LEGENDARY BOXING ANNOUNCER Larry Merchant said he would not have approached his already infamous post-bout interview with Floyd Mayweather last weekend any differently, given hindsight.
The octogenarian HBO staple was verbally abused by Mayweather for questioning his defeat of Victor Ortiz on Saturday night, after Merchant accused him off of knocking his opponent out in a manner not befitting the sport.
“I’m in a long line of media people that he feels have not given him as much credit as he gives himself,” Merchant told ESPN Radio in Los Angeles.
“The fans saw what they saw: A sucker-punch ending a fight. Now, was Mayweather within his rights to throw it? Absolutely. Should he have? In my opinion, no. It was a legal blow, but that’s not the way great champions do it. And the kid, Ortiz, has blame on him as well.
“But now I’m interviewing Mayweather, and I think he’s absorbing the boos in the crowd, which are getting more explosive, more inflammatory, and he understands he’s not going to get all the credit he deserves again. And that’s what I think set him off, in my opinion.”
As for his own response, which saw him tell Mayweather that he would have taken him on had he been 50 years younger, Merchant was unapologetic.
“You’re getting personally insulted as well as professionally insulted, and I was just trying my best to ask the questions that everybody wanted answered. And suddenly he assaults me that way, and I just, you know, went off.
“I have not second-guessed myself,” he added. “I don’t think that what I did was a sucker-punch. Put it (this) way: It was a counter-punch.”
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