None but romantics minded much when Floyd Mayweather Jr compared himself to Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali. He's a great fighter, after all – and it was just his ego talking.
But Floyd lost it this week when he compared his campaign for drug testing in his sport with the civil rights achievements of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
"It's me taking a stand for something that means something," he said. "It's sort of the same stance Martin Luther King and Malcolm X made, so we could have freedoms, so everybody could tell the world that we're equal. The only thing I'm saying is that we are equal. So if you're not on nothing and I'm not on nothing then let's go take the test."
Floyd tried and failed to bully Manny Pacquiao into blood testing he knew he did not want because he wasn't ready to fight him – and now he equates that shabby act with King giving his people hope and dignity through years of personal sacrifice. He gave his life too. So did Malcolm X, in murky circumstances. All Floyd gave up was a postponed payday.
Alex Ariza, Pacquiao's conditioner, reckons the blighted fight with Mayweather may not happen. And Freddie Roach, his trainer, is not bothered any more. More worryingly, for Mayweather and boxing, Mayweather doesn't much care, either – so now it's up to Floyd to eat some humble pie or he will finish his career an unfulfilled fighter.
But he has a lot of credibility to claw back first. His remarks about Martin Luther King were shameless and shameful. Maybe he will regret them. He should – but I doubt it. The man's ego knows no bounds.
A lot of people wouldn't mind Shane Mosley giving him a hiding on 13 March. I can't see it happening – because Mayweather actually is as good as he says he is.
Fighters of a different stamp
Robert Guerrero did Kevin Mitchell a huge favour when he relinquished his IBF world super-featherweight title and pulled out of a fight against the Australian Michael Katsidis.
It made Frank Warren's job easier than it already was in negotiating a fight between Katsidis and his Dagenham fighter for the vacant WBO lightweight belt. That should happen in late May or early June, at the 02 Arena or Upton Park.
More importantly, Guerrero did the right thing for his wife, Casey, who has leukaemia. The Katsidis fight was going to be the biggest of his career. Hers dwarfs his. So he is in her corner every day.
"I'll be back," Guerrero said, talking the Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, where Casey has had a bone marrow transplant. "Right now I'm not sure when but I know I'll be back."
In January, Andre Berto withdrew from his welterweight unification fight against Shane Mosley to be with his family and friends in Haiti after the devastating earthquake. That, too, would have been Berto's biggest payday.
Guerrero and Berto are good fighters, and better human beings. But that would only be surprising to people who don't know boxers.
By the way, how good was Mitchell? That right hand to the temple of Ignacio Mendoza at Wembley last Saturday night landed with such dramatic suddenness it lifted him two feet off the canvas. Older codgers at ringside thought immediately of George Foreman's booming blows that sent Joe Frazier into orbit in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973.
It was the sort of punch that can change a career. Any boxing suit in the US who saw it will have shuddered – in the way that men who like making money shudder. They love one-punch knockout artists, wherever they are from.
But it might never have happened had Mitchell not changed his attitude. He did his hands no favours early in his training by using smaller gloves in sparring – because he liked the thrill of hurting opponents – and was out for more than a year. He has found out, just in time, that there is more to the business than that.
What Mitchell does now, under his new mentor Jimmy Tibbs, is let the punches flow, rather than totally loading up – although there were no complaints from Tibbs when Kevin sent Mendoza on to Queer Street.
No fool like an old fool
How about this for weird, sad and predictable: Elijah McCall was due to step up from the undercard to fight in the main event at the Hard Rock Live Arena in Miami this week because the headliner, his father Oliver, has been arrested, again, for possessing cocaine.
The "Atomic Bull", 44, is still fighting – on all fronts – 16 years after knocking out Lennox Lewis to win the world heavyweight title, 15 years after losing it to Frank Bruno.
When he was arrested last weekend, police said they found a crack pipe and cocaine in his possession. He just can't kick the crack habit he has had for maybe 30 years. If convicted, he will almost certainly go back inside as he was on probation.
I went to see this most likeable of volcanoes when he was doing time for yet another public disturbance in his home town, Martinsville, Virginia, on the eve of Lewis's world title fight against Evander Holyfield at Madison Square Garden in 1999. I wondered if he'd be watching. "We don't have pay-per-view in prison," he said.
McCall got out and back into trouble. He brawled and raged, a danger to himself and others, but friends are always ready to forgive him because, basically, he's a good man with a bad problem.
While he can't beat life, McCall has no trouble with opponents in the ring; he hadn't lost in three years and was coming off a win over the once-decent Lance Whitaker, looking to take out no-name Zuri Lawrence this week. Away from the only place he feels safe, though, Oliver turns back into the wild teenager he was when learning about drugs and crime on the south side of Chicago. On his night, he was formidable.
Elijah? He didn't get the main gig in the end. That went to an NFL reject having his first fight. Elijah stayed down the bill, had Dieuly Aristilde down three times in round one – and was knocked cold in the fourth. Life goes on, and some times it can make you do what McCall did in his rematch with Lewis: cry.
There's more dads-go-on-too-long action to come...
Héctor Camacho now adds "Sr" to his name when he fights which, at 47, makes sense, although what "Jr" thinks of it is anyone's guess.
Pop's latest gig is not one of his biggest. The former world champion, who has shared ring space down the years with Roberto Durán, Sugar Ray Leonard, Julio César Chávez, Félix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya, lowers his sights for the Dane Allan Vester to contest the vacant (there's a surprise) World Professional Boxing Federation middleweight title at the Arena Midt, Kjellerup, Denmark, on 26 March.
Roll up, roll up.
Quote of the week – in fact most weeks
"The magnitude of this event cannot be overestimated," said Yuri Foreman's publicist, Dovid Efune, in salivating over his fighter's proposed bout against Miguel Cotto in New York on 12 June, maybe at Madison Square Garden, possibly at the new Yankee Stadium. "It may be the biggest Jewish sporting event of all time. Definitely since David fought Goliath."
Source: guardian.co.uk
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