By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.

August 25, 2026

When Terence Crawford objected to paying the World Boxing Council a substantial sanctioning fee after his fight with Canelo Álvarez, his position was easy to understand at an emotional level. Crawford was the fighter who trained for months, made weight, entered the ring, absorbed punches, and assumed the physical risks associated with professional boxing. The executives of the WBC did not take those risks, and yet the organization claimed the right to collect a percentage of Crawford’s compensation merely because one of its championship belts was involved.

That type of dispute naturally generates sympathy for the athlete. Professional sports are filled with managers, promoters, agents, lawyers, sanctioning organizations, broadcasters, accountants, consultants, and other people who appear to be making money from the efforts of someone else. In boxing the contrast is particularly stark because the fighter’s contribution is so visible. One person is getting punched in the head while everyone else is standing outside the ropes.

But that way of looking at the economics of a professional boxing match is incomplete. It focuses almost entirely on the final physical performance while largely ignoring the economic and institutional structure that allows that performance to be converted into tens of millions of dollars. Crawford’s athletic ability is obviously indispensable to a Crawford fight, but athletic ability by itself does not create a $50 million purse, assuming for purposes of discussion that the widely reported figure is approximately correct. Crawford has disputed that figure, and the precise amount is not important to the larger point.

The real question is not whether the WBC physically helped Crawford throw punches. The more useful question is what made a particular boxing match sufficiently important, organized, marketable, enforceable, and commercially valuable that enormous amounts of money could be generated from it. Once the question is framed that way, the sanctioning bodies, promoters, lawyers, managers, broadcasters, venues, regulators, accountants, and other professionals no longer look quite as much like people who happened to appear after the money was created and demanded a share.

They are part of the structure that helped create the event from which the money arose.

A Fighter’s Talent Is Necessary, But It Is Not the Entire Product

Terence Crawford is one of the outstanding fighters of his generation. Nothing about defending the economic role of the WBC, promoters, lawyers, or anyone else requires minimizing what Crawford accomplished. Without his skill, discipline, years of training, willingness to accept risk, and extraordinary competitive ability, there is no Terence Crawford championship fight to sell.

At the same time, there is a difference between athletic ability and the commercial product known as a major world championship fight. Two exceptionally talented men can agree to fight each other in a gym, parking lot, backyard, or warehouse. Their athletic abilities do not disappear simply because the fight is not sanctioned or professionally promoted, but the economic value of the event may be radically different.

Kimbo Slice provides an amusing historical illustration. Long before he became a professional mixed-martial-arts attraction, he became famous through videotaped street and backyard fights that circulated on the Internet. Those fights attracted substantial attention, particularly by the standards of early online video, but Kimbo’s real commercial value expanded dramatically when his popularity became part of organized professional combat sports.

The reason is obvious. A large professional sporting event is not simply the athletic contest itself. It is the contest plus the system that organizes, verifies, distributes, finances, promotes, regulates, and monetizes it.

If Crawford and Canelo had fought in a backyard with somebody recording the fight on a telephone, the punches would have been real. The fighters would have been just as talented. The fight nevertheless would not have been the same economic product as a globally distributed event promoted as a contest for the undisputed championship of the world.

That difference is not merely advertising. It is infrastructure.

What Makes a Championship Fight Worth So Much Money?

A modern championship boxing event involves a remarkable number of participants whose work occurs outside the ring. Promoters arrange and finance the event. Broadcasters and streaming companies acquire and distribute media rights. Venues provide the physical facility. Athletic commissions regulate the contest, license participants, appoint officials, and establish health and safety requirements.

Managers negotiate opportunities for fighters. Lawyers draft and negotiate the contracts that determine compensation, broadcasting rights, sponsorship obligations, promotional rights, intellectual-property rights, dispute procedures, and dozens of other issues that most viewers never think about. Accountants and business managers handle increasingly complicated financial arrangements associated with events that may generate revenues in multiple jurisdictions and through multiple entities.

Insurance companies assume risks that otherwise could make major events impossible or economically irrational. Sponsors pay for association with the event because an audience exists. Journalists, commentators, broadcasters, and media companies spend years creating interest in the sport and educating audiences about why particular matchups matter.

