It was jampacked and jelly tight Tuesday Tuesday afternoon at the ornate Hudson Theater in midtown Manhattan as the ?Mayweather Mafia? turned out in force to cheer on their boxing hero as L?il Floyd began the big hype for his Sept. 17 PPV bout entitled ?Star Power? against Vicious Victor Ortiz
If the organizers did not know the pitfalls of a public invited presser, they quickly learned about same as Golden Boy?s Richard Schaefer had to act like an angry schoolmarm to shush the peanut gallery several times.
Schaefer was speaking on Ortiz, conqueror of previously unbeaten Andre Berto, and said, ?He knows how to?
?Quit,? yelled someone in the first or second balcony, a reference to Ortiz?s demeaning loss to Marcos Maidana.
Schaefer spoke on how Ortiz valiantly beat back Berto, even rising off the canvas twice.
?Floyd ain?t Berto!? shouted another wisenheimer upstairs.
?Berto was overrated,? a second voice called out.
?Fight (Sergio) Martinez!? a third person yelled and, no, I don?t think it was Lou DiBella.
Schaefer soldiered on, bravely, saying of Vicious Victor, ?He can hurt Floyd Mayweather?? Advertisement
Boos cascaded from the two balconies.
?That is the storyline here,? Schaefer said.?
The crowd popularity levels figure to be reversed 180 degrees for Wednesday?s press conference in Los Angeles, where Mexican American Ortiz should get a much friendlier reception.
If there any Filipinos at the Mayweather presser I didn?t see them.
Ortiz noted the hostile reception when he first took to the podium.
“I feel a lot of love-hate things going on here,” the 24 year old from Garden City, Kansas, and now living in Ventura, California said.
As he spoke, Ortiz took a jab at the Mayweather camp and played to his Mexican fans by noting how Floyd’s uncle-trainer, Roger Mayweather, got beaten by Mexican great Julio Cesar Chavez on July 7, 1995.
“This will be a repetition of Roger Mayweather against Julio Cesar Chavez,” the likeable Ortiz said.
It should be duly noted that Mayweather was nothing but complimentary about Ortiz, praising his upset of Berto and lauding him for “coming back like a champion” from the embarrassment against Maidana.
