The New York State Athletic Commission, after a hearing today, unanimously voted to lift the July 6, 2010 suspension of Golden Boy Promotions’s New York boxing promoter’s license. The Commission’s Order, as well as its original Suspension Order, is attached hereto. The Commission’ ruling unequivocally demonstrates that certain members of the boxing press, particularly George Kimball, had been guilty of unprofessional and personally vindictive reporting that falsely claimed that Golden Boy had been suspended for unethical conduct – arising from supposed financial transactions relating to Golden Boy’s May 15, 2010 event in New York – after a full hearing.
In fact, as the Commission’s ruling today made clear:
a. Golden Boy had been suspended without a hearing only because there had been a misunderstanding and then delays in producing certain fighter contracts, as opposed to any allegations of financial misconduct. In other words, the only reason for the suspension had to do with these commission disclosure issues, and the suspension notice did not remotely suggest that Golden Boy had engaged in any inappropriate conduct vis a vis its fighters – all of whom had received timely Ali Act disclosures.
b. After its hearing today, the Commission explicitly found today that an initial Golden Boy disclosure, omitting the existence of certain contracts, was a simple mistake, and that the production of these contracts should have been made earlier. However, during the Commission meeting the Commission acknowledged that, having now seen all relevant contracts, there was no evidence of any substantive wrongdoing on the part of Golden Boy. Golden Boy has acknowledged an error (arising from the absence of key personnel for a short period of time) with respect solely to its timely production, and has therefore paid a $10,000 fine to the Commission upon the Commission’s finding that only New York laws, rather than the Ali Act, had been violated.
While Golden Boy made some procedural errors, the real story here is how supposedly reputable journalists, such as Mr. Kimball, feel free to write affirmatively false stories which they either know to be false or should have known to be false by simply reading the relevant documents. In this case, Mr. Kimball plainly never read the Commission’s suspension order and did not even bother to reach out to any Golden Boy representative to hear Golden Boy’s side, the truthful one, of the story. Indeed, in the case of Mr. Kimball, this conduct is particularly egregious in that he just published another false story in the Boston Herald on this subject.
Golden Boy is evaluating its legal options against Mr. Kimball and his publishers. It is our hope that the matter can be put to bed with a retraction and an apology. However, Golden Boy wants to make clear that, going forward, it will not tolerate this kind of irresponsible journalism, and will move swiftly to vindicate itself in court and elsewhere.
