Golden Boy Promotions readying to file suit against Al Haymon

According to Chris Mannix at Sports Illustrated, Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions will be filing a lawsuit against Al Haymon, Haymon Boxing, and mutual fund manager Waddell and Reed, alleging that Haymon and his team are in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and California's Unfair Competition law.

In its anti-trust argument, Golden Boy is expected to contend that Haymon is using his monopoly as a boxing manager—Haymon represents more than 150 fighters, legally creating a vastly larger market share than any other manager—to create another monopoly for promoting TV fights. The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, commonly known as the Ali Act, expressly prohibits managers from acting as promoters.

There have been questions about whether or not Haymon really does serve as a manager/promoter, and other promoters have raised those questions before, including Main Events, which filed suit against Haymon in 2014, only to settle that out of court. Whether or not anyone can prove this to be the case is another matter entirely.

Golden Boy lost a huge chunk of what they believed was their roster after ousting former CEO Richard Schaefer last year, after which Haymon's fighters, the vast majority of whom had never actually signed contracts with Golden Boy under Schaefer's regime, began steadily moving away from Golden Boy cards.

This year, Haymon launched his Premier Boxing Champions series, which has aired cards on NBC, CBS, and Spike, and will soon add ESPN to that group.

We'll see if this goes anywhere, and there's no timetable right now on when Golden Boy is actually going to go through with this