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Jester's Courtroom "Fight of the Century" Lands in Court
| "Fight of the Century" Lands in Court |
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| Wednesday, May 20 2015 |
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Boxing fans are suing after the highly-touted televised boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao ended in Pacquiao's loss. More than thirty lawsuits have been filed across the country, seeking more than $5 million each (the federal class action threshold amount), over allegations that Pacquiao and his team knew about the fighter’s shoulder injury before the fight in Las Vegas but failed to report it to the Nevada Athletic Commission, something that is required by law. The multitude of lawsuits contend that the "fight of the century" ended up being the "fraud of the century." All of the suits name Pacquiao and his management company as defendants; some of the suits include Mayweather Jr. and his team, as well as HBO, Showtime and cable companies, among the defendants. The fight is estimated to have generated over $350 million. Three million customers in America alone paid $100 to watch the fight on pay-per-view. A federal panel of judges will likely first need to decide if the cases from multiple states and Puerto Rico should be consolidated into one case. From there, a judge would have to decide whether to certify them as class actions or not. “The allegations in this lawsuit are demonstrably false,” said attorney Daniel Petrocelli, who represents Top Rank, Pacquiao’s management company. “There are documents that explicitly show the medications that Manny was using to treat his shoulder and it was fully disclosed with Usada, which we contracted for this fight.” The Nevada Athletic Commission, however, has already said it is not happy with how Pacquiao’s team dealt with the injury. “The first I heard of this was at 6:08 pm when he [Pacquiao] arrived in the locker room,” the commission chairman, Francisco Aguilar, said. “I have no proof of the injury. If he told us on Friday, we would have got the MRIs and there are a lot of things we could have done.” Pacquiao is scheduled to have surgery on his shoulder. According to news reports, Mayweather Jr. has agreed to fight Pacquiao once he recovers from surgery. —Sources: theguardian.com and news.yahoo.com
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