The sanctioning organizations play a role as well. Their role is certainly subject to legitimate criticism, and boxing has more belts, classifications, interim champions, mandatory challengers, and competing rankings than almost anyone can reasonably defend. Nevertheless, the fact that the system is imperfect does not mean that the organizations provide no value.

A championship designation has value because people have agreed over time that it has meaning. When a fighter becomes the WBC, WBA, IBF, or WBO champion, the designation carries historical, promotional, and economic significance because previous generations of fighters competed for those same championships.

That history matters. Muhammad Ali did not fight for an abstract concept called “heavyweight excellence.” Championship organizations, commissions, promoters, journalists, and the boxing public created a recognized institutional framework through which championship status could be conferred, contested, and transferred from one fighter to another.

The WBC did not create Terence Crawford’s ability. But Crawford wanted the WBC belt for a reason.

The Meaning of “Undisputed”

This point becomes particularly important when discussing an undisputed championship.

The phrase “undisputed champion” has enormous promotional significance precisely because boxing ordinarily has several recognized sanctioning organizations. A fighter becomes undisputed by collecting the major championships and thereby eliminating, at least temporarily, the disagreement created by having multiple organizations recognize different champions.

The existence of several sanctioning bodies creates some of boxing’s most obvious absurdities. It also creates the commercial significance of unification. If those belts truly meant nothing, collecting all of them would mean nothing.

Yet fighters spend years pursuing them. Promoters advertise unification bouts. Television broadcasts display the belts prominently. Fighters enter the ring wearing or carrying them. Announcers emphasize the number of titles at stake. Journalists describe a four-belt undisputed champion differently from someone holding a minor regional championship.

Crawford understood that perfectly well. Becoming undisputed was part of the significance of the Canelo fight. The WBC’s championship was one component of the status he sought to obtain.

That does not resolve every contractual issue concerning what Crawford owed the WBC, and the exact governing documents always matter. It does, however, make it difficult to dismiss the organization as a complete stranger attempting to confiscate money after the fight was over.

Crawford’s Objection Is Really About Price

A more persuasive criticism of the WBC is not that it deserves no compensation. The better argument is that a percentage-based sanctioning fee can become extraordinarily large when a fighter’s purse reaches the highest levels of the sport.

A 3% fee on a $500,000 purse is $15,000. A 3% fee on a $50 million purse is $1.5 million. It is certainly reasonable to ask whether the WBC performs one hundred times as much work simply because the fighter earns one hundred times as much money.

That is a legitimate pricing question.

It is also primarily a question that should be addressed before the fight.

If Crawford believes that his fame has reached the point at which the WBC benefits more from association with him than he benefits from carrying the WBC belt, he has considerable negotiating leverage. He can demand a reduced fee. He can refuse to participate in a WBC-sanctioned contest. He can decide that he values the other championships but does not value the WBC championship enough to pay what the organization charges.

There is nothing improper about any of those positions. They are ordinary commercial negotiations between sophisticated parties.

The difficulty arises when someone wants the benefit of a contractual arrangement before performance and disputes the price only after receiving the benefit. If the WBC sanctioned the fight, permitted its championship to be used in promoting the event, and Crawford agreed to the governing rules, then Crawford’s later conclusion that the fee was excessive is not necessarily a legal defense.

It may be an excellent reason never to contract with the WBC again. It is a much weaker reason to avoid a contractual obligation already incurred.

Contracts Often Become Unpopular Only After Performance

Anyone who practices commercial litigation sees some version of this phenomenon constantly.

At the beginning of a transaction, both parties perceive value in the agreement. One side wants money, services, intellectual property, a license, access, a product, or an opportunity. The other side wants compensation. The parties reach an agreement because, at that moment, each side believes the exchange is worthwhile.

After performance, the psychology changes.

The benefit received begins to seem inevitable, while the payment obligation suddenly appears burdensome. People frequently forget the uncertainty that existed before the agreement was performed. What once looked like a fair exchange begins to look like somebody taking money that now feels entirely owned by the person obligated to pay it.

That reaction is not unusual. It is one of the reasons contract law exists.

