KB-2025-003244 - [2025] EWHC 2386 (KB)

The Defendant is highly experienced in the world of boxing. He was first hired by the Claimant in 2020. The terms of that engagement had been set out in an email from the Defendant to Mr Shalom sent on 9 June 2020, which the Claimant agreed on 16 June 2020. The agreement covered 10 June 2020 to 31 August 2020. The parties agreed that the Defendant would not work for any other UK promoter during this time; and that he would not divulge any information about the Claimant to any other party or take any action that would damage the business.

At paragraph 7 of the Defendant’s statement he says that such unwritten contracts are not uncommon in the boxing industry and indicates that over many decades of working in the industry, he had never received or worked under a fully written contract.

The Defendant continued to work after the expiry of the originally agreed term, and on Mr Shalom’s evidence became an integral and full-time member of the team, being named as a “key man” in a significant contract between the Claimant and Sky Sports, agreed to run from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2025.

The role of Head of Boxing with the Claimant is an important and specialist one, involving maintaining relationships with boxers’ representatives, managing their career progression, “matchmaking”, dealing with regulatory matters with the British Boxing Board of Control, ensuring the Claimant delivers the boxing elements of its fighter contracts and discussing boxing matters with its broadcasters.

In early January 2024 a draft document, entitled “Consultancy Agreement”, was drawn up. This is exhibited to Mr Shalom’s statement and commences at p.96 of the hearing bundle. It was drawn up, on the Claimant’s case, to record more fully the written terms of the Defendant’s appointment. It is agreed that the agreement was never finalised, signed or executed.

However, on the evidence of Mr Shalom and Mr Cunningham, the Defendant confirmed orally that he was happy with the proposed terms, albeit that he wished to contract personally rather than through a service company, which the document had initially envisaged. Further, the Defendant continued to serve as the Claimant’s Head of Boxing and to hold himself out as such; he invoiced the Claimant for the £9,000 per month specified in the document and was paid accordingly; and in discussions with Mr Shalom he proceeded on the basis that the terms had been agreed, for example referring to his hope or expectation of receiving the £125,000 conditional bonus for which it provided. It is said that he specifically agreed to the 12-month notice provision within the document by email on 1 May 2024.

Accordingly, the Claimant’s case is that the terms of the Defendant’s appointment are those set out in the January 2024 document, with appropriate modifications to reflect the fact that he was appointed personally rather than through a limited company. The document includes obligations on the Defendant at clause 3.1.1 to “use [his] best endeavours to promote the interests of” the Claimant; at 3.1.6 not to “make any representations to any boxing […] promoter or fighter without the consent of” the Claimant; and at 6.1.2 not to engage in any “business, trade, profession or occupation during the Engagement […] if it relates to a business which is similar to or in any way competitive with the Business of” the Claimant. It is these obligations which the Claimant contends the Defendant has breached, and which it seeks to enforce through the injunction sought.

The Defendant disputes that this document incorporated applicable terms into his contract. He points to the fact that it is unsigned and does not include full detail of the “Services” to be performed in Schedule 1. He denies that he provided a confirmation that he was happy with the terms of the draft Agreement; and contends that he would never have agreed to such terms, particularly clause 6.2 which would prevent him, for 24 months after the termination of his engagement from providing services or being employed by a series of other boxing-related companies. He queries why, if he had orally agreed to the terms in the communal kitchen, as alleged, Mr Cunningham, as a qualified solicitor, would not have followed up with some form of communication to confirm the contents of the discussion and/or a revised draft of a fully completed agreement for signature. Mr Miletic also pointed to the onerous and significantly different terms in the draft document, compared to what was agreed between the parties in 2020, and the absence of evidence that these more onerous terms were drawn to the Defendant’s attention.

On 13 May 2025 Sky Sports confirmed to the Claimant that it would not enter into a new contract after the existing one expired on 30 June 2025. There is a dispute between the parties as to why that was. Mr Shalom suggests, based on various emails and spreadsheets found to have been deleted from the Defendant’s Boxxer.com email account, that from March 2025 the Defendant was actively corresponding with Sky Sports about a proposed new boxing venture that would circumvent the Claimant and was actively undermining the Claimant’s attempts to negotiate a renewed deal with Sky. The Defendant contends in his statement that during the course of the Sky Sports contract, various disputes and allegations arose which painted the Claimant and, in particular, Mr Shalom, in a negative light, which became well-known to the boxing industry as a whole. The Defendant asserts that the emails relied upon by the Claimant in fact relate to his attempts to salvage the Claimant’s business and its relationship with Sky Sports, in line with discussions he had had with Mr Shalom.

On 12 August 2025, the Defendant made clear to Mr Shalom that he would be leaving the Claimant. Mr Shalom’s evidence is that the Defendant told him that he had received an offer from Sky, albeit that he had only been approached by Sky in the previous few days and that Sky did not yet have any firm plans for any boxing-related activity.

According to Mr Shalom, at around the same time the Claimant became aware of evidence suggesting that the Defendant was in fact already carrying out work for the benefit of either a competitor or a potential competitor. The Claimant’s General Manager was contacted by a representative of a venue management company who said that the Defendant had enquired about the availability of a venue for an event in early October 2025, which was not a date on which the Defendant had any plans to stage an event, and which coincided with a date about which “a broadcaster” (later established to be Sky) had been enquiring. On 13 August 2025 Mr Shalom asked the Defendant whether he had made any such enquiries and he denied doing so.

The Claimant then conducted a review of the Defendant’s Boxxer.com email account. The review found that the Defendant had, a few days earlier on 7 August 2025, deleted several old emails (including then deleting them again from his ‘Deleted Items’ folder). In the Defendant’s statement, he admits that he deleted these emails and that he did so in order to prevent Mr Shalom from seeing them.

Mr Shalom described the content of the emails, which were helpfully summarised at paragraph 28.2 of Mr Cleaver’s skeleton argument as follows: (i) an email from March 2025 attaching what appeared to be a framework budget for a series of boxing events, including involving fighters contracted to the Claimant, which did not correspond to any events that the Claimant was planning and which contained certain indications that the events were intended to be staged by a new venture in partnership with Sky; (ii) an email from a few days later attaching a further version of that spreadsheet with revised figures (suggesting that the Defendant had been working on the financial detail of the proposals); (iii) another attachment to the same email which was a copy of a budget prepared by the Claimant for an event the previous year (which he was not involved in preparing and which he had no valid reason to be consulting in March 2025); (iv) two drafts of what appears to be an email to a senior employee of Sky involved in producing its boxing programmes (and the main point of contact in the Claimant’s relationship with Sky), referring to an attached “updated spreadsheet” and describing proposals for a new business with 8/9 employees that would be able to “utilise and exploit existing Sky Sports facilities and channels”; and (v) an email from July 2025 attaching what appeared to be another budget for a series of boxing events, similarly unconnected with any plans of the Claimant and similarly involving a number of fighters contracted to the Claimant.

The review also found that more recently, on 20 August 2025, the Defendant had received (and then double-deleted) an email from a boxing matchmaker in the United States about arranging a potential fight. Mr Shalom’s evidence is that that cannot have been a discussion the Defendant was having on behalf of the Claimant; and that if it had been, there would have been no legitimate reason for him to delete the email.

The Claimant has reason to believe that the Defendant was assisted in relation to this activity by another employee of the Claimant, who was hired on the Defendant’s recommendation in 2023 and whom the Defendant manages.

The Claimant’s case is that conduct of this kind is plainly incompatible with the duties the Defendant owed the Claimant, whether under the terms set out in the January 2024 document or simply as a necessary incident of his role as the Claimant’s Head of Boxing.