By Keith Idec

Jim Lampley’s show-closing criticism of Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the newest episode of his HBO show late Tuesday night left Lampley a target of widespread criticism on Twitter and other social media sites Wednesday.

The HBO blow-by-blow announcer asserted in his final comments on “The Fight Game With Jim Lampley” that there’s no place in boxing for Mayweather’s increasingly boorish behavior and added the sport’s pound-for-pound king couldn’t retire soon enough. Boxing fans and writers have denounced Lampley’s assessment as an agenda-driven attack because Mayweather, once HBO’s flagship fighter, performs exclusively on Showtime as part of a six-fight, 30-month contract he signed with CBS, Showtime’s parent company, in February 2013.

Critics also have lambasted Lampley as a hypocrite because he mentioned Mayweather’s repulsive reaction to besmirched Ravens running back Ray Rice’s season-long suspension and alluded to Mayweather’s 61-day incarceration following a September 2010 domestic violence incident. Those critics have pointed out Lampley pleaded no-contest to violating a restraining order in February 2007 that was issued following his arrest in January 2007, when his then-fiancee, Candice Sanders, alleged he attacked her at her apartment in Encinitas, Calif.

Lampley was sentenced to three years of probation and 40 hours of community service, fined and admitted into a domestic violence counseling program after he pled no-contest to violating the aforementioned restraining order. Charges were not filed against Lampley, however, based on Sanders’ allegations because investigators didn’t find sufficient evidence to support her claims.

Lampley praised Mayweather earlier in Tuesday night’s episode for his convincing victory over Marcos Maidana in their welterweight championship rematch Saturday night in Las Vegas. He later unloaded on Mayweather, as the show came to its conclusion.

“Floyd Mayweather long ago made clear he isn’t trying to please the entire available audience,” Lampley said. “And through concentrated, money-harvested, pay-per-view distribution, he has convincingly established he can do it his way, generate a kind of appeal not all of us will ever understand and attract an income that out-distances those of polite golfers and friendly, smiling auto racers. Some would say, more power to him. But if the goal is to push the limits of public taste to the point where the overwhelming preponderance of consumers simply wash their hands and want nothing to do with him or his fights, his blith comment to the effect the NFL was overreacting to a videotape by supsending Ray Rice [for the season] was probably a pretty good start. And his garbled apology did little to remove the stench.

“This was the absolute height of heaving a rock out of a glass house. And if he honestly thinks he can offer that kind of love to Rice, without offending significant numbers of fans and observers, he’s wrong. The fact is, unbeaten record or not, consummate skill notwithstanding, Floyd Mayweather is an often aggressively distasteful human being, whose behaviors are a blight on the boxing landscape. He also said last week he will retire from the ring at the completion of his six-fight, CBS/Showtime contract. And in responding to the result of his most recent win earlier in the show, we ignored that, because it won’t happen. But if it did, no damage would accrue to boxing. Fact is, for the betterment of boxing’s image, Floyd Mayweather’s retirement cannot come a moment too soon.”

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.