(Editor?s Note: Even a White House correspondent writes or talks about someone or something other than the president once in a while. In that vein, in the spirit of mixing it up, I, Perry White have ordered Michael Marley to write an article that completely ignores Tuk Tuk Driver beating Edwin Valero and to only parenthetically mention boxing?s equivalent of Barack Obama, meaning Manny Pacquiao.)
Great Julio Cesar Chavez?s ghost. Now even the Big Chief, the boss with the hot sauce, is exhausted with all the Pacman and Valero articles. So now I will switch gears and scribble about a shy, retiring lad named Floyd Mayweather Jr.
I have to tip my sombrero, as we near the Infernal Revenue Service annual filing deadline of April 15, to Mayweather .
Even as he ruled supreme as the world?s best, pound for pound fighter?Baddest Little Man on the Planet?Mayweather usually had to wear the black hat.
It really didn?t matter who the opponent was. Mayweather, who often comes off as flip and arrogant when he is just being his supremely confident and assertive self, was always cast as the heel, as the bad guy opposite the hero like in pro rassling.
If Oscar De La Hoya was the shining Golden Boy, then Mayweather was Negative Guy, the cock of the walk who said there is no man alive who could come close to matching his awesome ring skills.
Mayweather brilliantly flipped the script when he and his pugilistic posse showed up for his one-sided decision over Oscar wearing their red, white and green ?Mayweather Loves Mexico? attire.
But, if anything, that just incited the Mayweather haters, and they are legion, even more. Some mistakenly thought Mayweather and his crew were disrespecting a great country and its historic roll call of great boxers.
That kind of misunderstanding won?t happen in Mayweather?s comeback. Money May? No, call him Money Will Fight due to heavy, overdue obligations to a real villain, the IRS.
I don?t think Floyd and his minions will put on Uncle Sam outfits for fight night but, other than the creeps at AIG and Bernie Madoff, I cannot think of a foe Mayweather could find who would be less popular than the federal government?s tax collection bureaucracy.
His duel with the IRS should even bring Mayweather fans who never would?ve given him a second look before.
How many men and women do you know who have battled off a tax lien or who missed a tax payment here and there and then got dunned incessantly?
How many fine, upstanding citizens have been drilled by late filing fees and other assorted penalties by the merciless agency?
You want to talk about killer instinct, the IRS invented it.
I can hear all the tax debtors, all the people who been audited, cheering wildly for Mayweather now.
The IRS is not a if you can?t beat them, join them type group. You can?t beat them, as Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson and so many other great fighters learned the hard way, so you keep on fighting and pay them as best you can.
I mean, who will ever boo Mayweather again?
I, for one, will applaud Floyd now before every fight although I think we must start referring to him as Money Must Pay.
In the press section, by tradition, we are honor bound not cheer or boo either boxer.
But, when it comes to Mayweather vs. IRS, I will cheer Floyd silently.
On the great night when Mayweather fights Pacquiao, I will remain completely neutral.
Mark it down, I?m not some slobbering Pachugger. Write it down because I, for one, will be as neutral on that fight as every man, woman and child in Gensan.
At least for now, and for a refreshing change, Mayweather rides the white horse, wears the white hat and probably eats angel?s food cake.
I mention the latter because his toughest opponent is the devil.
I suppose I?m being a little unfair to the devil now that I think about it.
(Note to IRS: Up until April 14, 2009, I am completely paid up so don?t try anything or you will hear from my attorneys at Dewey, Cheatem & Howe, located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. I may be deathly afraid of you pencil pushers but they?re not.)
