By Jason Kim: HBO analyst Larry Merchant was on the receiving end of one of Floyd Mayweather’s rants after his controversial 4th round TKO win over WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz last Saturday night. What was Merchant’s offense for being screamed at by Mayweather?
Well, Merchant had the nerve to point out that a lot of the booing fans were upset because Mayweather had clobbered Ortiz with what appeared to be two cheap shots while Ortiz was in the process of apologizing for a headbutt that he had tagged Mayweather with moments earlier.
In an interview at TMZ, Merchant said “[the Mayweather-Ortiz fight] was kind of exhilarating in it’s own way. [Floyd] hit him with a legal sucker punch. It worked. He was in charge of the fight, but a lot of fans saw it and didn’t like what they saw…He’s a prima dona. He’s an outstanding fighter, he needs to be in control of everything. He is a modern say reality show in progress.”
Mayweather really went off on Merchant when the HBO analyst pointed out how angry boxing fans were with his cheap shot. All Merchant did was tell Mayweather about what the fans were angry about and ask him why he chose to land those two cheap shots when he was ahead and in control of the fight.
Mayweather then went off, saying that HBO should fire Merchant because he doesn’t give him a fair shake. This continued into the post fight press conference where Mayweather said HBO needs to bring in new blood to replace Merchant. Again, it was for the same reason, Merchant doesn’t give him a fair shake.
As such, Mayweather wants Merchant replaced. He won’t be replaced by HBO, but you can bet that this will likely be the last Mayweather fight that Merchant works because Mayweather told Merchant he didn’t want him to interview him anymore. Since Merchant is the guy that climbs up in the ring to interview Mayweather, it’s likely that HBO analyst Max Kellerman will be the one working future Mayweather fights on HBO. They can’t afford to have Mayweather say not to Merchant and have no one interviewing him the next time Mayweather fights. Mayweather has a lot of pull and HBO probably doesn’t want to lose him to another network like Showtime over this.
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