By Gary E G: “Mayweather is gone be beat up on his a$$ by Mosley and this KFC fool would be destroyed by Pacman!!!” These are the kind of nonsense responses im sure you have all heard on boxing articles. But if Floyd Mayweather takes a beating on May 1st by WBA welterweight champion Shane Mosley, once they have cheered aloud will the haters secretly shed a tear for the enemy?
Back in the nineties a prince called Naseem Hamed ruled the British boxing scene. He was as flash and brash a boxer as there has ever been and he backed up his haughty words with knockout after spectacular knockout. He was the man the people loved to hate (he had his fans but they soon turned against him when the bubble burst) and more importantly for his bank balance the man the people loved to watch throughout the middle years of the decade. Then he crossed the pond to conquer America and after a mad 12 minutes with Kevin Kelley he faced Marco Antonio Barrera.
I remember watching that fight that night hoping beyond hope that he would get what was coming too him. But when it came, after the initial amazement that he had finally gotten his Comeuppance I felt flat. It’s hard to hate a guy when his face is messed up and he humbly admits he was beaten by the better man. It was 6 or 7 years before Ricky Hatton became the next big thing but for me he never captured the imagination like the cocksure Prince in his prime.
Now some might argue that Hamed was a fearless, come forward, exciting boxer where as Mayweather is a win first, fight later borefest and that’s why they hate him. But for many people the thought process is if you hate one guy regardless, your part of a team and if he does lose where will Team Hater turn next because I don’t see another bad guy on the horizon.
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