Quitters Never Prosper
posted by Large
I like Nate Campbell, I always have. But I have to say that the poetic justice as to the way last night’s fight finished up was staggering. I mean… the Galaxxy Warrior, one of the great headbutt artists of his generation, going out like that and screaming to the heavens about a headbutt? Dear God, it was just too perfect.
The best win of Nate’s career came last year over Juan Diaz, and having watched that fight recently I remain of the opinion that Nate’s victory over Diaz primarily can be attributed to his expert use of his noggin as a weapon. He brutalized Diaz with his head from the first bell, opened the cut that threw Diaz way off his game, and then went after it like a surgeon with his fists and, well, his head. It was headwork of the highest order, basically, and I honestly don’t think he would have won that fight without it. Diaz was prepared to go to war in there, and he’s quite a warrior. He was stepping up his workrate in the second round and Nate was starting to lose steam. No cut, no blood, and I think Diaz would have battled it out and maybe even stopped Nate.
But whatever – cuts are a part of the game, and Diaz obviously doesn’t deal with them very well. Plus, if only Diaz had hired a competent cutman that night he might have been able to get out clean, because his cut wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was strikingly similar to the cut Nate suffered last night – significant, and in a bad place, but in general the type of material that a qualified cut-guy can work with.
Would Nate’s corner have been able to stop his cut from bleeding into his eye? We’ll never know, but I’m prepared to say unequivocally that… yes they would have. Led by trainer John David Jackson, that’s one very pro crew Campbell’s got behind him. When Nate got back to his corner after the third round last night, screaming before he even sat down that he couldn’t see and the fight needed to be stopped and it was a butt, he butted me, I can’t see, where’s the doctor?… the first thing his cornerman said to him was, “you’re all right… it’s not that bad.”
But it wasn’t the cut anyway. Nate begged out because he was seeing spots, a condition that personally I imagine to be rampant among men who are getting punched in the face a lot. And on that score, let me say here that I think the result of the fight should stand as recorded, because if it’s the headbutt that cut him above the eye that he’s complaining about, it’s hard to see where that same butt would have injured his eye. It didn’t even look like it hit his eye.
But… look, is this even worth debating? Is there any question in anyone’s mind as to what really happened in there last night? Nate was on his way to catching one hell of a beating. Bradley put it very well in what I thought was a pretty classy post-fight interview in a decidedly unclassy situation (I mean, shit, you got Jim Gray there, you got Don King, Gary Shaw… it was not a group defined by class) when he said of Nate, “as the rounds went by, he was getting older and older.” I second that, and I’ll add that I thought he looked pretty old in the first round.
There are journeymen out there in the world who have taken it upon themselves to get knocked out for a living. I marvel, in some ways sadly, at their path. It’s a rare man who, without reservation and in utter foreknowledge of his fate, goes down proudly with the sinking ship of his own fortunes. It’s rarer still that a man who is accustomed to the spoils of heroism makes such a choice. And I’m not talking about fighting a bloody battle to the bitter end and losing. I’m talking about knowing you’re fucked, knowing it early, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it but try to survive and keep on plugging until the inevitable happens, the inevitable being you on the canvas with some (hopefully) temporary brain damage and the taste of your own blood in your mouth.
It makes me think of Margarito. Whatever else there is to say about the guy at this point (and there’s a shitload), you gotta give the guy his due on the way he went out in that Mosley fight. Dude got slaughtered that night. He had nothing, and he knew it. He knew he was going down and that it wasn’t going to be pretty. But a motherfucker like that has a serious code. You go out on your shield, PERIOD. No questions asked.
I don’t want to beat up on Nate too much. Margarito is one of those guys that makes us think of classical mythology and bullfighting and Hemingway and codes, etc. – which is why the loaded gloves crap hurts all the more. For a man who made us aim so high with our metaphors to sink so bloody low…
But so Nate isn’t Margarito. Big whoop. He’s proven himself in that ring before, taken some beatings. He was going to take another one last night and there wasn’t much he could do about it. I have absolutely no doubt about that. The way that fight was going, I didn’t see him making it past the… eighth, I’d say. And along the way, he was going to get busted up. He was just too slow of both hand and foot, and what few shots he was able to land on Bradley looked to be utterly negligible in Bradley’s estimation. Things were bad and getting worse.
