longtime confidant and CEO of Mayweather Promotions Leonard Ellerbe—the pound-for-pound king apparently wasn’t happy with his handling of September’s rematch with Maidana—and his promises of a new team coming this year, via Ben Thompson of FightHype.com, and voila!
Schaefer will be running Mayweather Promotions as soon as it's legal.
You can mark that one down.
All of the fighters De La Hoya was forced to relinquish are managed by Haymon, the reclusive power broker who doesn’t do any business with the media, and operated on fight-by-fight deals with Golden Boy.
That leaves a pretty substantial talent pool on the promotional market right now, and while they're technically free agents—Haymon is barred by law from acting as both manager and promoter—you can probably see where this is headed, right?
It would shocking if the final stop for Garcia, Broner, Maidana, Jacobs and anyone else covered under this deal isn’t West Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. That’s the company headquarters of Mayweather Promotions, which was granted promotional licenses in Nevada and New York last year and is now in position to reap the benefits.
Some would say that was the plan all along.
Schaefer admitted to Iole early last year that only some of the fighters appearing on Golden Boy-promoted cards were actually under contract with the company. Others were only signed to deals with Haymon and were used by Golden Boy on a fight-by-fight basis.
During the Sergey Kovalev-Adonis Stevenson drama last year, Kathy Duva of Main Events filed a lawsuit against Schaefer, Haymon and Golden Boy, among many others, alleging that the two power brokers had “entered into an alliance” to seize control of the company from De La Hoya.
The lawsuit also directly accused Haymon of serving as both manager and promoter, which would be a violation of the federal Muhammad Ali Act, and called into question his close personal relationship with Schaefer and its potential improprieties.
Speaking at the final press conference before the Miguel Cotto-Sergio Martinez middleweight title showdown in June, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who is no fan of Schaefer and recently rekindled his relationship with De La Hoya, told Bleacher Report:
“It’s not any other stuff. The issue is, did this guy [Schaefer] take advantage of his position as the head of Golden Boy while the majority owner was going through personal problems and therefore did things not in the best interests of his company but in his own best interests.”
Those were the central issues that led to the split between De La Hoya, who created the company in 2002, and Schaefer, who turned the promotional outfit into a powerhouse. That, and the Golden Boy's desire to open venues for cross-promotional fights with Arum's Top Rank.
Where does that leave us?
Let’s recap.
De La Hoya and Schaefer are no longer suing each other, several high-profile Haymon fighters are likely on their way to Mayweather Promotions and they’ll be joined there—one must expect—by Schaefer as soon as his contractual ban expires.
It's a boon for Mayweather, Haymon and Schaefer, but De La Hoya?
The math is much more complicated here.
A Golden Boy spokesperson, per Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times, said that the feeling at the company was “an overwhelming feeling of relief” in light of the deal.
“We’re playing a long game now of signing and developing young fighters instead of a short game and jumping through hoops,” the spokesperson said.
Golden Boy announced the signing of 12 new fighters on Thursday, including Yoshihiro Kamegai, former title challenger Mercito Gesta and a half dozen California-based prospects.
Canelo remains in the fold as one of boxing’s biggest stars, so the company should be able to sustain itself as a high-level operation, so long as the cinnamon-haired former champion’s star continues to grow.
Fights with Cotto and/or WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in the coming 12 months could certainly be make-or-break events on that score.
Playing the long game will require Golden Boy to continue its tradition of developing young, talented fighters and shepherding them into the land of boxing’s big boys.
And then they need to keep them.
De La Hoya and whomever he brings in along the way to help him manage his stable of fighters will need to maintain a keen eye for detail.
Yes, when the bulk of the seeds for this mess were being planted, De La Hoya was suffering through personal problems—he entered rehab prior to the Mayweather vs. Canelo fight—but no more surprises.
The next one could cripple the company.
Take this as a lesson learned, be thankful you no longer need to rely on Haymon’s approval—the hoops the spokesperson described—to make fights, pick yourself up and begin again.
It’s the only path forward for Golden Boy Promotions.
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