Michael Marley
8/22/2007

Call me what I am, I can take it. Our Unofficial UK Correspondent  Matty Merrett, the “I Will Ram It Up Your Ronson” Ricky Hatton Hugger, is now sending emails concluding with something about “a mosquito’s willy.” If  Matty asks where the home orifice is, run the other way.

 

I am what I am as Popeye used to say. I am the Ugly American, the guy who says that Home Box Office needs to put America First. If that makes me a Joe Stay At Home, like the Welshman Joe Calzaghe, so be it.

 

The idea boys at Golden Boy, spurred on by Strongman Sampson Lewkowicz no doubt, now want to expand the World Cup series beyond Philippines-Mexico. Now the bright boys are pushing the HBO hoboes of Sixth Avenue to put on more World Cup competitions on their airwaves, to fund such shows, in 2008.

 

Where does it stop? The newly-expanded World Cup would match a team from Argentina, where GBP has a lucrative national TV deal, and Japan, which looks so golden to Oscar De La Hoya’s minions. Do you think wandering Venezuelan and world champion banger Edwin Valero would fight for the Nippon team, lol?

 

Leading the anti-World Cup expansion talk is an American and a world champion who is begging for an HBO date against ANYBODY. He’s from Brooklyn, y’all, and his name is Paulie Malignaggi and he makes a lot of sense.

 

I’d call Paulie’s lack of a well-deserved HBO fight date for 2007, Exhibit B of why we don’t need more countries and more World Cup competitions cluttering the HBO boxing schedule.

 

Exhibit A is undefeated Dominican Dandy and world champ Joan Guzman, who last fought on HBO against Argentine Jorge Barrios last September and who is now slated to fight Humberto Soto on the premium cable network on Nov. 17. The world’s best fighter, Floyd Mayweather Jr. rightly calls Guzman the second-best pure boxer in the universe and yet Guzman has been begging for an HBO date a lot longer than Malignaggi.

 

Americans want to see more of Guzman, more of Malignaggi, not some anonymous fighters from Kyoto or Buenos Aires. It’s not as if HBO isn’t foreigner friendly in terms of new boxing faces. Otherwise, you readers would not have discovered and marveled at a Michael “Rocky” Kastidis. And you saw Kastidis make his HBO debut against Czar Amonsot, a Filipino.

 

It’s not like Yo Paulie and I can be labeled xenophobes, meaning we are fearful of fighters from outside the USA. The regular HBO fight schedule is a United Nations of pugilists.

 

Finally, can you imagine being a fight peddler and going to a TV network in Japan or in Argentina and trying to sell them a boxing show matching the USA against Canada or USA against the Dominican Republic? You’d get laughed out of the building, Mr. Gaijin or Senor Gringo, trust me!

 

I may be an Ugly American but maybe plastic surgery can help. Golden Boy’s World Cup needs to be reined in, not expanded. The fistic cream from all countries will still rise to the top meaning that the Rocky Kastidises will still wind up fighting on HBO.

 

Yo Paulie, you got that right! No more other countries, no adding on to the World Cup, HBO. In other words, fughettabout it!

 

(mlcmarley@aol.com)