Authors

 Rudy Mondragón, Ph.D., Abel Valenzuela Jr., Ph.D., and José M. Hernández, Ph.D.

Executive Summary

In May of 2024, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez, took on Jaime Munguía and earned a purse estimated at a whopping $35 million. While the majority of the U.S. public is familiar with these multi-million dollar fights, for the majority of the roughly 3,600 licensed professional boxers actively working in the United States, boxing is a profession with high risks and very low pay. This policy brief examines the precarious labor position that professional boxers occupy in California, the state that hosts the most boxing events in the country.

Drawing on data from 32 in-depth qualitative interviews we conducted with independently contracted Latino boxers and various boxing stakeholders and quantitative data provided by the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC), we provide valuable insights on the total boxing events, approximate number of Latino boxers, a typical workday for boxers, median compensation figures, health and physical risks associated with the job, and current regulations offering an intricate look at the labor landscape of the boxing industry in California.

Key Findings

• California is the top state for boxing in the country by number of events. In 2022, California hosted almost 6 times as many official events as Nevada, a state popularly known for its boxing fights. Within California, most matches are concentrated in Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire.
• Latinos were overrepresented among professional boxers in California. While Latinos made up 40 percent of California’s population in 2022, 49 percent of boxers fighting in California between 2013 and 2021 were of Latino descent.
• While championship-level matches, usually 12-round fights, attract the most media, public attention, and money, almost 84 percent of all fights in California between 2013 and 2021 were four-, six-, or eight-round fights.
• Boxers in California who fight four-, six-, or eight-round fights typically train between 24 and 30 hours per week. Boxing work requires not only physical training, but also rehabilitation, meal preparation, social media engagement, and business meetings.
• Many boxers in California receive less-than-minimum wage earnings from boxing. The
  median compensation for fighters in California ranges from $1,500 per 4-round fight to $7,000 per 8-round fight, and fighters at four-, six-, and eight-round levels typically have two to four matches per year. Thus, in a best-case scenario, boxers at this level would make $28,000 per year, approximately $5,000 less than the annual earnings of a full-time worker earning California’s minimum wage.
• Since boxers are independent contractors, they have no access to comprehensive work
  benefits and protections and are not covered by federal labor standards.

Policy Recommendations

In California, CSAC has made strides in implementing some measures to assure, to the best of their abilities, the health and safety of boxers, such as requiring the presence of ringside physicians at each match. However, our findings show that boxers still face precarious conditions. To improve the safety and labor protection of boxers in California, we suggest the following policy recommendations:

• Raise the minimum payment of contestants from the current $100 per round to $375 per round and make annual adjustments to account for inflation.
• Strengthen the California Professional Boxer’s Pension Fund by increasing fees and
  making annual adjustments to fees and caps to account for inflation.
• Create a financial literacy tool that educates boxers on financial skills.
• Create an easily accessible database for collecting, storing, and retrieving disaggregated data.

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