Although Floyd Mayweather Jr. made hundreds of millions of dollars during his professional boxing career and topped the Forbes list as the highest-paid athlete from 2012 to 2014, the boxer said he has been shortchanged and filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Showtime.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday and acquired by ESPN, seeks to “recover hundreds of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds and damages resulting from a long-running and elaborate scheme of financial fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and conspiracy orchestrated by Floyd J. Mayweather’s former manager and advisor, Al Haymon, with the knowing and substantial participation and aid of Defendants Showtime Networks Inc. and Stephen Espinoza, among others.”
Mayweather, 48, claims to be owed “at least” $340 million and cites a “complex web of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions and deliberate concealment of financial records” as the reason he believes he has been defrauded from those funds.
Haymon is not named as a defendant in the complaint.
Espinoza didn’t respond to a request to comment on the lawsuit.
In 2013, Mayweather signed a 30-month, six-fight deal with Showtime that was, at the time, the richest for an individual athlete. He fought Robert Guerrero, Canelo Alvarez, Marcos Maidana (twice), Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto during that deal and also faced UFC superstar Conor McGregor on Showtime PPV.
Mayweather fought eight times on Showtime PPV, with the Pacquiao bout still standing as the highest-grossing pay-per-view in history with over 4.4 million purchases and $410 million in revenue generated. Mayweather reportedly earned around $250 million for that fight alone.
In the lawsuit, Mayweather claims Showtime and Espinoza worked in tandem to divert the boxer’s earnings into accounts controlled by Haymon and failed to provide financial transparency. Mayweather claims that he has “suffered enormous financial harm” and is missing at least $340 million from his reported $1.2 billion in career fight purses.
Mayweather retired from professional boxing in 2017 with a 50-0 record but has competed in several exhibitions since.
An exhibition fight with Mike Tyson was announced last September for Spring 2026, but no date or location has materialized since. Reports surfaced Tuesday that Mayweather would face K-1 kickboxing legend Mike Zambidis on June 27 in Greece, but there has been no formal announcement of that fight either.
ESPN’s Michael Rothstein contributed to this report.
