Calzaghe Wins Court Case Against Warren
Former world champion boxer Joe Calzaghe has won his High Court case against his ex-manager and promoter Frank Warren.
Calzaghe, who retired last month from the ring unbeaten, claimed he was owed £2m in unpaid fees while Warren claimed the Welsh super-middleweight owed him £1m for breaking a verbal contract for one more fight.
Justice Wyn Williams dismissed Warren’s claim and ruled he should pay Calzaghe around £2m a ruling which Warren said he intended to appeal against in terms of the amount.
The boxer denied breaking a promise to Warren, who managed him for 10 years from 1997 prior to Calzaghe taking over promoting his own fights. He counterclaimed that he was owed more than £2m in fees for his Bernard Hopkins win last year.
Justice Wyn Williams said: ‘I say now that there are aspects of the evidence given by each of these persons which has caused me to reflect long and hard upon their credibility, accuracy and reliability.
‘If an oral agreement was concluded as alleged, I have no doubt that some written record would have been created prior to the fight with Mr Hopkins.’
He said written terms had covered all of Calzaghe’s fights for Mr Warren from January 1998 onwards.
He said it was ‘inexplicable’ that Warren, the claimant in the case, as an ‘astute and experienced businessman’ had failed ‘to produce one shred of paper’ to record their alleged verbal deal over the Hopkins fight.
