## Facts

- Antwun Echols, a professional boxer, entered a written promotional agreement with Banner Promotions, Inc., whose president and owner was Arthur Pelullo.
- Echols received a $30,000 signing bonus.
- The agreement granted Banner the exclusive right for at least four years to secure and promote Echols’s professional bouts and to negotiate with third parties on his behalf.
- Banner was required to secure, arrange, and promote at least three bouts per contract year, with discretion over bout time and place; Echols could approve opponents but could not unreasonably withhold approval.
- The agreement set minimum purses by bout type (e.g., non-televised, specific networks) and provided training-expense payments for certain televised bouts.
- A clause allowed Banner, if Echols lost a bout or a recognized world title, to cancel the agreement or renegotiate the minimum-purse provisions.
- After Echols lost a bout, Banner did not cancel; instead, the parties proceeded on a fight-by-fight, renegotiated purse practice rather than the original minimum-purse schedule.
- Echols asserted Banner’s offers were unreasonably low and that bouts were withdrawn when he sought higher compensation.

## Issues

1. Whether the promotional agreement became unenforceable for indefiniteness after Banner exercised a contractual right to renegotiate minimum purses, leaving future per-bout compensation to later negotiation.
2. Whether the absence of a fixed post-renegotiation minimum purse rendered compensation so indefinite that the agreement was an unenforceable “agreement to agree.”

## Decision

- The Third Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment for Echols.
- The court held the agreement was not unenforceable for indefiniteness merely because future purses could be renegotiated and set by subsequent negotiation after specified contingencies.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- A contract is not unenforceable for indefiniteness if the parties intended to be bound and the agreement supplies sufficient structure to determine the parties’ obligations, even if some future price terms remain open.
- In an ongoing promotional/agency relationship, flexibility in future compensation terms may be permissible where the agreement otherwise defines core duties (e.g., exclusivity, bout-promotion obligations, and performance mechanisms).
- A renegotiation-or-cancellation clause triggered by defined contingencies does not automatically convert a contract into an unenforceable “agreement to agree,” particularly where the contract initially contained definite compensation terms and exchanged consideration.

## Conclusion

The Third Circuit held that a long-term boxing promotional agreement remained enforceable despite a clause permitting renegotiation of minimum purses after the boxer’s loss, because the contract reflected intent to be bound and provided sufficient contractual structure beyond the variable future purse amounts.


Echols v. Pelullo, 377 F.3d 272 (3d Cir. 2004)