Not long ago former pound for pound kingpin Floyd Mayweather Jr. was interviewed by Brian Kenny of ESPN. Not a minute into the interview, Mayweather took exception to being called the “former” pound for pound champ and stated “I already forgot who I was talking to, Brian Kenny, a guy who has never laced up gloves a day in his life, who don’t know nothing about boxing.” The interview goes downhill from there.
First of all, that is a double negative and grammatically incorrect.
Second, its classic Mayweather.
As Gabriel Montoya pointed out in an excellent piece for MaxBoxing.com, Mayweather is a man of many contradictions. Most of them pretty blatant. What I find more annoying is the statement that was quoted earlier.
According to Mayweather, Kenny has no right to an opinion because he has not “laced up gloves a day in his life”. I find that absurd.
The fact that Mayweather is arguably the best fighter of his generation is one thing and his boxing IQ is through the roof but Kenny has every right to an opinion, whether he has ever stepped into a ring or not.
Just like a movie critic has a right to give his opinion on a film even if has never directed one or a food critic can write about an entree even if he can’t boil an egg.
Brian Kenny, like many other boxing journalist as the afore mentioned Montoya or Steve Kim or Thomas Hauser among many others, have the uncanny ability to put their thoughts about the sweet science on paper or in interviews in an eloquent and thought provoking way that is entertaining for us, the boxing fans.
With newspaper coverage of our sport dwindling to almost nothing, ESPN, HBO, Showtime and all the internet scribes is all the sport has to make it relevant.
For one of the so called superstars of boxing to try to belittle Kenny for calling him out on his contradictions regarding his career is ridiculous.
But from Mayeather, I wouldn’t expect any less.
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