Al Haymon: The mystery man behind Floyd Mayweather who is revolutionising boxing
Al Haymon: The mystery man behind Floyd Mayweather who is revolutionising boxing
As well as Mayweather, Haymon manages more than 100 fighters, including current or former world champions Amir Khan, Adonis Stevenson, Adrien Broner and Paulie Malignaggi.
He has also brought boxing back to terrestrial television in America, establishing himself as one of the most powerful and influential men in the sport.
Yet he is rarely seen in public and never gives interviews; even Mayweather refers to him as ‘The Ghost’.
Al Haymon was born in 1956 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio before studying economics at Harvard. His older brother Bobby fought a young Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978 in the last of an unremarkable 30-fight career. Haymon’s first venture was into music promotion and he created a number of related businesses in order to control the various aspects of putting on a live concert
By overseeing, among other things, the lighting, production and marketing, Haymon could simply slot in the artist as the final piece of the jigsaw. He worked with singers MC Hammer, Whitney Houston and Mary J Blige as well as comedian Eddie Murphy and estimated he had put on 500 shows and grossed $60million in 1991.
The business partner of Murphy’s stepfather Vernon Lynch once called Haymon ‘the Steve Jobs of promotion’ and he would later move into television where he is credited as a producer in 10 shows between 1999 and 2000.
It was around this time that he first dipped his toe in the world of boxing, signing the late Vernon Forrest who won world titles at two different weights. And so began the biggest accumulation of talent ever seen in the sport.
According to boxingscene, Haymon signs fighters to an ‘Exclusive Advisory Agreement’ that gives his company exclusive rights to their career. In return, Haymon is required to ‘use his best efforts to secure remunerative boxing matches for the boxer’ and ‘counsel him in the overal development of his career.’ Haymon charges around 10 to 15 per cent of a fighter’s purse for his services, less than a standard manager’s share.
He helped Mayweather negotiate his way out of his contract with Top Rank for $750,000 in 2006 with the fighter later acknowledging, ‘If I would have had Al Haymon from the beginning, I probably would be a billionaire right now.’
Earlier this year, he founded ‘Haymon Boxing’, a company which describes itself as ‘the world’s premier boxing management company’ and whose headquarters are located in Las Vegas. And in March, backed by investors, he helped launch promotional outfit Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), spending $20m on airtime for 20 shows on NBC and NBC Sports Network. The deal meant that NBC would broadcast prime time boxing for the first time in 30 years.
