Floyd Mayweather Jr. throughout his 21-year professional career, he made sure that no one could beat him. Now, nearly nine years after his last professional fight, the 50-0 Hall of Famer is fighting a different kind of battle in which he claims those closest to him during boxing’s most lucrative era helped steal a staggering portion of his fortune.
The 25-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court February 4, 2026 (some reports say February 3) lists Showtime Networks Inc. and former Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza as defendants. Mayweather is seeking at least $340 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages, alleging that Showtime and Espinoza knowingly participated in what the lawsuit describes as an elaborate, multi-year financial fraud scheme orchestrated by his former manager and adviser, Al Haymon.
It’s worth noting that Haymon is not listed as a defendant.
The Showtime Era: Boxing’s Richest Partnership
To understand the scale of the allegations, it is worth recalling how the Mayweather-Showtime partnership came about in the first place.
In 2013, Mayweather left HBO, his longtime broadcast home, to sign a 30-month, six-fight deal with Showtime. As reported by ESPNAt the time, it was the richest contract for an individual athlete in the history of sports. The deal was largely driven by Espinoza, who joined Showtime from the entertainment law firm Ziffren Brittenham and aggressively pushed to make Mayweather a central part of the network’s boxing strategy.
The results were historic. Mayweather has fought eight times on Showtime pay-per-view, fighting Robert Guerrero, Canelo Alvarez, Marcos Maidana twice, Manny Pacquiao, Andre Berto and Conor McGregor. Pacquiao’s May 2015 fight remains the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in boxing history, generating more than $410 million in PPV revenue with an estimated 4.4 million buys. The fight with McGregor, which took place in August 2017, ranks second in history. Mayweather’s career earnings exceeded $1.2 billion.
Throughout the performance, Mayweather publicly praised the trio of Haymon, Espinoza and Showtime. Before and after his biggest fights, he thanked all three of them by name. In 2014, he called Haymon “a great guy, a great guy” and “a man of his words.”
What is the lawsuit about?
The complaint paints a very different picture than public relations suggested. Court records show that Haymon began managing Mayweather’s career around 2004 under an oral agreement that entitled Haymon to 10% of the salary. Technically, that contract expired after a year, but Haymon served in the role for about two decades, handling contract negotiations, television deals, sponsorships and investments.
The lawsuit alleges that instead of giving fight revenues directly to Mayweather, Showtime transferred earnings to accounts controlled by Haymon and associates, including an account linked to Mayweather’s tax advisor, Jeff Morris. From there, according to the complaint, funds were diverted through the network of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions and falsely marked transfers that Mayweather describes. Bank documents cited in the lawsuit allegedly show gigantic transfers to an entity called Alan Haymon Development shortly after the major fights, marked as “reimbursements” or “loan repayments,” that Mayweather claimed were illegal.
One of the more specific allegations concerns the Pacquiao fight. The complaint says financial records show inflated reimbursements for expenses charged to Pacquiao’s revenue pool, including a $20 million figure for the Berto fight in September 2015 that was taken from Pacquiao’s fight proceeds. Mayweather claims Pacquiao’s earnings were used as a fund to cover unrelated expenses. These are grave claims and remain unsubstantiated.
The lawsuit also alleged that contract dates were physically changed, and the complaint cited a note on one of the documents that briefly read: “We need to insure ourselves.”
Question about registration
Perhaps the most striking allegation concerns what happened when Mayweather’s modern management team tried to get answers. In mid-2024, following the appointment of Richard Schaefer as CEO of Mayweather Promotions to replace longtime lieutenant Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s team requested detailed financial breakdowns from Showtime for some of his biggest fights, including those of Pacquiao and McGregor.
According to the complaint, the response said critical financial records were “lost due to flooding” in the warehouse or were otherwise “stored off-site and hard to access.” Showtime separately raised a statute of limitations claim, arguing that all claims related to the 2015 fights were time-barred.
For Mayweather’s legal team, led by attorney Bobby Samini, the unavailability of records and the statute of limitations argument mean a continued cover-up that should affect the statute of limitations. Whether the court agrees will likely be one of the main legal questions in the case.
Reasons for action
The complaint lists four causes of action against Showtime and Espinoza: aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, conversion and unjust enrichment. The records show that Showtime and Espinoza knew Haymon was Mayweather’s confidant, admitted that payments well in excess of Haymon’s 10 percent salary were routed through illegal channels, and did nothing to intervene or warn Mayweather.
The complaint further alleged that Espinoza’s post-Showtime career arc supports this theory. Following the closure of Showtime Sports in overdue 2023, Espinoza took on a consulting role with Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions. The lawsuit saw this as evidence of an ongoing understanding between the two.
Espinoza replies
On February 7, Espinoza broke his silence in a YouTube podcast interview reported by journalist Manouk Akopyan. Trying not to refer to legal details, Espinoza firmly pushed back, telling interviewers that he had not yet seen the formal documents and that his lawyers advised restraint.
As BoxingInsider reported at the time of the filing, Espinoza expressed both surprise and disappointment. He said on the podcast that he is proud of his reputation as an forthright player and that he has never acted to change a player. He went further, calling the lawsuit “in many ways a secret” and adding that he had not discussed it directly with Mayweather. “The lawsuit will resolve itself,” he said.
A spokesman for Paramount, Showtime’s parent company, called the claims baseless and without factual basis and pledged to respond in court. Haymon, who rarely speaks publicly, has not commented on the situation.
Haymon’s question
Haymon’s absence as a named defendant is the most conspicuous feature of the lawsuit. The complaint described him as the architect of the alleged fraud, but targeted only the network and the executive who facilitated the payments. Multiple reports indicate that a separate lawsuit against Haymon may be forthcoming, though as of this writing, none have materialized.
In his coverage of the lawsuit, boxing veteran Dan Rafael noted that a person familiar with the matter stated that a second lawsuit against Haymon was expected. The decision to sue Showtime in the first place may be a strategic choice, whether to gain access to financial records through discovery, to frame fraud allegations, or for reasons related to the personal relationship between Mayweather and Haymon. The complaint itself admits that Mayweather once considered Haymon a “father figure” who managed virtually every aspect of his finances.
The bigger picture of boxing
Regardless of how the case is resolved, the Mayweather-Showtime lawsuit exposes a structural weakness in boxing’s financial model that the sport has never adequately addressed. Unlike team sports with centralized league offices, salary caps and limpid revenue sharing, boxing’s economic ecosystem relies on a patchwork of bilateral contracts between fighters, managers, promoters and broadcasters. Payment flows are cloudy by design. Athletes, even those at the very top of the sport, routinely rely on their advisors for financial arrangements they don’t fully understand.
Longtime observers will not miss the irony. Mayweather was boxing’s most powerful independent operator, a fighter who controlled his own promotion, chose his own opponents and dictated terms to the networks. If these allegations have any merit, they suggest that even the most influential athlete in the sport could be vulnerable to the kind of financial mismanagement that has plagued boxing for generations.
One of the main questions that arises in this case is whether a broadcaster like Showtime has an obligation to ensure that fight proceeds reach the intended recipient, or whether it can simply follow payment instructions from the fighter’s designated representatives. The answer could change the structure of future contracts between fighters, networks and managers.
The case is in its early stages. No trial date has been set and Showtime has not yet filed a formal response. But the complaint is now on the public record, and its questions about trust, transparency and the conduct of boxing’s biggest fights will continue to loom gigantic over the sport regardless of the outcome.
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