What Are The Issues With Larry Mercahnt?

Albert and Czyz were awesome back in the day. Pacheco was kind of an idiot, but that team was pretty good. I dont care much for the team now.

 

Some reporter interviewed Merchant coming out of an airport yesterday. To me Merchant seems drunk. Its on Fight news .com

 

What an arsehole. Thats pure garbage!

I Love larry he's pure old school. He may be getting on a bit now, but to me he's always been there and i wish he always could be. I loved Hbo's team of Lampley, merchant and jones jr. Seriously you americans don't realise how lucky you are to have Hbo. Skys production and boxing team are garbage!

 

He's opinionated and very critical and biased against pure boxer types. But he also completely lacks any tact at times. If you want to defend him for asking the important questions that's fine, but when he asked Michael Katsidis after a hard fought loss 'do you think your late brother would be proud of this performance'. Well that was completely unacceptable, maybe it came out wrong because he was drunk or just losing his faculties, but Katsidis had just fought his heart out giving his all and Merchant probably made him feel like ****. When someone talks negatively after you give your all in a fight you can understand boxers getting irritated with him. If you want to know why Mayweather hates Merchant listen to the Castillo 2 commentary.

 

Both George Foreman and Roy Jones have been critical of Merchant for talking bad about boxers with no experience in the ring. Merchant is very matter of fact and that turns off a lot of people, but he is there to do his job. Is there really any personality on any platform, whose job is to give their opinion, genuinely liked by all? Not really. Merchant is 80 years old, I really liked what he said to Floyd and then laughed it off. Mayweather has really become the same person Mike Tyson became in the late 80's. So enabled by yes men, his sense of reality is so warped that anytime hes outside that circle and questioned in anyway, he explodes. Mayweather is destined for disaster.

 

He's an old man who has seen it all and speaks whatever is on his mind. I'd say that he was a little less grumpy in his younger days, nowadays he can be too critical. Then again he was actually going somewhat "soft" on Mayweather when the fighter decided to pull a temper tantrum to avoid being questioned further by a man he knew wasn't going to pull any punches (even if he sometimes should to better communicate with temperamental fighters like Floyd).

Basically he can come off as a straight-forward ***** but so does Jim Gray and they're employed for exactly that reason. They're not there to accommodate the boxers but to drive the networks' agenda which is to have as exciting and money-drawing an event as possible.

 

This. He has never truly morphed from a writer to a broadcaster. Over 30 years ago, a boxing publication analyzing the qualities and flaws of various announcers and announcing teams stated that he seemed uncomfortable with a microphone, outside his proper "milieu." I don't think that's ever really changed, yet it's obviously worked for him all these decades later. (In fact, how many other currently active fight commentators date their televised body of work back to the 1970s? Merchant and Lederman immediately come to mind, but most of the others are either dead, retired, or no longer broadcasting boxing events.)

 

I believe Larry Merchant was a fair football player in his younger days so he isn't exactly a complete non-athlete. It was a rough game that forced a lot of players to retire early (including Merchant), still is.

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Showtime are pretty poor in my opinion. Employing Tarver was a baffling decision.

 

Lampley and Kellerman are ass kissers to fighters, while Larry asks the questions that we want to hear. i don't think he was out of line with what he asked Floyd, yet he more than likely would have been the only one of the analysts to ask it.

 

...'n Paul Pender was the middleweight champ, S

 

Is Briggs still concussed from that asswhipping Vitali put on him?

I can't make heads or tails of that diatribe.

 

He was MORE than a fair football player, TGA. He was a defensive terror.

 

Briggs is probably bitter from when he was knocked out by Darroll Wilson in less than inspiring fashion and the HBO team called him out on it.