The case can be made that those who conceived and arranged the 2015 boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao deserve to be compensated.
After all, the “Fight of the Century” at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas — won by Mayweather — set records with 4.6 million pay-per-view buys and $72 million in ticket sales.
So it’s no surprise that long after both boxers slipped comfortably into (temporary) retirement, legal fights endured over even slim slices of that cash-stuffed pie.
For 10 years — and counting — lawyers and judges have attempted to determine what claimants are due and whether Pacquiao in particular suffered reputational damage along the way.
Meanwhile, retirement is relegated to the rear view and a rematch Sept. 19 at the Las Vegas Sphere will be streamed live on Netflix. Mayweather is 49 and Pacquiao 47, yet another staggering payday serves as a great motivator.
And court battles continue. The latest salvo was a filing by Pacquiao this week in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing respected law firms and their restaurant server client of attempting to extort millions of dollars from the boxer by fabricating a verbal agreement and falsely accusing him of texting photos of dismembered bodies in a “terror campaign.”
Gabriel Rueda was a waiter at Craig’s restaurant in West Hollywood when he sued Pacquiao in 2016, claiming he was owed a finder’s fee of $8.6 million for connecting the boxer’s trainer Freddie Roach with then-CBS president Leslie Moonves to arrange the 2015 fight with Mayweather.
Rueda demanded $42 million in damages. Enter former boxer Richie Palmer — a friend of Roach and husband of Rachel Welch — who told a judge that Rueda promised him half of his finder’s fee if he could bring together Roach and Moonves.
A judge granted Pacquiao a summary judgment in 2024, dismissing Rueda’s case and making Palmer’s claim moot.
Now Pacquiao is delivering a counterpunch. This week he filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit, seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Rueda and deep-pocketed law firms Khan Law Office and Withers Bergman, as well as defunct firm Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht.
Pacquiao asserts in the filing that he never communicated with Rueda about a Roach-Moonves meeting, let alone agreed to pay him anything.
His attorneys produced a letter from Rueda intended for Mayweather that was not discovered until 2023 through court-ordered forensic recovery of Rueda’s iCloud account. According to the lawsuit, Rueda stated in the letter that he “asked for nothing in return,” for introducing Roach to Moonves. “No finders fee, no compensation.” Rueda was given a ticket to the 2015 fight, a hotel room in Las Vegas and $10,000 to cover expenses, according to the filing.
Pacquiao alleges that the email was hidden by Rueda and his attorneys despite discovery requests and a 2018 court order compelling production.
Pacquiao’s complaint also established that the texts of body parts and threats to Rueda were actually duplicates of messages from a widely distributed drug cartel scam. Rueda claimed in 2020 that he received text messages of images of dismembered bodies from associates of Pacquiao.
But records produced by Pacquiao’s lawyers showed that at least one of the messages was sent to more than 100 people in what the complaint describes as a “cartel scam.” Rueda dropped the claim in 2024 after Pacquiao’s team discredited it.
Pacquiao’s lawyers wrote that his lawsuit is “arising from one of the most egregious abuses of the civil justice system — the deliberate prosecution of knowingly false and sensational allegations for the purpose of inflicting reputational damage and coercing payment.
“Defendants knowingly and deliberately misused the judicial process to prosecute claims that were completely fabricated from the outset and directly refuted by evidence that Defendants knew about, possessed, and suppressed.”
Pacquiao’s lawyers said the boxer “incurred millions of dollars in legal fees and costs to clear his name.”
While the lawsuit is litigated, Pacquiao likely will be training for his rematch with Mayweather, who is involved in legal action of his own.
Earlier this month, Mayweather sued Showtimeand former executive Stephen Espinoza for $340 million, accusing them of depriving him of a “significant portion of his career earnings.” He alleges that Showtime “through a complex web of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions, and deliberate concealment of financial records,” wrongly paid some of his earnings to his former manager, Al Haymon.
Pacquiao and Mayweather must be cutting some serious checks to their lawyers. But their rematch should earn them more than enough to cover legal expenses: Mayweather made at least $250 million and Pacquiao at least $125 million for their first fight, which generated more than $600 million in total revenue.
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