Judge Refuses to Block Mayweather Exhibition Ahead of Planned Mike Tyson Fight

A federal judge in New York has ruled that an exhibition bout between former boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and kickboxer Mike Zambidis can move forward, rejecting a broadcasting company's argument that the fight violated Mayweather's contractual commitments tied to an upcoming match against Mike Tyson.

In a ruling issued last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick denied CSI Entertainment LLC's request to halt the bout through a temporary restraining order. The Mayweather-Zambidis fight had originally been scheduled for June 27 but never took place after CSI Entertainment sued to stop it and sought emergency court intervention.

According to Judge Broderick's order, the bout has not yet been rescheduled, but he found that CSI failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm from the fight going forward, even though it was tentatively set to happen before Mayweather's planned September matchup with Tyson.

Judge Broderick was skeptical of CSI's claims that it faced reputational or competitive harm from the Zambidis exhibition, noting that details of the fight had circulated publicly within the boxing world since at least February.

Because the matchup was already widely known well in advance, the judge reasoned that any reputational damage CSI might point to had effectively already occurred by the time the company filed suit, meaning the exhibition itself wasn't likely to cause any meaningful additional harm going forward.

The judge also signaled that Mayweather had raised legitimate questions about the underlying broadcast agreements CSI is relying on for the Tyson fight, including uncertainty over the exact date and location of that bout, as well as whether Mayweather was even contractually restricted from taking other fights within six months beforehand.

Given that ambiguity, Judge Broderick concluded that any harm CSI might suffer from the Zambidis fight remained speculative rather than concrete, since the terms of the Tyson matchup itself are still unsettled.

CSI's lawsuit, filed June 18, accuses Mayweather of breaching his contract by agreeing to the now-postponed Zambidis bout, arguing the exhibition interfered with media rights agreements CSI had negotiated with Mayweather and co-defendant Frist Apex Ventures LLC covering fights against both Tyson and fellow boxing veteran Manny Pacquiao.

CSI followed its complaint with requests for both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunctionpreliminary injunctionA preliminary injunction is a temporary court order issued before a case is finally decided that requires a party to take or stop an action while the litigation continues. Federal courts generally consider the likelihood of success, irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest before granting one.Read more →, the latter filed just a day after the initial suit.

While Judge Broderick declined to fast-track CSI's broader injunction request, he did direct the two sides to meet before this past Thursday to work out a schedule for briefing and discovery related to the disputed broadcast contracts.

The discovery process is expected to examine the agreements between CSI and Frist Apex Ventures, along with the question of whether Mayweather was ever actually a party to those contracts in the first place.

As for CSI's request for a full preliminary injunction hearing, the judge said his earliest availability would be August 2, and indicated he first wants briefing from both sides on whether such a hearing is even necessary.