If every party were free to reconsider the fairness of a price after discovering how valuable the transaction turned out to be, many commercial agreements would become meaningless. The entire point of a contract is to allocate obligations before everyone knows exactly how events will unfold.

Boxing is no different.

A rising fighter wants to be ranked. He wants an eliminator. He wants to fight for a recognized championship. He wants his photograph taken with a major belt around his waist. He wants broadcasters to identify him as a world champion.

Those things have economic value while he is building his career.

If he eventually becomes so famous that everybody already regards him as the best fighter in the world, his relationship with the sanctioning organization changes. That may allow him to negotiate much better terms in the future. It does not necessarily mean that the organization’s previous contribution had no value or that existing agreements disappear.

The Same Argument Appears in Contingency-Fee Cases

The psychology surrounding sanctioning fees has a close analogue in legal practice.

Consider a first-party property insurance claim. A homeowner submits a claim, and the insurance company denies coverage or refuses to make a meaningful payment. From the insured’s practical perspective, the claim may be worth nothing at that moment because the party controlling the money has said it will not pay.

The homeowner then hires a lawyer.

The lawyer reviews the policy and the loss. Depending upon the case, counsel may obtain experts, investigate the carrier’s factual and coverage positions, send statutory notices, file suit, conduct written discovery, take depositions, litigate motions, retain additional experts, prepare witnesses, attend mediation, negotiate with opposing counsel, and prepare the case for trial.

Eventually, the case settles for $60,000.

At that point, the insured sees $60,000.

The insured may begin thinking of the entire $60,000 as money that was always his. When the settlement statement shows attorney’s fees, costs, liens, or other deductions, the reaction sometimes becomes: “Everyone is taking part of my money.”

That reaction is understandable because the client is looking at the transaction at the end rather than at the beginning.

At the beginning, the carrier was paying zero.

The Lawyer Did Not Necessarily Take Part of an Existing Pie

A lawyer representing a claimant on contingency is sometimes described as taking a piece of the client’s recovery. In a literal accounting sense, that description may be accurate. The settlement proceeds are received and then distributed according to the applicable fee contract, costs, liens, and other obligations.

Economically, however, that description can be misleading.

The relevant question is what recovery existed before the lawyer’s services were provided.

If an insurer denied a claim and maintained that it owed nothing, there was no $60,000 check sitting on a table waiting for the insured. The lawyer did not arrive after the money had already been collected and decide to remove a percentage from it.

The lawyer’s work helped produce the circumstances under which the insurer became willing, or legally compelled, to pay.

I sometimes explain the concept in very simple terms: the lawyer did not merely take a piece of the pie. The legal process helped create the pie.

That is not a claim that every lawyer is uniquely brilliant or that every favorable settlement is solely attributable to counsel. Facts matter. Meritorious claims have inherent value. Judges, experts, witnesses, opposing counsel, insurers, and many other variables influence outcomes.

But professional representation can unquestionably create substantial economic value.

A denied insurance claim may produce nothing until somebody invokes the machinery capable of enforcing the claim.

A Demand Letter and a Lawsuit Are Not the Same Thing

One of the things clients often underestimate is the difference between having a legal right and having an effective mechanism for enforcing that right.

A policyholder can send an insurer a letter saying, “You are wrong and should pay me.”

A lawyer can file a lawsuit.

Those two communications are not economically equivalent.

A lawsuit invokes the authority of the judicial system. The defendant becomes subject to deadlines, discovery obligations, subpoenas, depositions, motions, judicial rulings, expert discovery, trial exposure, and eventually a judgment that can be enforced through the coercive authority of the state.

That framework changes behavior.

The lawyer is not merely being paid to write a better letter. The lawyer is being paid for the knowledge and ability required to place the client’s dispute within a system that can produce an enforceable result.

The same principle applies to business litigation, personal injury cases, employment disputes, contract cases, probate litigation, and many other areas of law. Rights have greater practical value when there is a functioning legal system and professionals capable of enforcing them.

Why Contingency Fees Can Be Large

Contingency fees often attract criticism because successful cases can produce fees that appear large when measured against the number of hours visible to the client.

That method of analysis ignores the risk allocation inherent in the arrangement.