So Nate got butted, bled a little, and he saw his way out. That he took it without a moment’s hesitation, that he grabbed at it greedily in fact, and that he raised such a hellacious fuss when he realized that his rush for the early exit was going to result in a loss and not an NC… it does not reflect tremendously well upon him. Let’s leave it at that. He almost seemed excited when he got back to his corner, as if relieved that a penalty-less escape route had presented itself just in the nick of time. Spots in my vision, can’t fight, yeah yeah, headbutt, innit, only the third round, it’s a no contest, I know the rules motherfucker…
Maybe something was really wrong with his vision, I don’t know. I’ll be honest, though – I doubt it. Consequently, I hope the whole controversy blows over with Bradley retaining the victory and no rematch being scheduled. Obviously, the rules are the rules, and if Nate’s cut is what was deemed to have stopped the fight, then it should have been ruled a no contest. But I ask again – if the damage to Nate’s vision is what stopped the fight, which is how it seemed to me, who’s to say really what caused that? The butt didn’t look like it could have been the culprit. Are we just supposed to go on Nate’s word on that? Nate was virulently yelling about the butt, and yes, obviously, the butt caused the cut. But the cut didn’t stop the fight. I thought Nate came back to his corner believing that the cut was going to be enough to stop the fight, but when he was met with a chorus of only mild concern on that front, then we had the spots-in-my-vision situation, and that’s what prompted the stoppage.
Ah, fuck it though. I said in my prognostification piece that I thought this was going to be the fight where Nate got old in front of our eyes, and across three rounds last night, that’s what I saw happening. Bradley is young, hard, and determined as all get-out. If they did fight again, it’d be a huge waste of everyone’s time, because, as Bradley himself stated, it would lead to much the same result. “That’s easy work,” Bradley said, and I believe him. Kendall Holt looked like frickin’ Muhammad Ali compared to what Nate was bringing last night.
In the end, I feel bad for Bradley. He seemed to me like he was all there, like he was ready to shine, and it was going to be an easy night for him. He was going to come out looking like a borderline A-lister, and he deserved the accolades. In a just world, today we would be sitting around talking about whether he’s worthy of a Pacquiao fight and not wondering about the stupidass spots in Nate’s stupidass vision.
I doubt Bradley cares very much, though, as well he shouldn’t. I tell you something – I’ve been on the cusp for a while now and I think last night made it official: I’m a Timothy Bradley fan. I like the way he fights, and I like what he stands for, which to me is a brand of all-too-rare no-bullshit relentlessness and no-give-up-in-that-doggedness to the nth degree of dog. In my mind, Bradley truly is what Ricky Hatton would like us to believe that Ricky Hatton is. But where Hatton is so highly skilled at talking the talk, Bradley walks the walk.
And we just might get ourselves a chance to see if that comparison stands up under pressure in the not-too-distant future. If Pacquiao beats Cotto, I can’t imagine him taking Mosley for an encore, and that Mayweather fight… who the hell knows if that shit will ever go down. At that point, maybe Pac will look Bradley’s way and eye himself up yet another world title. We know how him and Freddie are feeling about those alphabet straps these days…
(P.S. I have no comments on Alexander-Witter except that I want that half hour of my life back. And oh yeah – no winners on the prognostification contest. Nobody had Bradley by TKO, and if it gets changed to an NC, well, nobody had that either.)
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
you nailed it, largarito. spots in his vision my ass.
cotto could have pulled the same stunt (well, a variation of the same stunt) campbell did after 4 rounds against clottey but he didn’t. lame move by campbell… doesn’t even deserve the NC.
but i gotta add… i always think about what song i would come to the ring to if i was a fighter. sometimes i hear songs that make me say, “yo, this would be a banger to come to the ring to”, but last night i saw/heard what i’ve been waiting all my life for…. i wanna come to the ring to a christian rap freestyle! DESERT STORM!!!
