Mayweather's exhibition with Zambidis in Greece is called off
Michael Huezo
Host · Writer
ATHENS – Floyd Mayweather's exhibition against Greek kickboxing legend Mike Zambidis which was scheduled for this Saturday in Athens has been called off, according to federal court records filed Thursday.
Mayweather's attorney Melissa Glass wrote in a letter to the court that the event would no longer proceed in Athens as planned, since a pending motion for injunction had not yet been ruled on. The fight had been thrown into doubt over the past week after CSI Sports Events, an events company that holds exclusive promotional rights to two other Mayweather bouts, sued him in the Southern District of New York. CSI accused Mayweather of breach of contract and filed an emergency injunction petition to stop the Zambidis bout from happening at all.
According to the lawsuit, Mayweather’s deal with CSI covers an eight round exhibition against Mike Tyson and a professional rematch against Manny Pacquiao, and bars him from competing against anyone else before fulfilling those obligations. CSI claims it had already advanced Mayweather $4.5 million tied to those guarantees, and that he announced the Zambidis bout in Greece just a day after receiving a separate $150,000 medical advance for the Tyson fight. The Tyson exhibition had been pushed off its original date after Tyson suffered a hand injury.
The legal pressure had already started to cause issues for the Athens card before Thursday’s letter made it official. DAZN, which had been set to stream the bout as pay per view, quietly pulled it from its schedule with no public announcement.
The fallout has gotten expensive on both sides. Front Row, the promotional entity behind the Zambidis event, claims it spent or committed roughly $7 million on the show and had already paid Mayweather $3 million plus travel costs for his team, money it says it cannot recover now that the fight is dead. Mayweather’s side has its own losses to count. His manager Walter Jordan said in a court filing that Mayweather put up $250,000 of his own money for his Zambidis training camp, money that will not be coming back either.
Mayweather’s team has pushed back hard on CSI’s version of events. In filings this week, his attorneys argued that key pieces of the Tyson fight never came together on CSI’s end, including a locked in venue, funding and basic logistics, and that Jordan said CSI never reached a point where it was actually prepared to put the Tyson event on. Mayweather's attorney also raised questions in oral arguments about whether CSI’s contract with Mayweather was even valid, and argued the company waited until eight days before the Zambidis fight to seek its injunction without explanation.
Where this leaves the Tyson and Pacquiao fights remains an open question.
