Frank Maloney shocks with tasteless comment about Wladimir Klitschko and Emanuel Steward

Boxing promoter Frank Maloney worked as a pundit today for ESPN UK, covering Wladimir Klitschko's decision win over Mariusz Wach, and stunned the boxing community with a rather classless comment about Klitschko and his late trainer and friend, Emanuel Steward.

Maloney said after the fight that Klitschko would be happy that he doesn't have to pay Steward his 10% share of the purse for today's outing, something that was poorly timed and ill-considered at best, and truly tasteless and disgraceful at worst.

Media backlash has been swift, as you would likely expect, with many on Twitter immediately condemning the comment. At this point, Maloney's going to likely have no choice but to issue a public apology, as it has done nothing to help him or any of his fighters. If the intention was to start drawing attention to a fight between Klitschko and Maloney's promising heavyweight David Price -- which is about the only thing that "makes sense," as much as this comment could -- then that is a disgrace, and disrespectful to the image that Price himself has put out into the world.

We'll have more on this as soon as there's something new, and while I don't want to preach about political correctness or anything like that, I can say that personally, I find Maloney's comment to be embarrassing for him and all of the fighters he promotes, and it's something that just has no place in the boxing world, even accepting the trash-talking nature of the sport.