An hourly lawyer usually bills for time worked regardless of the ultimate outcome. The client bears much of the litigation risk because the client continues paying fees even if the case eventually loses.

A contingency lawyer accepts a different bargain. The lawyer may work for months or years without receiving an hourly fee. The lawyer may devote hundreds of hours to a matter and ultimately receive nothing if there is no recovery.

Depending upon the arrangement and governing law, the lawyer or firm also may carry litigation expenses for substantial periods. Even when expenses ultimately remain the client’s responsibility, the law firm may have money tied up in experts, depositions, records, investigators, filing fees, travel, demonstrative exhibits, and other litigation costs.

The successful cases therefore cannot be evaluated in isolation.

A contingent-fee practice is economically possible because successful cases compensate the lawyer not only for the time associated with those particular matters but also for the risk inherent in taking cases whose outcome is uncertain. If every successful case were repriced after the result became known, the model would collapse.

That is why contingency fees are fundamentally different from ordinary hourly billing.

Why the Percentage Is Usually Applied to a Defined Gross Recovery

Clients also sometimes question why a contingent fee is calculated from a defined gross recovery rather than from whatever amount the client ultimately takes home after every other obligation is paid.

The simplest answer is that a defined base creates an objective calculation.

Assume a lawyer obtains a $500,000 settlement under a lawful written contingent-fee agreement that provides for a specified percentage of the recovery. The fee can be calculated from the defined amount according to the agreement and the applicable ethical rules.

Suppose instead that the fee were based on the client’s eventual subjective “net.”

What would be deducted first?

Medical bills? Liens? Taxes? Credit-card debt? Mortgage arrearages? Litigation expenses? A loan the client took during the lawsuit? Money the client owes a family member?

Those obligations have no logical relationship to the value of the legal service.

The same problem becomes obvious in Crawford’s case.

If the WBC’s percentage were calculated from Crawford’s “net” rather than from a defined purse, somebody would first have to decide what net means. His trainer may receive a percentage. His manager may receive another percentage. His attorneys and accountants are paid. Training camp costs money. Sparring partners are compensated. There may be travel expenses, security, nutrition, medical costs, business-management expenses, and numerous other deductions.

Then there are taxes.

Should the WBC receive less because Crawford happens to have a different tax structure from another fighter? Should one boxer pay a larger sanctioning fee because his business manager found better deductions? Should another fighter reduce the fee by routing legitimate expenses through entities he controls?

Once the calculation moves away from an objectively defined gross amount, it becomes an accounting dispute.

A gross-recovery percentage is not perfect. It is simply predictable.

Taxes Do Not Make the Percentage Irrational

There is another common emotional objection. A fighter may say that the sanctioning organization takes its percentage from the gross purse while the fighter must still pay federal taxes, state taxes where applicable, trainers, managers, lawyers, and other expenses.

All of that is true.

It is also how gross revenue works in virtually every business.

A law firm may collect a fee but still has to pay employees, rent, insurance, software, taxes, experts, contractors, and operating expenses. A restaurant receives the entire price of a meal but does not keep the entire amount as profit. A construction company receives contract revenue and then pays labor, materials, insurance, equipment expenses, subcontractors, taxes, and overhead.

Revenue and profit are different concepts.

The fact that Crawford does not personally retain every dollar of a gross purse does not necessarily mean that another party’s percentage should be calculated after all of his private expenses have been resolved.

It simply means that earning $50 million is not the same as personally spending $50 million.

Why Lawyers Are Particularly Easy to Resent

Lawyers frequently occupy an uncomfortable position in this economic discussion because their contribution is less visible than the client’s underlying injury or loss.

The homeowner sees the damaged property.

The injured person feels the pain.

The business owner experiences the lost revenue.

The lawyer’s work may consist of reading documents, conducting research, writing, negotiating, taking testimony, filing papers, and appearing in court. Much of that work occurs away from the client.

Then a settlement check arrives.

At that moment, the lawyer’s fee is extremely visible.

The work that produced the recovery may have occurred over the preceding eighteen months, but the deduction appears on a single settlement statement. Human beings naturally focus on the number directly in front of them.

