Staying Off the Shelf: How to Avoid Management Problems in Your Boxing Career

David Tua, “Merciless” Ray Mercer, In-jin Chi, “Sugar” Shane Mosley.  All world class boxers when they were in their respective primes.  All victims of management problems that stalled their professional boxing careers.  My brief Google query for articles responsive to the search terms “boxing” and “management problems” gave me all of the examples that I needed to justify my writing of this article.  Because of the decentralized nature and lax regulation of their sport, boxers, more so than most any other type of professional athlete, can see their career stall in an instant over a contractual dispute with their manager or agent.  Can you imagine LeBron James not playing basketball for two seasons because of a dispute with his agent or Andy Roddick not playing tennis for two years while he waited for the agreement with his agent to lapse? Such thoughts are absurd, but that is exactly what happens with boxers at all levels of the sport.  The question is, what can be done to avoid or minimize the possibility of such a dispute ruining your career?   Allow me to offer some helpful tips to help avoid the types of contractual pitfalls that can ruin your professional boxing career

Do Not Just be Happy to be There:  Managers and aspiring managers are a dime a dozen.  If they have an attorney, or are one, they will probably present you with a decent looking management agreement.  Perhaps a stipend is included within the contract terms, as well as a solid minimum number of fights per year. Maybe you will be provided housing.  But look closer, as there any number of other terms buried within any given management agreement that can be ruinous to your career if they are not identified and altered through negotiation.  You must always believe that someone is out there that is willing to manage you, do not be happy just to be in the presence of any given manager and sign anything that he puts in front of you without a thorough review and proper negotiation of the terms.

Seek a Commission-Approved Management Agreement:  To the extent that the state or territory that you live in has an athletic commission that provides a standard form agreement that those licensed within the state must sign with the approval of the commission to get its protection, that may provide the single best mechanism for protecting the momentum of your career as a professional boxer.  This is because several commissions, including New York ’s, provide for mandatory arbitration in the event of a dispute between the boxer and his manager.  At an arbitration, an athletic commission representative can recommend the best way to settle the dispute and make recommendations to each party that will make their parting of ways that much swifter, so everyone can move on with their careers.

Negotiate for a Binding Arbitration Clause: If its not practical to sign a management agreement under the auspices of a particular athletic commission, the next best thing you can do is demand that any and all legal disputes that arise under your management agreement be subject to a binding arbitration.  While you would certainly need the guidance of an attorney if arbitration became necessary, you would likely save on legal fees and waste less time litigating your dispute, as the parties would be bound by the decision of the arbitrator and barred, in most instances, from filing a lawsuit afterwards.  The slothfulness of the legal process if a lawsuit were filed can be lethal to your boxing career. 

Negotiate for a Buy-Out or Buy-In Clause:  In the absence of a central governing body that licenses or otherwise authorizes what agents can represent its athletes, boxing is left with a handful of truly capable managers, and a bumper crop of managers that are, to put it mildly, more style than substance.   With an eye towards the future of your career, therefore, negotiate a buy-out or buy-in clause into your management agreement that would allow another manager to take over the handling of your career in the event that your original manager cannot deliver the services that a future prospective manager could provide on his own, or at all.  Even some of most capable managers may have their limitations and your window of opportunity is only open for so long.

Do Your Due Diligence:  Your prospective manager may be a seemingly affluent business person, a close friend, or a relative.  But how well connected are they in boxing?   How much access do they really have to the money you might need to move your professional career along?  Do they have a criminal record or a history of lawsuits that call into question their reliability and propensity for truthfulness? Do they associate with the types of individuals that you want influencing their decisions and hanging around your training camp?  Whether through specific representations in your management agreement, talking with people around your area gyms, and/or the one-time hiring of a private investigator to look into the background of your prospective manager, you must be comfortable that you know everything relevant from your manager’s background before ending into a management agreement.  If they’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing and you don’t do your part to detect that beforehand, you can be in for a whole lot of sitting on the shelf if the management relationship goes sour with time remaining on the contract.

Sign Short Term Agreements:  While a prospective manager might not be as willing to invest in you if you are only willing to sign a one year management agreement, such an agreement also means that if you don’t like how your manager’s handling your career, it’ll only be a matter of months until you’re a free agent, and not a matter of years.

Decide Whether You Want a Guide or a Sugar Daddy: Managers are not automated teller machines.  At their core, they are businesspeople, no matter how good your relationship with them appears to be.  Avoid taking advances, asking for unreasonable stipends, or asking for too much else involving money that is not covered within the four corners of your contract.  Think about it: the deeper your manager goes into the hole as far as providing you cash, rent, etc., the more you hazard the risk of his judgment being impaired by the desire to recover his investment as tougher and bigger fights are being offered to you.   Its wrong, but it’s a reality.

While I understand that personal economic limitations of a professional boxer and that the potential unwillingness of managers to accept such language as I suggest above may make some of my suggestions seem unrealistic, there is no denying that these bits of advice can save a boxer long periods of time on the shelf if he does his homework and succeeds in getting the recommended protections incorporated into his management agreement.   At the end of the day, it is the boxer that is taking the punishment in the ring, not the manager, so the boxer should take every step possible to minimize the downtime during his professional career.  A boxing career should be wrapped in glory, not in managerial red tape.