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Whether you think Campbell looked old and slow the first two and a half rounds (and I did) and you thought Bradley was going to win the fight anyway (ditto) the fact of the matter is the call was wrong. Period. Until we hear otherwise there is no basis for doubting the veracity of Campbell’s injury claims (and as you said it was the alleged injury, not the cut, that caused the stoppage). You were less harsh on Robert Guerrero back in March under similar circumstances although Guerrero’s cut was demonstrably worse. At the end of the day, the ref bungled the call (What was the in-ring ruling? Did he even make one?) and the result should have been an NC. As for a rematch . . . sorry Nate, but I don’t think there’s much juice behind that idea. Bradley should move on to greener pastures. Green with money. One thing’s for sure, whoever he fights next should start callousing up their brows now. The dude does have a tendency to come in low and hard with that bowling ball on top of his neck.
I want Alexander again. He actually managed to look decent against a guy who seemed determined to make the bout as unwatchable as possible.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Bum – I was at the Guerrero fight, and so I don’t know what was said in the ring. I never watched the replay, but I’ve heard people say that Guerrero was begging out of the fight pretty dramatically. From my seat, all that happened was that he got cut and then the ringside doctor stopped it. And I remember thinking, well, it didn’t seem like he put up much of a fight on that, but at the same time it did look like a very nasty cut. I don’t remember what I wrote, but I brought up Gatti/Hutchinson, I think, and said not everyone can be Gatti.
That’s basically what I’m saying here. It’s hard not to feel like Nate’s act was a little ridiculous – by the time he got back to his corner, he was already wearing his street clothes in his mind. The way the conversation in the corner went, it felt dramatically that he thought he had a legitimate, inarguable way of getting out of the fight without losing and he unequivocally wanted to take it.
Plus, I still maintain that… how do we know that the butt caused the injury? A cut is something that you can verify in replays, but a claim of seeing spots? Can any fighter at any time claim that he’s seeing spots because of an accidental headbutt and opt out of a fight with a no-contest? I don’t know the rules on that specifically myself, but it seems fishy to me. Nate’s cut wasn’t bad enough to stop the fight, I don’t think. Maybe if he’d fought another round or two and the blood was pouring into his eye, he could have made that case, but I think they were going to be able to stop the bleeding on that thing (they seemed to do it instantly in the corner) and anyway, we never found out. So basically Nate is saying, this headbutt that caused a cut on my eyebrow also has impaired my vision to the point where I can’t fight anymore, and therefore I deserve a no contest.
And see, that’s where I think it’s a little bogus – I don’t think he’d worked through his own argument yet. He’s screaming for them to show the replay, but why? What are we going to see on the replay? That there was headbutt – yeah. That it opened a cut? Yeah. So what? That’s not why the fight is stopped, so it’s irrelevant. But Nate is clinging to it like it’s evidence of something.
I felt like Shaw and Bradley both were standing there just dying to say this is total bullshit, we all know what happened, and Shaw pretty much summed it up when he finally said, “look, Nate Campbell is a warrior, he could have fought through that if he wanted to, but he just didn’t want to fight anymore.”
Case closed, in my book. And I’m with Bum – there ain’t gonna be no rematch. And yes, Bradley is rough with his head. Holt has problems with that too. Don’t think he’s intentional with it, though. He just leaps in wildly and comes in, as you say, very low.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 am
You are right about Campbells decision, I just don’t think the story was allready told after two rounds. Sure, Bradley looked faster and won the first two rounds, but Campbell was able to hit him – I don’t see a case of a beatdown allready looming above this fight as you do. The third round barrage was started by the but that obviously hurt and stunned Nate. Only looking at the first two rounds I see a close and interessting fight that we missed – I hope they do it again. Maybe they first fight someone else – why not Nate vs. Alexander and Bradley vs. Peterson.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
there is little question that nate was looking for a way out….that was the second time he was butted pretty good inside of 3 rounds….
but a gary shaw fix was in….the referee was saying that he saw blood after a punch…which was thrown right after the butt….not to mention when nate went back to the corner you could hear the doctor say “its a diagonal cut it couldnt have been from a butt”….i dunno..im no expert…is that true??
kind of reminds me of that james toney/rahman fight last year on foxsportsnet…it was originally ruled a tko for toney…and changed to a no contest….but campbell is pretty much out of luck when the ref ruled that it was from a punch….which i think is pretty bogus…anyone heard that you cant get a diagonal cut from a headbutt?
