The boxing business can be as ruthless as any business really.
Bitching, moaning, fighters arguing, promoters crapping on one another’s shows are all part of the course and part of the game really.
As they are in any business — it’s just the way lower level capitalism works.
Hence on the word ‘lower level’.
Usually anyone who talks bad about a competitor behind their back or even outside of business, when someone talks garbage about someone to another person — it just shows what level that person is really operating on themselves.
Inevitably, the best businessmen, sportsmen and people in general in life never have a bad word to say about others for the most part.
Within the boxing world perhaps the only manager or someone of genuine note who has some say in what happens in the sport where no one seems to have bad words to say about him is Al Haymon.
Go to the US, meet some of the fighters on the West Coast.
Ask the boxers themselves what they think of him and you’ll have your answer.
There’s a reason they are so ferociously loyal to him.
By all accounts he’s a man of his word and chooses to just get on with things, keep the head down and tries to get the best deals he can for his fighters.
Not rocket science really.
I once read a court manuscript of some comments Haymon made in an American West coast court room around the time he was being sued by two of America’s biggest boxing promoters.
Two cases which he beat with ease by the way — which says a lot in itself.
Although he’s never done an interview his written words upon reading the transcript were telling to me in one sentence in particular where he told the judge in the civil case words to the affect that boxers take huge risks comparative to other professions.
He also made reference to the short time frame of a professional boxer’s career relative to other professions in that they have a limited opportunity to earn a living in a much shorter space of time than most other professions.
With much higher stakes involved too.
This showed genuine concern for the clients he represented in my view and seemed reasonable in the arguments he was making.
Any time someone in life comes at me with logic in a calm, clear manner I always hear them out.
His argument at the time seemed to convey genuine interest in the boxers he managed.
Perhaps a far cry from handlers of notable boxers in the past. It’s no surprise that the two civil cases taken against him were thrown out.
Inevitably, judges can see through bull s*** nine times out of ten.
Haymon appears on surface level at least to be a man who doesn’t shout from the roof tops to get his point across.
Sure, he’s still a capitalist, as we all are really in the Western world we live in, but on balance, he appears to be a guy who operates (currently) with not one boxer saying a bad word against him at this time.
That’s impressive by anyone’s barometer, surely.
Promoter Eddie Hearn made a mistake in trying to pry away some of his fighters last year when he announced his intentions to take over US boxing in my opinion.
It’s better to be friends with a guy like Al Haymon then to annoy him.
Often times the loudest man in the room is the weakest one.
It’s the guy you don’t see coming that you gotta watch out for in this life.
Never judge a book by its cover.
All in all, Gervonta Davis’ tweet here to kick off 2019 says it all about how loyal his boxers are to the man who Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum recently branded as ‘Mr. Cancer’:
As for Davis — he takes on Mexican boxing star Abner Mares next up.
