“Fighting Words” – Mayweather-mania’s Runnin’ Wild on You, Brother By David P. Greisman (March 24, 2008) Send this page to friend Give us your feedback Gorgeous George, meet Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd Mayweather Jr. is far from the only boxer to mix it up in the professional wrestling world. Some combinations of Sweet Science and sports entertainment have been works – Chuck Wepner and Andre the Giant, Evander Holyfield and Matt Hardy; others, quite real: Muhammad Ali long felt the damage from leg kicks suffered over 15 rounds with Antonio Inoki, and a less acclaimed heavyweight, Butterbean, knocked Bart Gunn unconscious in 35 seconds. Butterbean-Gunn came at WrestleMania 15. Nine years later, the biggest event in the business, which airs Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, will play host to scripted fare featuring Mayweather and The Big Show. Mayweather has captured titles in five divisions. He sits atop pound-for-pound lists. He’s grown from an acclaimed amateur into a prominent professional. With a father and uncles who were also in the sport, one would think that boxing has always been his everything. Not so. “One of my ultimate goals was to be a wrestler when I was a kid,” Mayweather said last week. “When you watch WWE as a kid, you like, ‘Man, that’s unreal, unbelievable.’ ” As if to prove his fan-hood, Mayweather rattles off a list of favorites – headliners and mid-carders from the days when World Wrestling Entertainment was the World Wrestling Federation: Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Hulk Hogan, the British Bulldogs, the Hart Foundation, King Kong Bundy, Junkyard Dog, Tito Santana, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. Characters, larger than life, imprinted on a young boy’s mind. “When you’re a kid, you say, ‘I’m gonna wrestle like this someday when I become an adult,’ ” Mayweather said. “One thing led to another, and somehow I ended up at WrestleMania.” Pound-for-pound, meet 441 pounds. That ‘one thing’ was Mayweather being brought in for an angle with the returning Big Show at last month’s No Way Out pay-per-view. That night, Mayweather jumped the ringside barricade to come to the defense of fallen wrestler Rey Mysterio Jr. The Big Show shoved Mayweather away and taunted him. With a 7-foot-tall target in front of him, Mayweather responded. “I punched a guy in the face. I broke his nose. No blood capsules or anything,” Mayweather said. And it’s true. The Big Show apparently turned in the wrong direction and took a left hook. It was realer than it needed to be. It made the moment better. Since then, the build for the match leading up to WrestleMania has seen highs and lows. With a week to go, the exact stipulations for the bout had yet to be revealed. Odds are that boxing will be involved – Mayweather isn’t exactly trained to wrestle, though he’s probably been taught the basics of taking bumps in the ring. And The Big Show pinned opponent Chris Jericho last week after landing a single right hand. The Big Show has largely been pushed as a bad guy. Typically that would make Mayweather the babyface, but the lines aren’t so clear. Mayweather not only got booed in California – Oscar De La Hoya territory, and despite this extracurricular activity, there is the little matter of a September rematch with the Golden Boy – but elsewhere, too. He is brash, and as has been evident in the build-ups to his showdowns with De La Hoya, Arturo Gatti and Ricky Hatton, Mayweather is far more comfortable when wearing the proverbial black hat. So is Mayweather the next-generation heel? Has the Million Dollar Man made way for the $20 million man? Not exactly. In an event synonymous with the company that holds it, all of the top wrestlers are involved so as to get a cut of the sizable gate and lucrative pay-per-view revenue. Although Mr. McMahon the character might put out $20 million for a non-wrestler to make an appearance, Vince McMahon the businessman knows better. Still, Mayweather will pull in enough to satisfy his new “Money” moniker. “When it’s all said and done, I’m a businessman,” Mayweather said. “What I’m showing every other fighter that’s out there, I’m showing them versatility. Don’t just be one-dimensional. Go outside the box. When you look at any other fighter in boxing, you say, ‘He’s a boxer.’ But when you look at Floyd Mayweather, you say, ‘That kid’s an entertainer.’ ” This, then, is a match made in heaven. “WWE is the biggest entertainment company. It has the biggest vehicle in promotion in the world,” Mayweather said. “I’m one of the flashiest, flamboyant, most exciting entertainers out there right now. I’m one of the hottest products, and I can be sold. My credentials speak for itself [sic]. Whatever I got involved with, I don’t slack at it. I give it my best. WrestleMania, I’m going to be at my best. ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ hey, I was at my best.” Forget for a moment that Mayweather was bounced from the reality dancing competition after four weeks. The brief stint still put his face in front of one of the largest television audiences out there. That didn’t necessarily translate into record-setting sales for Mayweather’s pay-per-view fight with Hatton, though hundreds of thousands in the States still tuned in. Nevertheless, the boxer whose talent was once inversely proportional to his popularity is now a legitimate superstar. How much of a crossover will there be? Will boxing fans, taxed by a regular offering of $50 shows, dig into their wallets once more for something that, despite all the intrigue, is still a scripted spectacle? After raking in eight figures for the two biggest main events of 2007, Mayweather, of course, is hyping the chance for people to watch a welterweight take on one of the heaviest of heavyweights. “If everybody wants to see how it gets done,” he said, “buy a pay-per-view.” The 10 Count 1.  Joel Casamayor’s first knockdown of Michael Katsidis came just 23 seconds into the opening round. The final flooring occurred nine rounds later, with the Cuban veteran sending his Australian challenger down hard 10 seconds into the 10th heat. In between, they went to war. Casamayor had to let everything hang out – his last appearance, a November split decision over Jose Armando Santa Cruz, was one of the worst robberies in recent memory. Yet the 36-year-old southpaw still held onto the “Ring Magazine” lightweight championship, recognition complicating a division in which another fighter (first Juan Diaz, now Nate Campbell) holds three titles and a strong claim to being the best at 135. Katsidis knew no other way; descriptions of him as the new Arturo Gatti are apt. He gets dropped. He bleeds. And he keeps coming forward, ever determined, behind the equalizer of heavy hands. He got dropped twice in the early moments of Saturday’s “Boxing After Dark” main event, both times by Casamayor left hands. True to form, Katsidis got up and got going. Katsidis hurt Casamayor with a four-punch combination in the fourth round. Several minutes later, he had Casamayor bent forward from a hard hook to the body and falling backward through the ropes amid a furious flurry. Katsidis’ confidence was building. He was ahead on two of the three judges’ scorecards. The fight wasn’t over yet. Katsidis charged out of his corner to begin the 10th round. Casamayor countered, catching him with a big left hook. Katsidis crumpled to the canvas, and though he rose, the end was close. Casamayor hurt Katsidis again, forcing referee Jon Schorle to step in and halt the action. 2.  Katsidis will recover and return – that is the Arturo Gatti story, right? It won’t be on the terms both were originally hoping for, but a bout between Katsidis and Juan Diaz would still be a candidate for Fight of the Year. Casamayor, meanwhile, can be judged on this most recent performance instead of by the Santa Cruz controversy. The names he mentioned afterward, however, don’t quite thrill: Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao. Of the three, only Pacquiao is anywhere close to being on the upswing. A rematch with the aforementioned Campbell, who lost to Casamayor in a 130-pound fight in 2003, is far more preferable. 3. When it comes to taking punishment, Librado Andrade is showing himself to be the Wayne McCullough of the super middleweights. And when it comes to acrobatics, the 29-year-old contender is seemingly the Scott Hamilton of boxing. Andrade’s eighth-round stoppage Saturday of former 168-pound title challenger Robert Stieglitz had him doing backflips. Literally. The technical knockout puts Andrade in position to challenge International Boxing Federation beltholder Lucien Bute. It was just one year ago that Andrade was getting tattooed by Mikkel Kessler, never taking a round against the Danish fighter. But the Stieglitz victory was Andrade’s third win in a row, further fuel for a second run at the crown. Division king Joe Calzaghe has left in favor of the light heavyweight division, Bernard Hopkins and a potential climactic conclusion to his career. Sorting through the wide-open field at 168 requires the top names fighting each other: Andrade, Sakio Bika, Bute, Jaidon Codrington, Carl Froch, Allan Green, Denis Inkin, Kessler, Jeff Lacy, Edison Miranda, Jean Pascal, Jermain Taylor, and, potentially, Kelly Pavlik. We were able to get through 16 contestants to find a super middleweight “Contender.” In this deep pool, somewhere, is a champion. 4.  