By Rick Reeno
WBA junior middleweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26KOs) disclosed that he officially ended the feud with HBO analyst Larry Merchant. Last September, following his fourth round knockout of Victor Ortiz, Mayweather and Merchant engaged in a well documented verbal exchange, which erupted after Merchant grilled him on the Ortiz outcome.
Mayweather shouted "HBO needs to fire you. You don't know sh*t about boxing. You ain't sh*t." To which Merchant fired back - "I wish I was 50 years younger so I could kick your ass"
During the pre-fight promotion, fans were anticipating another verbal exchange at the conclusion of Saturday's fight with Miguel Cotto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Following Mayweather's unanimous decision victory, Merchant and Mayweather took part in a post-fight interview with no obvious tension between the two of them.
"Larry Merchant, things happen. Me being the bigger man, I just apologized and said hopefully we can have a better relationship in the future. I apologized for what I said. Any time someone gets pushed to the limit [things happen], and I feel that I got pushed to the limit. He wasn't giving me my just due. All I wanted to say the last time was to thank my fans for buying the pay-per-view and thank my fans for coming out and supporting me. That's all I wanted to say, but he kept worrying about other things - about the Ortiz fight, and asking me the same questions over and over again, so I got kind of upset," Mayweather said.
