Shortly after Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiaoannounced that they would finally fight early last year, the Los Angeles Timesran a story on a waiter named Gabriel Salvador who played a small role in setting up the fight. According to that story, Salvador—a waiter at Craig’s restaurant in West Hollywood—helped orchestrate the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight by bringing CBS executive Leslie Moonves and Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach together to talk about the possibility of it happening. Salvador knew Moonves from serving him at his restaurant, and he knew Roach because the trainer had worked with his son. So he convinced the two men to sit down one day for a meeting.
“Every tree starts with a seed, correct?” Salvador told the LA Times last February. “I just knew, with no doubt, that if I brought Freddie Roach to Leslie Moonves, those two men could make the fight happen. I’m the finder.”
Now, Salvador wants to be a paid a proper finder’s fee. According to TMZ Sports, he just filed a lawsuit against Pacquiao, Roach, Pacquiao’s attorney Keith Davidson, and CBS that calls for him to be paid upwards of $8.6 million. He claims he deserves two percent of the total gross of the fight due to his involvement in the initial meeting between Moonves and Roach. In the suit, he admits that he was already given a ticket to the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight, a stay in a Las Vegas hotel on the night of the fight, and $10,000 to cover all of his expenses. But he wants more money for what he did. He’s also claiming that Davidson attempted to force him to take a $50,000 check at one point just to go away.
A CBS source spoke with TMZ Sports and told them that Salvador doesn’t have any legal claim to a finder’s fee. But it sounds like Salvador is going to proceed with his lawsuit and attempt to cash out on the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight. Stay tuned to see if he’s successful.
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[via TMZ Sports]
