Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes

It’s Good to be Bad
↵↵I have to tell you, Floyd Mayweather had me nervous for a little while there. Here I was licking my chops in anticipation of the return of boxing’s Darth Vader, cueing up the Imperial March, and then suddenly it seemed like the man might be going soft on me. Coming on all sweet and humble at the Marquez presser in L.A.? Saying publicly, more than once, that Manny Pacquiao is an excellent fighter? And reuniting with his pops and going on about how much he missed him?↵

↵↵Ninja please. When is the real Floyd Mayweather going to show up, I thought, the thrilla, the killa, The Dark Prince of Fistiana?↵

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↵↵I didn’t have to wait long. Unsurprisingly, Floyd’s old buddy over at ESPN, Brian Kenny, got the Money May motormouth revved up good. They say in the gym that sometimes it takes one or two clean shots from a sparring partner to get the champ’s head right for training. When it comes to Floyd’s ego, it seems like it only takes a few words from BK. ↵

↵↵That ridiculous ESPN interview Floyd did with Kenny is generating a lot of media attention and viral action the past couple of days, which I think is good for boxing and good for Floyd. Because the last thing the sport needs right now at this dizzying point is a kinder, gentler Floyd Mayweather.↵

↵↵I’ve written many times before that it’s my sense that Floyd is very smart and an excellent businessman. I believe he was very calculating in adopting his thuggish Money May persona to sell tickets and PPV buys, a type of media hustle that has rich antecedents in boxing lore (see the file marked “Lip, The Louisville”). It’s well known that having people dramatically hate you is an even more effective way to get people to watch your fights than having them dramatically love you. Everybody wants to see the villain get it in the end. It’s almost biological, this craving for street justice. Hollywood makes a jillion dollars a year fulfilling that need, and Ali built the entire first part of his career on confounding it.↵

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↵↵Floyd, I think, wants the love now. He’s ready for that transformation. But the transformation isn’t ready for Floyd. I gather that he’s weary of being the self-conscious bad guy, but I don’t think there’s anywhere else for him to go with his persona at the moment. A lot happened with Ali to turn him face, let’s remember. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, Joe Frazier -- heavy business all around. ↵

↵↵These are different times, to put it mildly. And for Floyd, just deciding to speak in a soft voice and pay respects to his highly unrespectable father isn’t going to turn the trick with fight fans that he himself has taken great pains to alienate. Maybe somewhere down the road the circumstances will arise whereby Floyd can make the leap from villain to hero on the big stage. But right now, he’s typecast, and it’s his own doing. You rode the black hat to the big money, Money May, and now it’s riding you. At least the money remains ridonkulously good.↵

↵↵Cuban Champion Debuts on Friday Night Fights↵

↵↵FNF has a compelling main event tonight, involving the professional debut of the Cuban great, Guillermo Rigondeaux, a two-time world champion as an amateur and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. ↵

↵↵In second attempt at defection, Rigondeaux managed to escape Cuba in February of this year. Now at the age of 28, he’s about to jump into the spotlight on national television in his first professional fight. His opponent? A sacrificial lamb by the name of Juan Noriega. No, this bout does not figure to be competitive. But nevertheless, the eyes of the boxing world will be trained on this fight tonight, because Rigondeaux’s pedigree ranks him among the great amateur boxers of all time. Will he be able to translate that success to the pro ranks at such an advanced age? Has his two-year layoff from the ring (enforced in Cuba due to his first failed attempt at defecting in 2007) prompted any deterioration in his skills? We likely won’t get definitive answers to either of these questions tonight, but it will be worth watching just to look for clues.↵

↵↵Quick Hits↵

↵↵-- Rafael Marquez fights tomorrow night in Monterrey, Mexico. He might as well be fighting on Mars for all the press he’s getting. He must be wondering what he did wrong. His last fight, in March of 2008, was a PPV event and a consensus fight of the year candidate, his third epic war with Israel Vazquez. Now he’s in a WBC title eliminator in Mexico getting less ink than his brother, who doesn’t fight for two months? Man, it’s tough to be a little guy.↵

↵↵-- Roy Jones vs. Jeff Lacy. They deserve each other. That’s not a crossroads fight. That’s a backroads fight.↵

↵↵-- Looks like Juan Manuel Marquez is going to train for the Mayweather fight in Mexico City. Which means that HBO’s 24/7 is going to be headed south of the border. Should make for great TV, but what a gig for the crew. Five weeks down in Mexico City in the dead of summer? Sheesh. Sounds like the toughest job in sports television just got a lot tougher.↵

↵↵-- Rumors abound that negotiations have begun for a Chad Dawson/Glen Johnson rematch. Good for the Road Warrior. I got nothing against Bad Chad, but I hope this thing gets made and I hope Johnson wins. He won the first fight on my scorecard, and he’s been screwed too many times in this game.↵

↵↵-- Did you read where Ricky Hatton’s brother, Matthew Hatton, is going to fight Zab Judah as the main undercard bout on the Mayweather/Marquez card? Let me just say here that I’ve seen Matthew Hatton fight a few times now, and unless Zab has deteriorated to about 25 percent of what he was at his best, another Hatton boy is going to catch a hellacious beating at the MGM Grand in a couple months. ↵

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