“Roses are red… “Violets are blue… “Pacquiao Worldwide Army (PWA) cannot wait until Manny tattoos you…”
Look, I concede I’m a lousy poet and I know it..
But this is my Valentine for Floyd Joy Mayweather, Jr.
I was going the “violets are purple” route but what rhymes with that color, urple or sturple or fluprle? I was stumped there.
Reasons why Mayweather is the fighter we love to hate, the fighter we hate to love.
1. Because he is the Ralph Nader of the important fight to stop drug cheaters in boxing.
2. Because he is, to borrow Kris Kristofferson’s lyrics, “a walking contradicton, partly truth and partly fiction.”…
3. Because you never use Tina Turner’s “Simply The Best” as your ring walk music, out of respect not for Tina, I am sure, but because of your reverence for Chris Eubank, the British champ who made it his anthem.
4. Because Examiners of all stripes, sizes and subject can scribble about you, even the Kalamazoo Relationships Examiner and the Boondocks Baby Examiner, and generate beaucoup page views. I’m just waiting for the National Twilight Examiner to pick up on my Mayweather-“Blacula” reference, denoting your vampire like fascination with random blood testing.
5. Because, as you told Jamie Foxx on Sirius, “I make money, money don’t make me.” That’s an old Don King phrase but, if money is so unimportant, how come your nickname was/is “Money?” How come your strip club/disco routine is throw money in the air like you just don’t care?
6. Because Shane Mosley comes off like a Boy Scout compared to you. God forbid, the secret that you’re a regular fella ever leaks out, it would ruin your stage managed villainous image. You gladly wear the black hat while Pacman wears the white hat, ka-ching!
7. Because you spit in Oscar de la Hoya’s face on the regular but then shove dough in his corporate pocket by letting Golden Boy make your bouts. I wish you “hated” me like that, brother. With enemies like you, Oskie doesn’t need any compadres, son.
8. Because you admitted, talking to Foxx, that you and Pacman were both 106-pounders at the same age (16), suggesting that the slightly younger man’s physical growth is completely normal like yours.
9. Because you’re smart enough to play up Mosley’s chances when you know, in your little tiny ego place, that you won’t let Shanester win even a single round (except by default like you played with Oskie).
10. Because your fans bring their passion to my pages and elsewhere and because boxing needs fans supporting more than just one national hero.
11. Because you’re not America’s Sweetheart and don’t pretend to be. You know you don’t have Sugar Ray Leonard charisma so you don’t try to fake it until you make it, you stay on the real side and occasionally talk real talk.
12. Because you are the best pure boxer on the planet.
13. Because you will have to win a fight to beat Pacman, you know that and you will eventually accept the challenge. If Manny makes it a brawl, you will bawl.
14. Because you are the Anti-Manny, the flip side of Pacquiao, and the contrasting ring styles and personalities are box office and PPV TV magic.
15. Because Michael Marley is not keen on returning to Cambridge, Mass., to reapply for a hack license as Ambassador Taxi and Taxi #78 have disappeared. When they called Marley a hack in his college days, L’il Floyd, they weren’t lying. I went to Harvard (Square) for fares only.
16. Because you reject materialism and disdain the Big Boy Mansion, the Maybach and your Segway. It’s only a matter of time before you became a Tibetan monk or imitate St. Francis and toss all your earthly possessions aside to go into the woods wearing only burlap.
17. Because you realize that “with God as our Father, all we are brothers” which is why you just ended your artificial “feud” with rapper Rick “The Boss, Port Of Miami” Ross. You’re a lovecat living up to your middle name of Joy, not a vicious landshark!
No hearts, no flowers, no boxes of chocolate for you, Floyd.
Just this simple note from me and one from Manny.
Manny’s reads: Mayweather, when will you be mine?
It’s real, it’s authentic this valentine from Pacquiao. Even Tiny Tim Smith and Teddy Atlas know about it. They never saw it, they just know because a reliable source told them so.
Aw, gee, ain’t love grand?
