“That’s a really good way to ensure people don’t get the benefits they are entitled to because by the time you send it you’ve lost contact with them,” said Nari Rhee, director of the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Retirement Security Program. Thank you for your support.Įxplore more Subscriber Exclusive content. Times subscribers special access to our best journalism. Subscribers get exclusive access to this story The plan does not have enough money to pay all unclaimed pensions without reducing the amount of money received by fighters who become eligible in future years - with just $294,000 set aside for the $2.1 million owed to boxers who haven’t been paid.Įxperts said the commission has created a sizable unfunded liability and - perhaps more concerning - a disincentive to find boxers who are owed benefits.The commission has failed to increase the amount of revenue generated for the pension to ensure the plan is adequately funded and benefits do not depreciate over time.Roughly 200 boxers could have claimed a pension last year, but only 12 of them - 6% - did so.When creating the safety net in 1982, California lawmakers said too many fighters were ending up “injured or destitute, or both.” The boxers’ pension, funded by a ticket fee for boxing events, would ensure a “modicum of financial security,” according to language in the state statute.īut a Times investigation found that the pension plan has a long history of falling short of that lofty goal. The Times examined hundreds of state documents and interviewed dozens of fighters, promoters and retirement plan experts about the California boxers’ pension, which includes retirement accounts for more than 1,900 current and former boxers. “I’m not a hard guy to reach,” Kemp said from his sparsely decorated apartment in Edmonton, Canada, where he sleeps on a discarded massage table he found in an alley.
And, under plan rules, those unclaimed pensions - which are paid in a lump sum - have been diminishing in value for years, in some cases decades. But an additional 200 boxers are owed pensions and have not claimed them because, in many cases, they were unaware they were even eligible.
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