Money has always been Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s loudest talking point. Now, nearly eight years after retiring undefeated, the boxer known as “Money” is claiming that hundreds of millions of those dollars never actually reached him — and he wants them back.
Why He’s Suing
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is suing Showtime Networks Inc. and former Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza, alleging what the complaint describes as “a long-running and elaborate scheme of financial fraud,” according to ESPN.
Mayweather is seeking to recover “hundreds of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds,” claiming he is owed “at least $340,000,000,” plus additional damages tied to lost investment opportunities and reputational harm.
For an athlete estimated to have generated over a $1 billion over a 21-year professional career — and who topped Forbes’ highest-paid athlete list from 2012 to 2014 — the lawsuit reframes Mayweather not as boxing’s most financially dominant star, but as an example of how even elite earners can lose control of their cash flow.
At the center of the complaint is Mayweather’s former manager and adviser Al Haymon, described as a “father figure” who allegedly engineered “a complex web of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions and deliberate concealment of financial records.”
Haymon is not named as a defendant, but the lawsuit claims Showtime and Espinoza knowingly worked with him as Mayweather’s earnings were routed into accounts Mayweather neither controlled nor fully understood.
“Given the size of the transfers (hundreds of millions) and the unusual nature of paying a fighter via a third-party lawyer’s trust account, this should have raised red flags within Showtime,” the lawsuit states, according to The New York Times.
It further alleges that defendants “knew that by sending funds” through those accounts, they were “knowingly participating in a structure that kept Mayweather from directly receiving or overseeing his own earnings.”
According to the complaint, those transfers often arrived tens of millions of dollars short. Haymon allegedly deducted large sums labeled as “reimbursements,” creating the appearance that he was recouping money previously advanced to Mayweather. The lawsuit claims those deductions were not legitimate and were used “solely to enrich Haymon.”
The filing points to documentation it says supports that claim.
“On at least one occasion,” the lawsuit alleges, documents were altered to conceal wrongdoing, including a faxed authorization form that appeared to have been “whited-out and rewritten.” Another document authorizing a large payout allegedly contained a crossed-out notation reading, “We need to cover our a–.”
The financial irregularities extend to Mayweather’s biggest fights. The lawsuit highlights delays and discrepancies tied to the 2015 Manny Pacquiao bout — the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in boxing history — and the 2017 crossover fight with Conor McGregor.
Mayweather claims he is still owed roughly $20 million from his 2015 fight against Andre Berto and alleges that Pacquiao-related revenue was used as a “slush fund” to cover unrelated payouts.
When Mayweather’s new management team sought financial records in 2024, the lawsuit says they were met with resistance. Documents were allegedly “lost in a flood,” “stored off-site and not readily accessible,” or deemed unnecessary to produce.
Showtime, according to the complaint, also raised the statute of limitations — a move the lawsuit calls “deeply ironic” given the alleged concealment that delayed discovery of the claims.
Beyond missing money, Mayweather argues the scheme damaged his brand. The complaint claims it fueled “[false] rumors that he was ‘broke,’” causing “reputational harm and mental anguish,” while depriving him of capital that could have been deployed into investments during the peak of his earning years.
Showtime’s parent company, Paramount, has rejected the allegations. In a statement, a spokesperson said, “These baseless claims lack legal or factual merit. We strongly reject them and will respond accordingly through the court process.”
Mayweather is seeking a jury trial, $340 million in compensatory damages, and additional damages “at least equal” to that amount. If successful, the total exposure could exceed $680 million before legal fees and forensic accounting costs — a reminder that even in boxing, the biggest fights can come long after the final bell.
