Let’s leave Grandpa Bernard Hopkins, closer to age 50 than he is to 40, out of this.
Ditto for the rapidly aging but still immensely talented Floyd Mayweather Jr. who turns 35 next February.
Focus on Andre “Son Of God” Ward, the slick super middleweight champion who was in New York Tuesday to promote his Showtime tournament finale fight against the always entertaining British brawler Carl Froch.
At 27, Ward pretty much stands alone as a primetime, African American boxer of international repute.
For dinosaurs from the halcyon era of Ali, Leonard, Holmes, Pryor, Hagler and Hearns, it is kind of mind boggling, this recent absence of black American world champions.
I broached this subject to, of all people, a well known white rap star and fight fanatic RA The Rugged Man recently. We met up at a Hopkins-Chadwick Dawson presser in Times Square.
(Among the props RA has earned in rap is a quote from the legendary Biggie Smalls who said “I thought I was the illest” after hearing RA perform.)
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RA, mistakenly viewed by some in the internet jungle as a rabid Mayweather hater, had this take on the subject of the vanishing black American boxer.
HERE’S RA THE RUGGED MAN BOXING MAYWEATHER IN ON THAT RADIO BRAWL.
“No role models, that’s the key problem,” RA said. “There’s no Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard out there for the kids to look up to.
“If you are some eight year old black kid, who do you look up to? There’s no dominant heavyweight champ like Larry Holmes, the Klitschkos run that division and the rest of boxing seems to be filled with the Latinos and Asians,” RA said.
“I grew up as a suburban kid, in Suffolk County, Long Island, and my dad (the late Vietnam vet and Agent Orange victim John A Thorburn) was a big Larry Holmes fan. We lived in Gerry Cooney country and Cooney is from there. My Dad told all the neighbors that Larry would whip Cooney’s butt and he did.”
RA also thinks shrinking media coverage of the sport has also kept boxing off the radar for younger black Americans.
“There’s not enough mainstream media coverage. I’ve worked to get more boxing coverage, not only for Mayweather but for other fighters, in the magazines that appeal to the market, magazines and sites like The Source and Vibe.
“You look in these outlets, and Vibe has 1.2 million readers, and they covering the NBA players and have nothing about boxers. I was the one who got Floyd coverage in Rides, in King and in Complex. I even got got Wladimir Klitschko up to Hot 97 (New York urban radio station) and on their “Street Soldiers” program. Klitschko talked about growing up in Ukraine and people could relate to him.” RA said.
RA looks back on the blowup with Mayweather on a satelittle radio program and said many people misunderstood his comments which precipated an angry rebuttal phone call from Mayweather.
“I was in the studio talking about how Floyd is one of the most gifted fighters and then he called up,” RA said.
“He got lots off free promotion from that bit. I still feel he is most gifted but now he’s in a position where he’s got to fight Pacquiao or his legacy is tarnished.
“I can’t see anyway he gets around fighting Manny without harming the legacy unless maybe he does something extraordinary, like fighting Sergio Martinez at a catchweight. And I don’t see that happening.”
So RA is no Mayweather hater, not hardly. Don’t put the Rugged Man in that box.
You can’t rap a rapper for telling like it is.
Remember, it’s not the white man, it’s the right man.
