Jay-Z and his sports management company Roc Nation Sports are being sued for an unspecified amount by former featherweight boxer and client Daniel “Twitch” Franco.
Franco suffered catastrophic, career-ending head and brain injuries in 2017. He says he was the victim of reckless scheduling and inadequate post-fight medical procedures, Deadspin reported.
After signing with Roc Nation Sports in 2015, Franco won five fights. Three weeks before his sixth fight in 2017, he had the flu. Unable to train in the gym, Franco asked for the fight to be canceled or postponed. This is where the management practices of Roc Nation Sports first come into question, according to Deadspin. Roc Nation pressured Franco to stay in the fight. He was knocked out in the third round.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 06: Rodney Sampson
A pioneering name in economic opportunity for Black tech, Rodney Sampson is the founder of HBCU@SXSW and the Atlanta-based Opportunity Hub. In this episode, Rodney discusses investing in Atlanta blockchain startups Storj and Patientory, and the importance of connecting HBCU endowments to Black tech.
Seven weeks later, Franco won a fight. Less than a month after that, he lost a fight that sent him to the hospital with slurred speech and convulsions. Suffering a brain hemorrhage, he had to have part of his skull removed and he ended up in a coma for two weeks.
Several brain surgeries later, Franco now has to wear a helmet, his speech is slow and doctors told him he’ll have memory deficiencies caused by the injuries. He claims Roc Nation pushed him into an unsafe fight and was negligent because the company failed in its duty to clear him medically for another fight so soon after the knockout.
Franco says Roc Nation initially offered to help with medical bills, but then stopped communicating with him, according to The Blast.
“They told us they were going to help us,” Franco said in a Nov. 25, 2017 YouTube video. “They abandoned us when we were in such a tough spot.”
Franco’s father and trainer, Al Franco, asked Roc Nation executives to at least help promote a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his son’s medical bills, but was rejected, The LA Times reported.
Franco has more than $200,000 in medical bills. His GoFundMe page has raised $69,179 by 908 people in 23 months toward a $100,000 goal.
Boxing comes with deadly risk. It’s part of the game and hungry young boxers accept that. “Daniel Franco understood those risks when he began boxing,” The Times reported.
Franco said he considered Roc Nation to be part of his family. “For them to just leave me out and hang me out to dry, that’s something that someone you absolutely trust with your career should not be doing,” he said on YouTube.
“They never valued me as a person. All I was was a product,” Franco said in an LA Times interview.
Roc Nation Sports was founded by Jay-Z in 2013 in partnership with Creative Artists Agency, a Los Angeles talent agency. Other Roc Nation Sports clients have included Kevin Durant, Saquon Barkley and Dez Bryant.
