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Davy Fitzgerald speaks to the press early this week. ©INPHO/James Crombie
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Irish breakfast, meth dealers and Greek fighters: The week's best sportswriting

Good morning, here’s the best writing the internet had to offer sports fans this week.

1. “No knock on Paulie Malignaggi, but “ever” is a mighty big mouthful. Floyd Mayweather is a fine boxer (if demonstrably a bum, many times over), but ranks well outside the top 10 for all-time fighting greats. Likely outside the top 25 of just the past 100 years.

“Which is what we’re really talking about when we say “all time.” Prisoners of the present, “all time” always means “our own time.” It’s a way to fix ourselves against the river of history.

ESPN and Jeff MacGregor take on the ‘greatest of all time’ debate with a little help from Homer.

2. “Danny McBride appears near the monitors wearing a ratty, green cutoff tee, chewing over the upcoming scene’s dialogue. When a makeup woman accidentally spills the contents of her purse, he snaps to: “Oh, let’s see here: Adderall, Vicodin, Percs …”

Amos Barshad visits the set of Eastbound and Down as it films its final season, for Grantland.

3. “Despite the usual smattering of applause among the hundreds who gather at half-past-one to greet their heroes, few players looked up to acknowledge them. As for the staff, many of whom have been employed by the club for decades, they blanked them completely. It didn’t add up. Not at Sunderland.”

Few people viewed Paolo Di Canio as a balanced individual, but that dumber took a further tumble after Colin Young’s insight into Sunderland life for the Daily Mail.

4, “That guy smoked meth? That guy dealt meth?

“As Joe drove, he kept telling himself that he could sustain the secrets and lies as long as Melissa got on the road.”

Now, this sounds familiar. Paul Kix tells the tale of Joe O’Brien, former college star and a man rising through the coaching ranks… while dealing drugs.

5. “Why doesn’t the scoreline read 18-17 instead of 2-12 to 1-14?”

“Answer from Irish-American raised in Ireland: “It just doesn’t.”

Chuck Culpepper gives an American view on last Sunday’s All-Ireland final. Don’t wince, on SportsOnEarth it’s better-informed than most overseas accounts you’ve read already.

6.“Do we know why Simmons—who is just a talking head from the television set, after all, and not an X-Men villain—thinks he can read our minds all the way from his California lair?

“What we do want to know, to a point of scientific certainty, is whether Simmons—a man who recently wrote 16,000 words premised on the conceit that the the public is interested in his comparison of the NBA off-season to a Charles Grodin movie from 25 years ago—is really the most self-obsessed pundit of all, or just a fraudulent aspirant to the throne. “

Deadspin writers do some intense pronoun searching in the search for the USA’s most pompous pundit.