WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather, Jr., is taking his December 8th showdown with Ricky Hatton very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he's part of the cast for the new season of "Dancing with the Stars."
Mayweather will compete against Mark Cuban, Wayne Newton, Jennie Garth, Helio Castroneves, Sabrina Bryan, Melanie Brown, Cameron Mathison, Josie Maran, Albert Reed, Marie Osmond and Jane Seymour.
I could say I don't get why Floyd would do something so distracting a few months prior to a huge money fight, but I do, actually. Mayweather really thinks Hatton sucks -- that whole thing isn't promotion. He probably doesn't believe that Ricky Hatton can challenge him if he was having his worst day and Hatton was having his best. (An idea, for the record, that I don't agree with. But, well...it's not that far off from what I do agree with.)
It is, in some ways, blatant disrespect for Hatton. Naturally, HBO will play it up when they go full-tilt in hyping the fight. "The great Mayweather thinks so little of Hatton that he danced on ABC for weeks." And, it'll probably help sell.
The instinctive thought that we could be seeing Mayweather taking Hatton too lightly is probably much ado about nothing. How many great athletes of yesteryear would do things similar to this before a big fight or a big game? How many of them still won? Biographies across the world of sport are littered with stories and anecdotes about the outrageous stunts athletes would pull, then they went out the next day and hit three home runs or scored two touchdowns or knocked out their opponent, or whatever. Most likely, this has zero effect on Mayweather's preparation for the fight.
To switch gears on the story, how do you think Mayweather will do? I admit, though I won't watch (and I'm not trying to sound manly), that I'm intrigued. Given Floyd's superior boxing footwork, you'd have to guess he's going to be very good. But Ty Cobb never became much of a golfer -- different swings, different game.
Kind of a slow August, huh? September should help us get moving again. Although, really, maybe we needed a few weeks to recover from Vazquez-Marquez II. How lame could some big-name fights look trying to follow that act?