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Moorer's grandfather says champ made chump of him
Saturday, December 11, 1999 By Gene Collier, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
On Feb. 19, 1989, the Monessen High School gymnasium throbbed in pugilistic celebration of hometown boxer Michael Moorer. He'd come home to defend his light heavyweight title against Frankie Swindell, and when he finished Swindell in the sixth round with a surge of decisive violence, the place erupted with satisfaction and pride.
The emotional backdrop of that Sunday afternoon was the special relationship between Moorer and his grandfather, Henry Smith, who'd trained his grandson in a Charleroi gym from the time Moorer was 13.
Now, more than 10 years later, on Monday morning, Henry Smith and Michael Moorer will be found in a more somber forum -- U.S. District Court.
Smith is suing Moorer, former trainer Emanuel Steward and longtime manager John Davimos of JEB Enterprises Inc., claiming they shut him off from any professional relationship with his grandson and trumped an agreement with Moorer that Smith get 25 percent of the fighter's gross career earnings, described in court documents as $27,878,376.
The defendants say their own agreement with Moorer superseded Smith's and that they paid Smith substantial sums of money over the years without being legally obligated to do so.
"I know the grandfather was involved in some training early in Michael's career, but Michael left to go with Steward and Kronk gym [in Detroit] when he was still relatively young," said Teddy Atlas, who wound up training Moorer for the biggest fights of his career in the mid-1990s and is now a fight analyst for ESPN2. "All Michael's connections to his grandfather ended then. [Smith] was never around.
"Michael flew him in for fights, him and his mother, but he was never part of camp or any training."
Atlas is no longer associated with Moorer or with JEB Enterprises.
The case appears to pivot on the legal integrity of the two agreements.
The first, which Smith claims was entered into by Moorer in May 1986 in the presence of his aunts, Brenda Smith and Marsha Smith, made Smith the fighter's sole and exclusive trainer and provided that he receive 25 percent of purses, appearance fees and endorsement money.
The second, drawn up at a Jan. 9, 1988, meeting at the home of Moorer's mother, Paulette Moorer, was signed by Moorer, Steward and Davimos and called for Steward and JEB Enterprises to get 50 percent of Moorer's gross.
The fighter made it known at the time, according to court documents filed by both sides, that he wanted Smith included in the agreement, saying, "Don't forget my granddad."
Stewart then wrote an addendum to the agreement. It called for Smith to be employed as a trainer for the next five years and receive 10 percent of Moorer's purses, or 5 percent if he was unable to work as a trainer.
The defendants say that Smith made no mention of a previous contract with Moorer when the 1988 agreement was signed.
Nor, they said, did Smith make any claim under the 1986 agreement until he sued more than 10 years later.
According to court documents, Moorer says he does not recall signing the first document and disputes the authenticity of his signature on it.
Smith, in court papers, said he had an oral agreement with Davimos that he would be "taken care of" even after the expiration of the 1988 agreement, which ran for five years.
He says Moorer's handlers wouldn't let him near the fighter after 1995.
At a meeting in 1993, he says, he attempted to point out to Moorer's trainers that no one was correcting Moorer's mistakes. He says Davimos immediately ended the meeting and offered Smith $1,000 to keep quiet about it. He says he was never given an accounting of Moorer's purses during the term of the 1988 agreement.
Smith says he was paid only $3,000 in 1993 and 1994, when Moorer's purses were in the millions.
The defendants counter that "Smith's near-constant hounding of Moorer and [Davimos] for money was a distraction. Davimos even had to deal with such requests in the training room immediately before a fight."
Moorer won the heavyweight championship from Evander Holyfield in April 1994, but lost it seven months later when 45-year-old George Foreman crashed a mammoth right into his lip and became the oldest man to win the title.
Moorer last fought in November 1997, losing to Holyfield. Moorer's professional record is 39-2.
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