Who Wants to be a (Mere) Millionaire? Elite Fighters Now Dream of Billionaire Status

The late Ralph Kiner, who could hit the long ball but wasn’t particularly adept at anything else on a baseball field, led the National League in home runs seven times in as many seasons from 1946 to 1952. That specialized skill was good enough for him to receive a $91,000 contract to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates in ’52, which at the time of its signing made him the highest-paid player in the league. In reaction to criticism from those who felt the one-dimensional slugger wasn’t worth his new deal, Kiner responded, “Singles hitters drive Fords; home run hitters drive Cadillacs.”

Kiner, who was inducted into his sport’s Hall of Fame in 1975, was 91 when he passed away on Feb. 6, 2014. As the radio voice of the New York Mets from the team’s inaugural season in 1962 through 2013, he lived long enough to see just how puny $91,000 for a year’s labor (worth $846,554.11 in 2018 dollars) would be today. The highest-paid players for the just-ended 2018 season were Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw ($35.57 million) and Los Angeles Angels centerfielder Mike Trout ($34.08 million). It has been widely speculated that Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper, an impending free agent who was paid a relatively piddling $21.625 million in 2018, will command a multiyear deal approaching or even in excess of $400 million, which doesn’t seem that exorbitant in these inflated times and considering that he is only now entering what should be his prime, having just turned 26 on Oct. 16.

If Harper signs for something approximating the target figure being bandied about by his agent, Scott Boras, he will become the most highly compensated athlete over the life of an existing base contract, vaulting past boxing superstar Canelo Alvarez, the recently crowned WBC/WBA middleweight champion, who agreed to an exclusive deal with the streaming service DAZN (pronounced “Da Zone”) in mid-October. The 11-fight agreement, the details of which were not disclosed, reportedly calls for the world’s most currently marketable fighter to be paid somewhere between $350 million and $365 million. If he deigns to learn English, the red-haired Mexican sensation, who is only 28 years of age and shows no signs of slippage, could become a popular enough commercial spokesman to become a Madison Avenue heavyweight and possibly approach $1 billion in overall earnings. Breaking the 10-figure barrier might enable Canelo to eventually surpass the only man to have defeated him, the legendarily greedy Floyd Mayweather Jr., who currently reigns as the highest-grossing boxer of all time at $785 million, according to Forbes, a particularly impressive figure when you consider virtually none of it comes from pitching products.

Perhaps it is the possibility that his cherished position atop boxing’s mounting cash pile could someday be challenged by Alvarez, or simply that his lavish spending habits are finally catching up with him, that the aptly nicknamed “Money” Mayweather, who turns 42 on Feb. 24, is publicly speculating about another low-risk cash grab for a rematch with past victim Manny Pacquiao or a schooling of another mixed martial artist who might want to try his hand at boxing, Khabib Nurmagomedov. A 30-year-old Russian, Nurmagomedov is coming off a victory over Conor McGregor, the previous MMA star who foolishly thought he might be able to beat Mayweather at his own game.

His conspicuous consumption notwithstanding, Mayweather ranks no better than ninth among all super-rich athletes. Retired NBA great Michael Jordan is No. 1 with total earnings of $1.85 billion, including endorsements, followed by golfers Tiger Woods ($1.7 billion), the late Arnold Palmer ($1.4 billion) and Jack Nicklaus ($1.3 billion). In addition to Mayweather, other boxers on Forbes’ top 25 list include Mike Tyson (No. 14, $700 million; filed for bankruptcy in 2003), Oscar De La Hoya (No. 19, $520 million), Pacquiao (No. 20, $510 million) and Evander Holyfield (No. 24, $475 million).

