Like many boxing retirements, Floyd Mayweather’s was merely a temporary sabbatical. Perhaps his ego couldn’t stand the talk of his performances being surpassed. Perhaps he always planned to un-retire — boxers are rivaled only by rappers in going back on pledges to leave their professions. Or maybe it was the problem Mayweather had developed with the IRS: a $5.6 million-sized problem. Whatever the reason, Mayweather ended a 21-month absence from the ring against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2009.
On the eve of Mayweather’s comeback, the fighter sat down for an interview with ESPN’s Brian Kenny on SportsCenter. The interview on May 20, 2009 was meant to publicize Mayweather’s upcoming bout against Marquez, but quickly took on a life of its own.
It turned into 13 minutes of unbridled, broadcast sports journalism havoc. A mano-a-mano slugfest that boxing fans have yearned to see from Mayweather inside the ropes.
Only a handful of interviewers have so agitated Mayweather, a defensive genius in the ring used to controlling fights completely. One was HBO’s Larry Merchant, who famously concluded a hostile in-ring interview with Mayweather by declaring, “I wish I was 50 years younger and I would kick your ass.” Another, less known encounter was a radio debate with rapper RA The Rugged Man.
The SportsCenter interview of Mayweather by Kenny, who now works for Showtime and MLB Network, would quickly go viral; it sits at 1.8 million views on YouTube.
“Even now when I walk around Showtime Boxing, I still can’t believe how many people bring it up – in ballparks, everywhere, how many people will bring that up,” Kenny said.
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That 2009 skirmish between Kenny and Mayweather had a prelude. In 2006, Mayweather was lining up a weight class jump against Zab Judah, considered the true, lineal champion at welterweight and the owner of multiple major sanctioning organization title belts.
“He was the welterweight champion of the world,” Kenny recalled. “A funny thing happened on the way to the title fight: Zab Judah lost to Carlos Baldomir. Most everybody in boxing thought, there goes that fight.”
Instead, Baldomir, a minor figure in boxing until he shockingly beat Judah, was only able to afford the sanctioning fee for one of the belts. Despite losing to Baldomir, Judah remained, by virtue of Baldomir’s relative poverty, the IBF welterweight “champion” and the fight with Mayweather was set for the summer of 2006.
Just prior to their interview live on ESPNews for The Hot List, the veteran anchor saw something that raised his hackles.
“The promoter, I saw in their press release – I think it was Top Rank at the time – starts calling it the welterweight championship of the world. In my head I’m thinking , oh no they’re not. C’mon, we know better,” Kenny said. Usually in interviews, boxers would acknowledge that a title didn’t equal being the real champion.
“Real champions don’t have to fake it,” he said. “I’m thinking Floyd being a real champ, at 130 [pounds], at 135, is not going to try to fake it. It defies logic. It defies reality. Sure enough when I asked him about it, he started telling me it was. I know he’s acting in his interest, in his short-term interest, but that’s not my job. My job is, the fight with Zab Judah is good, but just don’t tell me it’s for the championship.”
Before that contentious interview, Kenny and Mayweather had always been on good terms according to the anchor. In fact, Kenny had kept an autographed copy of KO Magazine that Mayweather had signed, “To the #1 broadcaster, Brian Kenny.” As host of Friday Night Fights, Kenny had interviewed Mayweather numerous times and attended many of his fights.
“I had always thought he was vastly underrated on the way up,” Kenny said. “He was. He was underrated and underpaid.”
Despite the heated live back and forth, Kenny left the interview with no sense that Mayweather was angry. After the segment concluded, Mayweather and Kenny shared a laugh, Kenny said, and Mayweather repeated what he said on the air: That Kenny could be the Howard Cosell to his Muhammad Ali.
But Kenny later surmised that Mayweather soured on the interview.
“I think he was good with it, but afterwards when it gets a life of its own, people start getting into your ear saying things,” Kenny said. “He enjoys the verbal sparring. Right after we were doing it, he had no problem with it. He loves the engagement.”
So by 2009, Mayweather was primed for a rematch. Kenny made sure he got the assignment, as he did for all boxing interviews by the time he had moved over as a regular at SportsCenter’s 6 p.m. ET slot. Other SportsCenter anchors didn’t follow boxing as closely as Kenny did, and ESPN’s other boxing specialists, Teddy Atlas and Max Kellerman, weren’t stationed in Bristol.
Kenny said he would always come in early when a boxer was making rounds via satellite to promote a fight. On the day of Mayweather’s interview with Kenny, May 20th, everyone had a sense sparks might fly, Kenny said, based on the previous encounter.
And when they started flying, ESPN producers let them fly freely.
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