Lennox Lewis, fresh off his firing in the penultimate episode of “Celebrity Apprentice,” has clearly set out to prove his value as the Shakespeare of the Sweet Science. There he was, working as ringside commentator on “Boxing After Dark,” serving not just viewers worldwide, but the future of the English language, too. How else must one now describe Michael Katsidis’ pressure but in the terms used by the former heavyweight champion: “unrelentless.” Oh, Lennox, how we misunderstimated you. 5. Boxers Behaving Badly: Reggie Johnson was indicted last week in Texas, accused of making off with more than $120,000 in Red Cross grant money set aside for camps for children displaced since 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, according to the Houston Chronicle. An indictment doesn’t presume guilt or innocence. Rather, it is handed down when a grand jury determines that prosecutors have enough evidence to warrant a trial. The Houston Area Urban League had distributed the money to Johnson and his Pugilistic Drama Inc. to hold boxing summer camps for at least 40 kids, authorities said. But those camps didn’t happen. Johnson is facing a second-degree felony charge of theft of more than $100,000, which, if he’s convicted, could land him anywhere from probation to 20 years in prison, plus fines of up to $10,000. Johnson, who held titles at middleweight and light heavyweight, retired in 2002 after a split-decision loss to Antonio Tarver. He briefly returned in 2005 with a knockout of Fred Moore, and then last month he came back again, scoring a close win over Julio Cesar Gonzalez. 6.  Boxers Behaving Badly update: Carlton Elijah Tillery was sentenced last week to nine years in prison on a charge of second-degree weapon possession stemming from an August incident involving a sawed-off shotgun inside a 3-foot-long toy alligator, according to New York’s Albany Times Union. Tillery, 50, who went by his middle name in two ignominious performances against Riddick Bowe, was found guilty earlier this year. Last August, the former heavyweight fighter was arrested after an unmarked police car saw him speaking with three other people on an Albany street. Police said they heard one person tell Tillery to get his weapon from a car, and out came the toy reptile, which had a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun inside. He had shotgun shells in his pockets, too, authorities said. Tillery was disqualified against Bowe in late 2001 for kicking Bowe in response to a late hit. Bowe’s manager, the infamous Rock Newman, would pull Tillery over the ring ropes and out of the squared circle. Bowe and Tillery fought a rematch six weeks later, which Bowe won via fourth-round technical knockout. Tillery’s last appearance came in 1993, a sixth-round stoppage loss to James “Bonecrusher” Smith. He retired with a record of 23-7 (15).  7.  In other action last week, Andy Lee suffered an upset defeat against an opponent many believed had little chance at toppling the highly touted middleweight prospect’s apple cart. Brian Vera didn’t listen, and he didn’t quit, recovering from a first-round knockdown and scoring a surprise technical-knockout victory on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.” Lee was the latest prodigy to fight out of Emanuel Steward’s famed stable. Vera was a relative unknown whose brief time in the spotlight saw him knocked out by Jaidon Codrington in the most recent season of “The Contender.” But results in the sporting world aren’t decided on paper. Vera’s right hand couldn’t miss. Lee, who was both cut and hurt as the bout went on, didn’t know how to recover. The two situations led to a seventh-round stoppage, when referee Tony Chiarantano stepped in following another Vera right. Lee was throwing back, but the third man in the ring had apparently seen enough. For many boxing fans, there is a sense of schadenfreude when they believe a fighter has been shown a fraud. In this case, such conclusions are premature. Nearly every undefeated record falls. For some, that day comes later in their career. Others get tested, though, and take with them the lessons learned, be it Juan Diaz improving after his close win over Ubaldo Hernandez or David Haye rebounding from his loss to Carl Thompson. Young and inexperienced, Andy Lee still has time to roll with the punches. 8.  Dodgeball, an occasional update: The proud roster of Aim Low could pull a Zab Judah and come up with a litany of excuses – they had a short bench, sore arms, and were emotionally drained after the departure of player-coach Jake Berry to another newspaper. They won't do that, though, nor will they blame Don King for a 4-2 loss in yet another match against the Gyroballers. This season's rival team took the first game with relative ease. Aim Low seemed set to even the score until the lone Gyroballer left hit a clutch basket and brought his ousted teammates back into the fray. The momentum once again in their favor, the Gyroballers gave Aim Low its second straight defeat. Team record: 4-3. This past week’s post-game beer of choice: Pabst Blue Ribbon. 9.  Lennox Lewis has exited from reality television, but other boxers, active and retired, will soon take his place. “Secret Talents of the Stars,” which premieres April 8 on CBS, will feature Joe Frazier and Roy Jones Jr. as two of the 16 celebrities who apparently don't mind combining fame with shame. Frazier will sing rhythm-and-blues while Jones, who must've forgot how his 2002 album bombed, will rap. 10.  Danny Bonaduce on a unicycle? Sulu from “Star Trek” crooning country music? Ric Flair salsa dancing and Ben Stein doing the jitterbug? And here I thought the writers’ strike was over… David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on MaxBoxing.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com Discuss this Topic - Go to the forums Boxing News Wire: News Links