Perhaps more than anyone within that highly exclusive, diamond-encrusted circle, Mayweather puts the lie to Kiner’s long-ago assertion that Cadillacs are the preferred ride of athletes who don’t have to concern themselves with showroom sticker shock. Shortly after he pulled down $250 million or so for his May 2, 2015, unanimous decision over Pacquiao, which set records with 4.6 million pay-per-view subscriptions and $600 million in gross revenues, Floyd treated himself to the world’s most expensive car, the $4.8 million Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita. But that fabulous  new toy apparently wasn’t enough to satisfy Mayweather, an insatiable collector of stratospherically priced land rockets; shortly thereafter he dropped another $3.2 million for a Ferrari Enzo, upping to 25 his collection of luxury vehicles that includes various models of Rolls-Royces, McLarens, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Bugattis.

Mayweather, of course, is free to spend his millions in any manner he so chooses,  but the skyrocketing level of money in professional sports, a seeming affirmation of Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko character  pronouncing that “greed is good” in 1987’s Wall Street, calls to mind another line from that movie, uttered by the character played by Charlie Sheen. “How many yachts,” Gekko’s young and increasingly disillusioned protégé asks, “can you water-ski behind? How much is enough?”

In announcing his massive, groundbreaking deal with Alvarez, Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, armed with $1 billion in rights fees over eight years from the Perform Group’s DAZN, said the burgeoning financial pie for elite performers like Canelo would make for large-enough slices so the best of the best can financially compete with or even eclipse premier athletes in soccer, basketball, baseball, golf or whatever.

“I am so excited to shake up the world of boxing in America,” Hearn said at a Madison Square Garden press conference to introduce DAZN to U.S. consumers, opening a fertile market which potentially could spell the demise of pay-per-view on this side of the pond, and maybe everywhere. “You’ve seen us do it in the UK … there were certain things I needed to be able to take boxing here to a new level, to build a stable that is unrivaled.”

In addition to Alvarez, all reasonably established members of the Golden Boy coterie figure to benefit from the company’s affiliation with DAZN, both in terms of available dates and the promise of increased purses. Other big-name fighters can expect to be recruited once they are free of their current contractual obligations. But it is Canelo, who will make his DAZN debut when he moves up to super middleweight to challenge WBA champion Rocky Fielding on Dec. 15 at the Garden, who will be the bell cow leading the way to what might soon become a new reality. That fight will be streamed free to entice fans to subscribe to DAZN, a preview of coming attractions as it were, and is not a part of Alvarez’s contractual commitment to the streaming service, which officially begins in 2019.

If the $365 million figure is indeed correct, over the life of the five-year deal Alvarez not only will pull down a minimum of $35 million per fight, but an average of $191,675.79 per day, even if he is just hanging out at home. No wonder he reached for a pen when the DAZN contract was placed before him.

A word of caution, though, comes from former middleweight champion Marvin Hagler, who said it can be difficult for a fighter, or any successful pro athlete, to remain focused and hungry once they become too rich and comfortable. “It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 a.m. when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas,” the Marvelous one once observed.

Boxing has always been the sport of participants who sought to rise up from impoverished circumstances, who had to ply their trade for years and for low wages until, hopefully, their hard work and dedication, if melded with the requisite amount of talent, finally paid off. Celebrated former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey fit that profile, fighting often and for scant recompense until the “Manassa Mauler” became one of the most compelling figures in the 1920s golden age of sports. He received an almost-incomprehensible $300,000 for his July 2, 1921, fight with Georges Carpentier, which generated boxing’s first million-dollar live gate ($1,789,238). The payday for Dempsey, who knocked out the Frenchman in four rounds, would equate to $3,112,226.80 in 2018 dollars, a staggering amount in light of the fact that the average American worker’s pay that year was $3,649.40.

When Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier squared off in the first of their classic three bouts on March 8, 1971, each was guaranteed a king’s ransom of $2.5 million ($15,485,175.88 in 2018 dollars). It was a huge sum at that time, especially when you consider that it wasn’t until 1979 that Houston Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan became the first $1 million baseball player. Even more incredibly, future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton, a 27-year-old lefthander who was coming off a 20-7 season, was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies because Carlton had the audacity to ask Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, the beer baron, for a raise to $65,000. Carlton got that figure from the Phillies, and rewarded them by posting a 27-10 record with a 1.97 ERA and 310 strikeouts in 1972. Carlton’s $65,000 salary in 1972 ($389,879.81 in today’s dollars), even adjusted for inflation, would amount to a little more than one-90th of what Kershaw made this season.