That creates the illusion that the lawyer arrived at the end and took money that otherwise would have gone entirely to the client.

Sometimes the same attitude is directed at accountants, financial advisers, brokers, agents, consultants, and other professionals. Their work is perceived as overhead rather than as part of the mechanism that makes the transaction possible.

There are certainly circumstances where that criticism is deserved.

There are lawyers who charge too much. There are promoters who exploit athletes. There are managers who add very little value. There are consultants whose primary skill seems to be producing invoices. Boxing sanctioning organizations sometimes create titles and fees that are difficult to defend.

Acknowledging those abuses does not require accepting the opposite proposition that professional intermediaries generally add no value.

Modern Economic Activity Requires Institutions

The idea that only the person performing the most visible physical work creates value does not describe how a modern economy functions.

A major real-estate project is not created only by the workers pouring concrete. Developers, architects, engineers, lenders, lawyers, insurers, regulators, title companies, accountants, contractors, subcontractors, and investors all perform different functions that allow the project to exist.

A surgeon may perform the operation, but the operation requires a hospital, anesthesia professionals, nurses, imaging, laboratories, sterile equipment, insurance arrangements, administrators, and an entire regulatory and legal structure surrounding the procedure.

A public company may build a valuable product, but sophisticated legal, accounting, banking, and regulatory systems allow it to raise capital, enter contracts, protect intellectual property, compensate employees, acquire businesses, and sell products throughout the world.

Professional boxing is no different.

The boxer is the indispensable central performer. But the athlete’s physical performance becomes a multimillion-dollar commercial event only because a much larger system makes that transformation possible.

The WBC Has Its Own Legitimate Costs and Functions

The WBC also has a better defense than simply saying that its belt has historical prestige.

It maintains rankings. It administers championship rules. It identifies and orders mandatory challengers. It regulates aspects of championship contests. It maintains a Clean Boxing Program in conjunction with VADA that subjects covered fighters to anti-doping requirements.

One may reasonably argue about whether those functions justify a 3% percentage of every purse. The scale of the fee is a legitimate business issue.

But those functions are not imaginary.

The anti-doping system is particularly relevant because credible championship competition requires some method of addressing performance-enhancing drugs. Professional boxing historically had highly inconsistent testing, and the system remains far from uniform today. Nevertheless, the WBC has invested in a program that imposes requirements on its champions and ranked fighters.

That has value.

A fan may never consciously purchase a fight because the WBC operates a drug-testing program, but institutional credibility is often valuable precisely because consumers do not have to think about every component separately.

Crawford Benefited From the Same System Before He Became Crawford

There is also a temporal dimension to the dispute that tends to be overlooked.

Today, Terence Crawford is famous enough that he can credibly say that his name is larger than any particular belt. If the WBC strips him, knowledgeable boxing fans do not suddenly forget what happened in the ring.

That was not always true.

At an earlier point in his career, recognized championships helped establish Crawford’s legitimacy. Rankings mattered. Title opportunities mattered. Being introduced as a world champion mattered. Unifying divisions mattered.

Those accomplishments became part of the résumé that eventually allowed Crawford to command the kind of event he had with Canelo.

Again, the WBC did not create his talent. It did not win his fights for him.

But it participated in an institutional system that helped convert his victories into recognized championship accomplishments.

There is nothing inconsistent about saying that Crawford eventually became more commercially important than a particular sanctioning organization while also recognizing that the system had real value during the process by which he reached that level.

The Lawyer’s Relationship With a Successful Client Can Evolve the Same Way

Something similar happens in professional relationships generally.

A new business may desperately need experienced outside counsel during its early years. As the company grows, it may hire an internal legal department, develop leverage with major law firms, and negotiate much lower rates.

That does not mean the legal work performed during the company’s early years had no value.

A young athlete may need an agent badly. A superstar athlete may eventually possess enough leverage to negotiate much more favorable terms or establish his own management company.

That does not retroactively make the earlier agency agreement irrational.

Economic relationships evolve as bargaining power changes.

Crawford’s bargaining power today may allow him to tell sanctioning organizations that he will no longer pay traditional percentages. That is a future business decision.

It is different from saying that the entire system surrounding his career was worthless.

