Columnist Dean Juipe: Mayweather’s image outside the ring isn’t so pretty

Dean Juipe

Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999 | 10:48 a.m.

Dean Juipe's boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at 259-4084 or juipe@vegas.com

Floyd Mayweather may be as good a fighter as there is in the world today.

The WBC junior lightweight champion is 22-0 and has been handling competent, experienced fighters with noteworthy ease.

Yet his popularity has always left something to be desired.

While being revered as a boxer, he is perceived as aloof and too cocky and, over time, could develop a Naseem Hamed-like reputation where most fans respect him but want to see him lose.

Within the last week, the 22-year-old Las Vegan only added to his image problems by turning down a contract extension with HBO that, at least temporarily, leaves him without a fight and in danger of seeing his marketability plummet.

"Right now he's a very misguided young man," said HBO's Lou DiBella. "He has an inflated view of his own career (and) I find his comments insulting."

Mayweather called HBO's extension offer "a slave contract" and turned it down in spite of the advice of his father, Floyd Sr., and uncle, Jeff. The deal would have been worth $12.5 million for six fights over three years and also would have paid him $1 million -- rather than the contractually agreed upon $750,000 -- for the one remaining fight he owes HBO on their original contract with him.

"It's at an impasse," Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler said of Mayweather's negotiations with HBO. "Floyd's fight-less, if there is such a word, and he may have overplayed his hand. He's back to ground zero right now."

HBO wanted to plug a Mayweather vs. Derrick Gainer fight into a Nov. 6 date it holds, or, if that was deemed to be insufficient notice, have Mayweather fight Dec. 10. Now he has neither date, nothing scheduled, and has alienated HBO.

"Floyd wants $3 million per fight," Trampler said. "But I don't know where he goes from here. HBO will carry on without Floyd Mayweather and I think he has to take stock of that and re-assess his original assessment.

"He has a lot of fences to mend."

Trampler is involved on the periphery of the negotiations because Top Rank has Mayweather under contract for an additional three years. He believes Mayweather is listening to bad advice from people outside his family and, perhaps, outside of the fight game.

"Floyd wants to be paid like Oscar De La Hoya," Trampler said. "Well, we all know that's not going to happen, at least right now. Floyd Sr. and Jeff recommended he take HBO's offer but some of Floyd's other advisers submarined the deal."

Mayweather was summoned to promoter Bob Arum's office earlier this week, although his situation is nowhere near being resolved. And it may not be for some time.

* TRAMPLER HONORED: Trampler, 50, and Top Rank's matchmaker for almost 20 years, will be inducted Saturday into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. He's part of a 1999 class that also includes ex-fighters Khaosai Galaxy and Jose Luis Ramirez.

Trampler is being included in the "Expanded Category" of the Hall.

"I'm kind of excited about it," he said. "The part I'll really like is going to the ceremony and being around all the other boxing people who will be there. If I hadn't been inducted I still would have wanted to go just to see the guys who will be there.

"It's a thrill to be around those people and I could just as easily go and be a fly on the wall."

* WBC ON CHAVEZ: Only moments after Julio Cesar Chavez was beaten by Willie Wise Oct. 2 at the Las Vegas Hilton, promoter Don King bellowed that the defeat would not cost Chavez his No. 1 ranking at 140 pounds with the World Boxing Council. King's reasoning was that the Chavez vs. Wise fight took place at 147 pounds.

While the truth is that King has a remarkable influence on the WBC and generally gets his way, the organization has not given him carte blanche to go ahead and arrange a Chavez vs. Kostya Tszyu fight for the junior welterweight title.

According to a WBC spokesman this week, the organization has dropped Chavez from a "mandatory" challenger for Tszyu and now regards the champion's title defense as "voluntary." The WBC will also demand a "thorough medical exam" for Chavez and that it will "see the exam results and then have its executive board vote" on whether to sanction Chavez as a challenger.

Money does talk, however, and King is apt to offer Tszyu enough of it to put the fight together with an early 2000 target date.

* QUICK HITS: Coming right back from an Oct. 1 victory, former IBF cruiserweight champ Arthur Williams of Las Vegas has taken a Friday fight in his native Pensacola, Fla. In a bout to be televised by ESPN2, Williams will be up against a fighter who was once based in Las Vegas, Daren Zenner. Williams is 31-5-1 with 23 knockouts, while Zenner, a native of Canada who fought here earlier in the decade and now lives in New York, is 24-3-2 with 14 KOs. ... America Presents won a purse bid to promote a Bernard Hopkins vs. Antwun Echols IBF middleweight title fight. That's a mandatory defense for Hopkins, who is 35-2-1. Echols is 22-2-1. ... The local weekly radio show Ring Talk will have Naseem Hamed, Michael Grant, Dan Goossen and Orlin Norris as its Saturday guests. The show comes on at 8:06 p.m. and is broadcast over 1340 KRLV and 1400 KSHP. Pedro Fernandez ho sts.