Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | 9:29 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
Sitting in the back of the classroom Monday at UNLV, I realized I have a tendency to at least philosophically side with a manager or a promoter when he has a contractual dispute with a fighter. That manager or promoter may have treated the fighter as if he were no more than an indentured servant, yet it's the manager or promoter who is footing the financial bill and, in theory, attempting to do what's best for the fighter if for no other reason than to recoup his investment.
And then Rhoshii Wells spoke up.
Wells, 27, is a four-year resident of Las Vegas and a professional fighter with a record of 17-1-2. He's a junior middleweight who also won the bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
He's also in the midst of what is now a three-year legal dispute with his former manager, and that entanglement is what brought him -- as well as a current and former Nevada deputy attorney general -- to the Sports & Entertainment Law Association class at the Boyd School of Law on campus.
Wells, ironically, was accompanied by his father, Rico, the irony being that on the same day they were appearing so cohesively in public a more famous junior middleweight, Shane Mosley, was announcing that he had fired his father, Jack, as his trainer.
"I'm going to miss my father," Shane Mosley said in a statement, as if Jack had died.
The Wells family has no such internal strife. Rhoshii and Rico are committed not only to making the best of Rhoshii's career, but to clearing the fiscal and emotional baggage the son has been lugging around for the better part of three years.
"We've already spent $21,000 of our own money on this," Rico Wells said of the attorney and arbitration fees the family has paid on Rhoshii's behalf. "We hope no one else ever has to go through what we've been through."
The Wells case, said attorney James Vilt of Nevada Legal Services, is "so much legal nonsense over what is essentially a simple matter." Yet he neither predicts a victory nor expects one as he prepares legal briefs addressing Wells' potential liability in damages, should the arbitrator rule against the fighter.
The relationship between fighters and managers is habitually evolving and not always sacrosanct, as both the current Nevada deputy attorney general, Keith Kizer, and his predecessor with the Nevada State Athletic Commission and Gaming Control Board, Kirk Hendrick, pointed out during a discussion before some 40 UNLV law students in instructor Mac Weed's class.
"It's the manager's job to get paid fights for the boxer, and it's the boxer's responsibility to fight those fights," Kizer told the audience. "In 95 percent of the (arbitration) cases we hear in Nevada, the question becomes: Did the manager get the fighter the types of fights he needs to advance his career?"
Rhoshii Wells believes his former manager, Nick Garone, not only failed him in that regard, but took a counterproductive stance that cost the fighter a bout that was scheduled and later canceled at Garone's whim.
Wells then left Garone, despite having just signed a contract extension, and Garone in turn filed suit in 2001 seeking 25 percent of Wells' collective purses since the time of their split. Slowing the process was the death of the originally assigned arbitrator, as well as the death of Wells' first attorney.
"I'd like to get this cloud out from over my head," Wells said. "I don't want to become a world champion and then four years later have a former manager say I owe him a ton of money."
Wells makes a good case for himself, yet, it must be added, the opposing view hasn't been heard. To protect himself, Wells has $11,000 in an escrow account that he hopes would satisfy any judgment against him.
Vilt, who said "I feel as if I'm coming into this case two minutes into the fourth quarter," pointed out that Wells is so determined to eliminate this distraction that he took out a loan to finance the arbitration process even after the case had been suspended earlier due to a failure of the parties to pay the appropriate fees.
"I know he wants to get this done," Vilt said, adding that a decision is expected by May 1 and that a dismissal may be the best outcome his client can reasonably expect.
Wells is smart, articulate and as an Olympic medal winner a hero of some sorts. He hasn't made a lot of money fighting, yet he's in a position where his dream of becoming a world champion may yet materialize.
Is his former manager guilty of some malfeasance?
On the surface, it would appear so.
Is Wells entitled to continue his career unencumbered of having to reimburse his former manager?
Again, it would appear so.
But a victory in court is no sure thing and as the students in Weed's class surmised as the case was presented before them, fighters (and managers) are capable of entering into contractual agreements for which neither party is properly prepared.
They looked at Wells with compassion while weighing the legalities of the matter.
I looked at Wells and decided here was a case where the fighter deserved better, even if the law may eventually say otherwise.
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