A First-Party Property Example

Consider again the homeowner with a denied property claim because it illustrates the issue in a less glamorous context.

Assume a homeowner suffers significant water damage and submits an insurance claim. The carrier investigates and denies coverage. The homeowner believes the denial is wrong but does not know how to challenge it effectively.

At that point, the homeowner may possess a potentially valuable legal claim, but legal claims do not automatically convert themselves into money.

The lawyer studies the policy. Counsel analyzes exclusions, endorsements, notice provisions, causation issues, and applicable statutes. Experts may be retained to evaluate the source and extent of damage.

Litigation begins.

The insurer must now respond to formal discovery. Its representatives may be deposed. Experts may be challenged. Documents that were previously internal to the carrier may become relevant evidence. Coverage arguments must survive judicial scrutiny.

Eventually, the carrier agrees to pay $60,000.

If the client looks only at the final settlement statement, the lawyer’s fee may feel substantial. If the client compares the result with the situation on the day counsel was retained, however, the economics look different.

The client began with a denied claim.

The client finished with a recovery.

The professional service was the mechanism that helped move the dispute from the first position to the second.

A Fee Should Be Evaluated Against the Alternative

This is perhaps the most important economic principle in the entire discussion.

The value of a professional service should generally be compared with the realistic alternative, not with an imaginary world in which the same beneficial result occurs for free.

A client who receives a $60,000 settlement and pays an agreed contingent fee may imagine that the alternative was receiving $60,000 without paying the lawyer.

Often that was never an available option.

The realistic alternative may have been receiving nothing.

Similarly, Crawford may look at a $300,000 sanctioning fee and imagine the alternative as earning precisely the same purse in precisely the same historic undisputed championship event without paying the sanctioning organization.

Perhaps at Crawford’s present level of fame he eventually could negotiate something close to that.

But that does not mean the institutional structure contributed nothing to the value of the event.

The relevant comparison has to include the system that produced the commercial opportunity.

This Is Not a Defense of Every Fee

None of this means every percentage is reasonable merely because someone signed a contract.

Courts regulate contracts. Ethical rules regulate lawyers. Legislatures regulate professional services. Contracts can be unenforceable for numerous reasons, and fiduciary obligations may impose duties beyond ordinary commercial bargaining.

Florida, for example, regulates contingent attorney’s fees through the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, and particular types of claims may be subject to additional statutory provisions and limitations. Lawyers cannot simply charge whatever percentage they want without regard to those rules.

Likewise, boxing sanctioning bodies are properly subject to criticism when their rules become excessive, opaque, inconsistent, or primarily revenue-generating.

The point is narrower.

A percentage fee is not inherently illegitimate simply because the resulting number becomes large.

The proper inquiry is whether the fee was lawfully agreed upon, whether the professional or organization provided the bargained-for service, whether applicable ethical or statutory rules were satisfied, and whether some recognized legal basis exists for avoiding the obligation.

“I no longer like how large the number looks” is not generally enough.

The Myth of the Person in the Back Room

There is an old caricature of the businessman, promoter, lawyer, or manager sitting in the back room smoking a cigar while someone else performs the real work.

That caricature survives because there are certainly people who exploit others and contribute little.

But it can also become an excuse for misunderstanding the economic value of organization.

Professional expertise frequently consists of making complicated systems work.

The successful lawyer may make litigation look simple because the lawyer understands the system. The successful promoter may make a global boxing event appear inevitable because the promotional infrastructure is functioning properly. The successful accountant may prevent financial problems that never become visible precisely because they were prevented.

People often notice professional infrastructure most when it fails.

If Crawford had defeated Canelo and the promoter then announced that the purse money had disappeared, everyone would immediately appreciate the value of enforceable contracts, lawyers, regulated payment arrangements, financial institutions, and courts.

When everything works, those systems become almost invisible.

Their invisibility does not mean they are unnecessary.

The System Is Why the Money Can Become So Large

At bottom, the debate is about the relationship between individual talent and institutional infrastructure.

Crawford’s talent created the reason people wanted to watch.

