3-time Super Bowl champ sues ex-Arizona Wildcat over sports gear brand

In the baseball world, the gear company Bat Wraps has an outsized presence.

Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts wears its gear and owns a portion of the company. On the Bat Wraps Instagram page — which boasts 128,000 followers — it touts its connection with Chicago Cubs phenom Pete Crow-Armstrong, Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. and even Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray. One recent video features shoutouts from rappers Bun B and Swae Lee. Last year, the company partnered with Perfect Game, the gigantic baseball showcase company.

But behind the glitzy photos and videos of fancy bat gear roils a legal conflict involving, ironically, two football players. One is Paul Magloire Jr., a former University of Arizona linebacker and the company’s founder and primary owner. The other is LeGarrette Blount, the nine-year NFL veteran running back and three-time Super Bowl champion.

Late last month, Blount filed a lawsuit against Magloire and Bat Wraps in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleging breach of contract and fraud, among other things. Blount claims that he and Magloire started the Bat Wraps business together but that Magloire has since frozen Blount out of the company and refused to acknowledge his ownership share. The former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back is asking a court to declare he owns 50% of the company and to award him punitive and compensatory damages.

Phoenix New Times attempted to reach Magloire at numbers and emails associated with him and Bat Wraps but was not successful. Attorneys for Blount and Magloire declined to comment on the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, Blount and Magloire “began discussing and building the business plan” for Bat Wraps in early 2024. The company would offer new and creative ways to decorate the barrels of baseball players’ bats while also producing other equipment such as batting gloves. The company, officially called Bat Gear & Bat Wraps LLC, was formed on July 16, 2024. Both Magloire and Blount, who listed a Queen Creek address in paperwork, were listed as the company’s “organizers” in a document filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission.

But being an LLC organizer is different than being a member (read: owner) of the company, and corporation commission records do not list Blount among the company’s owners. Instead, only Magloire is listed as having an ownership stake. Betts and a man named Brandon McPhail, who is the vice president of Betts’ charity, were added as fellow owners in March 2025, records show.

Blount claims his name should be among them. In his lawsuit, Blount says he and Magloire had verbally agreed that each would have a 50% stake in the company. The complaint says Magloire wrote to Blount that he would file the paperwork with them “both as members,” going on to ask Blount which address he wanted listed. The pair even opened a Chase Bank account for the business together, per the lawsuit.

But ultimately, Blount says, Magloire intentionally filed paperwork with the corporation commission listing himself as the sole owner. The suit says Magloire promised Blount that those records “would be amended to formally reflect Blount’s true ownership interest,” and that Blount relied on that promise to continue promoting the company.

It was under that understanding, Blount says, that he recruited Betts as an investor in Bat Wraps. The lawsuit says that Betts was offered an ownership stake in exchange for $200,000 and “his future affiliation with the Bat Wraps brand.” Betts has continued to wear Bat Wraps batting gloves in games. Blount’s lawsuit claims that Betts’ involvement — arranged by Blount himself — has helped Bat Wraps become “an extremely profitable and growing company.” Representatives for Betts did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Blount says, when he asked Magloire to update the company’s paperwork to reflect his ownership stake, Magloire refused. When Blount pressed the issue, according to the lawsuit, Magloire offered stakes of only 1% and then 15%. Those talks apparently went nowhere, leading to Blount’s lawsuit.

Other controversies

Blount’s lawsuit isn’t the first legal dustup for Magloire, who starred for two years at the University of Arizona in 2015 and 2016. He’s been named in at least two other lawsuits since 2018.

In one case from that year, Magloire was sued by a landlord who claimed Magloire did thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to a property Magloire had been renting. Court records show that a default judgment was issued against Magloire, who never fought the case. More pertinent is another lawsuit, filed last year, against Magloire related to another one of his businesses.

In June 2025, a woman sued Magloire, claiming that he fraudulently coerced her into taking out a $200,000 loan with the promise of an ownership stake in his sports training business and facility, the Queen Creek-based PMJ Sports Training. According to the woman’s lawsuit, Magloire never fulfilled that ownership commitment, leaving the woman with a monthly loan service payment of more than $17,000 on top of a nearly $30,000 payment to a loan broker she says Magloire insisted she use. In court records related to that case, Magloire says the fault is with the loan broker and not him.

The woman’s complaint also alleges that Magloire “induced” her into opening business credit card accounts for PMJ Training, another company called Elite Sports Training and for Bat Wraps. That lawsuit has yet to be resolved, and Magloire has denied the allegations in court.

Beyond the court cases, one doesn’t have to sift through social media very thoroughly to find other tales of Magloire’s alleged shady practices. Last November, the owner of a different batting glove company, 661 Gloves, posted a video accusing Magloire of reaching out under the pretense of a partnership, only to steal designs that were later worn by Betts and sold online.

A year earlier, a woman posted in a Facebook group called East Valley Baseball Connections to vent about her experience with PMJ Training and its club sports teams. She said Magloire routinely didn’t show up for games, placed children on teams they were far too young for and charged different families different prices. “He is a scammer and just takes money from people,” the woman wrote. Other people replied with their own experiences with Magloire, with several parents claiming he misused thousands in fundraising money raised in their sons’ names.

According to corporation commission records, Magloire is listed as the principal on four other businesses besides Bat Wraps and PMJ Sports Training, the second of which may no longer be operating. One of those is the Elite Sports Training mentioned in the 2025 lawsuit. The other three are Power 5 Trucking, East Valley Football League and ESTQC LLC. A website seemingly for the latter, which may stand for “Elite Sports Training Queen Creek,” lists the business as “coming soon” and has a 2024 copyright.