The “silk pajamas” analogy offered by Marvin Hagler seems more appropriate now than ever. Are today’s multimillionaire athletes as appreciative of what they had as those from other, less-well-compensated eras? A child of poverty growing up in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mayweather was offered a six-fight, $12.5 million contract extension by then-HBO boxing czar Lou DiBella in the autumn of 1999. Mayweather initially rejected the proposal, saying he could not fight for “slave wages,” and insisted he wanted $3 million for his next fight, which would have given him virtual parity with more established, ratings-producing HBO mainstays Oscar De La Hoya and Roy Jones Jr. Mayweather grudgingly accepted the stipulated $750,000 for the last remaining bout on his HBO contract, and retained his WBC super featherweight title on a unanimous decision over mandatory contender Gregorio Vargas on March 18, 2000. Longtime HBO analyst Larry Merchant, however, was critical of his refusal to sign the extension, saying, “Mayweather’s no $12 million fighter.”

Time would prove that Mayweather’s exceedingly high opinion of himself and his worth was more than justified, but not every athlete who plays contractual hardball wins similar stare-downs. Mexican-American heavyweight contender Alex Garcia, at his manager’s urging, turned down a proposed $1 million payday to swap punches with comebacking George Foreman in 1993, the rationale being that he could get $5 million by holding off for a year or so, time in which he presumably could raise his recognizability factor. Garcia instead got knocked out, for a $15,000 purse, in a stay-busy bout with journeyman Mike Dixon on June 8, 1993. He bet on himself and lost, never again coming within whiffing distance of the kind of money he might have made for fighting Big George.

Another athlete who bet big on himself and lost is former Minnesota Timberwolves forward Latrell Sprewell, then 34 and on the downhill side of what had been a mostly productive career. After having been paid $14 million a year on his previous contract, he should have counted himself fortunate to be offered a three-year extension for $21 million, an annual average of $7 million. He instead publicly ripped team owner Glen Taylor, asking reporters how anyone could expect him to try to “feed his family” for such a paltry sum. Taylor withdrew the offer and Sprewell never played another game in the NBA, for anybody.

“His comment about `feeding my family’ wasn’t really the issue with me,” Taylor said in an interview in October 2006. “That was just a bad thing. What was worse was that he said, `Well, then maybe I shouldn’t play so hard,’ or something like that. That, I took issue with.”

It will be interesting to see if today’s ultra-wealthy athletes can remain as driven and committed as their less-affluent forebears, who not only played or fought for pride and championships, but to pay the bills and actually feed their families. Where once sports fans marveled at the three-year, $400,000 (total!) contract the New York Jets lavished upon rookie quarterback Joe Namath on Jan. 2, 1966, the San Francisco 49ers signed newly acquired and largely unproven Jimmy Garoppolo, who previously had served as Tom Brady’s backup with the New England Patriots, to a five-year, $137.5 million contract, with a salary-cap hit of $37 million for this season alone. Where Bob Pettit, a 10-time first-team All-NBA selection and two-time league NBA who was still playing at a high level, retired from the St. Louis Hawks after the 1964-65 season because he thought he could do better as a banker than his $65,000 basketball salary ($513,591.67 in 2018 dollars), LeBron James raked in $85 million in 2017, $52 million of which came from endorsements.

After he has a couple of hundred million dollars put away for a rainy day, will Canelo Alvarez still want to suffer the rigors of training camp and more trials by combat to further embellish his legacy? Or will he be satisfied to walk away, fat and happy, with still more to give because the incentive to do so had diminished in correlation with the expansion of his bank account?

Like the Charlie Sheen character asked in Wall Street, how much is enough? It is a question everyone who buys a Powerball or Mega Millions lottery ticket probably poses to himself or herself, even as we imagine what it must be like to find that life has supplied us with its elusive winning numbers.

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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