The system created the means by which millions of people could watch, the fight could be marketed as historically significant, the parties could enter enforceable agreements, the fighters could be guaranteed compensation, championships could be recognized, sponsors could safely participate, broadcasters could purchase rights, and the entire event could operate as a sophisticated commercial transaction.

Both contributions matter.

The same is true of litigation.

A client supplies the claim. The facts belong to the client. The injury, property loss, contractual breach, or financial damage happened to the client.

The legal system and the lawyers operating within it provide the means by which that claim can become an enforceable recovery.

When the process succeeds, the resulting money does not prove that the lawyers, courts, experts, and other professionals were unnecessary.

Frequently it proves the opposite.

The Pie Still Had to Be Created

That is why the “piece of the pie” metaphor can be misleading.

Once money has been generated, everybody can see it. A sanctioning fee becomes $300,000. A contingent fee becomes a six-figure number. The parties naturally focus on how the existing amount will be divided.

But the more important economic inquiry begins earlier.

How did the money become available?

If the homeowner’s insurance claim was denied before counsel became involved, the lawyer did not simply arrive and reduce a recovery that was already guaranteed. The legal representation contributed to creating the conditions that produced the settlement.

If a boxer receives an extraordinary purse for an undisputed championship event, the sanctioning bodies and other institutions did not simply appear after the event was completed. Their championships, rankings, history, rules, commercial relationships, and institutional legitimacy were among the elements that helped give the event its meaning.

There is nothing wrong with negotiating aggressively over how the resulting revenue should be distributed.

Crawford is entitled to believe the WBC charges too much. The WBC is entitled to believe its championship has substantial value. Promoters want their percentage. Managers want theirs. Lawyers want to be paid. Fighters understandably want to retain as much of their purses as possible.

Those disagreements are precisely why contracts exist.

Everyone Is Free to Reject the Deal Beforehand

There is a simple solution for someone who believes a professional service costs too much.

Do not buy it.

A prospective client who believes a contingent fee is excessive can try to negotiate different terms, hire another lawyer, pay counsel hourly if that option is available, or proceed without representation.

A boxer who believes the WBC championship is not worth the sanctioning fee can decline to fight for it, negotiate a reduction, or build his career outside that organization’s rankings.

Those choices may have consequences.

The unrepresented claimant may recover less or nothing. The fighter may lose access to a championship opportunity or part of the promotional significance associated with a particular bout.

That does not make the underlying fee coercive merely because rejecting it has an economic cost.

Markets operate through choices among alternatives, none of which is necessarily perfect.

The Larger Lesson

The Crawford controversy is interesting because it illustrates a much broader misunderstanding about professional services.

People understandably identify value with the person performing the most visible act.

Crawford throws the punches, so Crawford appears to create all the value.

The injured client suffered the loss, so the recovery appears to belong entirely to the client independent of the process used to obtain it.

Modern economic systems are more complicated than that.

Individual talent matters enormously. So do institutions.

The best fighter in the world still needs an opponent, a contract, a promoter, a venue, distribution, regulation, financial backing, and an audience willing to assign meaning to the contest.

A person with a meritorious legal claim still needs a functioning judicial system and, in many instances, capable counsel willing and able to use it.

None of those participants should apologize merely because their work is performed outside the boxing ring or outside the client’s immediate view.

The athlete deserves his purse.

The client deserves the recovery.

The lawyer deserves the lawful fee that was agreed upon.

The promoter deserves compensation for promoting.

The accountant deserves compensation for accounting.

And a sanctioning organization that provides a championship under agreed rules has a legitimate argument that it should receive the compensation associated with that arrangement.

Reasonable people can disagree about what each participant should receive. Those negotiations are part of every sophisticated commercial system.

What is harder to defend is the idea that everyone except the most visible participant is simply taking money that somehow would have existed in exactly the same amount without them.

Usually, it would not.

Terence Crawford is capable of fighting without the WBC, without a promoter, without lawyers, and without most of the institutional machinery of professional boxing.

He could find an opponent and fight him in a backyard.

What he could not reasonably expect is for that backyard fight to generate the same purse, carry the same championship significance, produce the same worldwide audience, or create the same commercial legacy.

The system has value.

So do the people who know how to make the system work.