HBO’s Max Kellerman has taken some heat from people who ought to know better for pulling the plug on a scheduled in-ring interview with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the aftermath of last weekend’s mismatch with Juan Manuel Marquez. The contretemps developed only after Mayweather, having already declined to answer the one question anybody cared about – his having come in two pounds over the 144-pound contractual weight, thereby costing him a reported $600,000 – tried to wrest the microphone away from Kellerman.
Having already set the agenda for the fight with his decision to face a career-long 130-pounder at welterweight and then exacerbate the size disparity by abrogating the bout agreement, Mayweather could not be allowed to set the agenda for the post-fight telecast as well.
As viewers could see, Kellerman was simply doing his job when he cut off Mayweather and threw back to Jim Lampley. Kellerman should be commended for the display of stones. . . .
Since size obviously did matter in Mayweather-Marquez, has anybody else noticed the face-to-face promo shots for the Nov. 7 Nikolai Valuev-David Haye fight in Germany? The 6-foot-3 Haye, who weighed 215 in his last fight, could be a featherweight alongside the Russian giant. John Ruiz, the former WBA champion, will fight an unnamed opponent on the Valuev-Haye undercard and has been promised the winner. . . .
I don’t know whether Bob Arum maintains one of those “Stadium Tour” logs on his Facebook page, but if so, he’s been making up some serious ground on the competition: The Top Rank chairman, who just last month kicked off the Miguel Cotto-Manny Pacquiao press tour at Yankee Stadium, returns to the Big Apple Tuesday to formally announce the Dec. 5 Kelly Pavlik-Paul Williams middleweight title fight in Atlantic City at the New York Giants’ training facility across the river at the Meadowlands. Eleven days later, the Las Vegas-based promoter will be at Madison Square Garden’s Wa-Mu Theatre, where Juan Manuel Lopez-Rogers Mtagwa headlines an Oct. 10 card.
That’s a mouthful
Did Don Dunphy ever have to do this?
The broadcast team, which included yours truly, for last night’s world title fight in Dublin, Ireland, had its work cut out for it even before the Buddhist monks got involved in Bernard Dunne’s first defense of his World Boxing Association 122-pound championship.
Dunne’s mandatory challenger and WBA “interim” champ fights under the tongue-twisting handle Poonsawat Kraitingdaeggym, but like many Thai boxers (including the immortal Fahsan 3K Battery), his ring name incorporates that of his sponsor, while the name on his birth certificate is Prakorb Udomna, obligating the ringside commentators to learn both of them.
Already the owner of two unpronounceable names, Kratingdaenggym arrived in Ireland and announced that he had acquired a third. At his first Irish workout, he revealed that his spiritual advisor had given him an additional name – Chalermwong, meaning “honor and family,” and that following the monk’s advice he had legally changed his name to Chalermwong Udomna.
Thanks a lot, there, monk.
Twin twin bill
Jimmy Burchfield has been anxious to run a Saturday matinee, and a few weeks ago the folks at the Twin River Events Center in Lincoln, R.I., gave their blessing to a live boxing card Saturday afternoon, and the casino waived its 18-plus policy for the day. The show, which already featured Providence’s 2008 Olympian Demetrius “Boo-Boo” Andrade (6-0), got another big boost last week when another of New England’s brightest prospects, Worcester super middleweight Edwin Rodriguez (11-0) became available after his scheduled opponent on another card fell out at the 11th hour. Rodriguez will now fight in the main event and Andrade in the co-feature of the card, which will also showcase former URI football player Vladine Biosse, who is 3-0 as a super-middleweight. For information phone, 401-724-2253. . . .
Framingham junior welterweight Danny O’Connor improved to 9-0 with a third-round TKO of Minnesotan Patrick Cape on the “Fight to Educate” card in Manchester, N.H., Wednesday night. The main event of that annual benefit show saw Palestinian super middleweight Omar Sheika stop Florida journeyman Theo Kruger in eight, but the real buzz from the card came from what had loomed an inconsequential undercard bout. New Yorker Shawn McLean appeared to be yet another in a McNeeleyesque series of unthreatening opponents Newark heavyweight Faruq Saleem (38-0) had faced, but McLean (who went into the bout 3-4) turned the tables to register an upset with a fourth-round TKO. . . .
Freddie Roach-trained Cuban featherweight prospect Guillermo Rigondeux was credited a third-round TKO last weekend when his elderly Brazilian opponent Giovanni Andrade, 39, quit after absorbing a solid body shot. Rigondeux is 3-0 as a pro since defecting from his homeland. . . .
With the venues now set, the first round of Showtime’s super middleweight tournament will take place in three different countries. As anticipated, the inaugural Oct. 17 doubleheader will originate from Germany (Arthur Abraham vs. Jermain Taylor) and England (Carl Froch vs. Andre Dirrell), but the Nov. 21 Mikkel Kessler-Andre Ward WBA title fight, which had been expected to be in Denmark, will instead take place in Oakland, Ward’s hometown. . . .
In a non-tournament 168-pound title bout, IBF champ Lucien Bute’s HBO-televised Nov. 28 rematch with Librado Andrade, has been switched from Montreal to Quebec City. HBO will visit New England earlier in November for the Chad Dawson-Glen Johnson bout from the XL Center in Hartford. . . .
At the Sept. 12 New York memorial service for Budd Schulberg, who died in August, the Boxing Hall of Famer’s son, Benn, invited the audience to consider the advances in technology his father had witnessed in his 95 years on this earth. Born in the era of silent motion pictures (his father at one time headed Paramount Studios), by the end of his career, Schulberg was filing his copy from ringside via computer and corresponding by e-mail, but there were some things he never quite did get the hang of. His son recalled a trip to Vegas a few years ago when he and his dad were driving to the home of the late Diego Corrales in a rental car equipped with voice-guided GPS, causing the elder Schulberg to wonder: “Who is this woman, and how does she know where we’re going?” . . .