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Sounds like some rigorous, scientific headbutting experiments are in order. I’m with you guys on 1. Campbell was on his way to the beating of his life, 2. He saw that butt/cut as his ticket out, and 3. A rematch is not an interesting proposition. But I don’t know, Large, about the whole spots thing. It does raise some thorny issues if a butt leads to spots but no cut. I think the best (but not perfect) way to deal with the mess is to let the cut be the golden ticket, even if everyone knows the real reason a fighter wants out is that he’s getting beat. Let the fans then decide if they want to watch that fighter again. If they think he’s a quitter, they’ll pass on dropping money on a ticket or PPV buy. I doubt Showtime or HBO really look too kindly on a fighter who ducks out prematurely. But at the end of the day I don’t want to argue with a fighter who says he can’t see. Let Nate take his NC and try shopping that around for another big fight. Of course, it got Rahman a ridiculous title shot when he did it, so maybe Nate’s on deck for the Pacquiao-Cotto winner.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Reports have now come out suggesting that the injury suffered by Campbell was a “vitreous hemorrhage,” in other words, an internal injury not connected with the flow of blood into his eye. This explains why Campbell was not interested in having his cutman tend to the cut – it was pointless. It also illustrates the difference between the type of impaired vision Juan Diaz was dealing with against Campbell and the type Nate was dealing with in against Bradley.
Large: I also find it hard to believe that you can write-off a potential rematch based on two and a half rounds of action (the latter half of the third is irrelevant due to the injury), when not a day ago you were touting this fight as a “FOY candidate.” That’s an awfully sizable leap based on just two and a half rounds. I certainly understand why you’d predict a Bradley rout in any future match-ups between the two – I, too, would throw my vote behind Bradley – but we’ve all seen enough championship fights to know that what happens in the opening rounds isn’t necessarily indicative of what will happen in the championship stanzas.
Not once did Bradley have Nate hurt, and for all of Bradley’s effectiveness, Nate was getting his licks in. This wasn’t Hopkins-Pavlik. Not by a long shot.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Jason – that’s fair. Maybe I should have been more inclined to give Nate the benefit of the doubt on his injury, because he has definitely manned up in the past. His behavior, though… I don’t know. It just wasn’t the demeanor of a man who was really hurt and struggling with whether he should keep going or not. I think of Israel Vazquez in the first Marquez fight. There’s a warrior who battled it out as long as he could and finally admitted that he was too hurt to keep going. Nate had none of that vibe about him, none of the sense that he was disappointed in the least about the situation, which is an air that usually surrounds the guy who is actually hurt and wants to keep fighting. He just seemed in the way he behaved that he wanted out ASAP, and maybe that was because he was freaked out at what was going on with his eye. It didn’t seem to me that way at the time though. It appeared like he was more concerned with the due process of the whole situation.
One more thing – it certainly behooves the Campbell camp at this point to make the injury seem as serious as possible. Not that it isn’t serious. I don’t know. But there was no way in hell the news coming out of their camp was going to be otherwise than that it was a significant injury and that he shouldn’t have continued.
As for the way the fight was going, of course you’re right about that on one hand. Two and a half rounds does not a fight make. But I thought Nate looked terrible. I thought FOY based on what Nate has done in the past, as a younger and hungrier 135 who liked to mix it up. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt on that front. I also wrote that I thought Bradley was going to make him old.
Yes he was hitting Bradley, but those punches seemed like they were irrelevant to Bradley, and that was in the early rounds. We’ve seen Bradley’s fitness level, and we know Nate’s age. Nate looked very slow to me in his movement and with his hands, missing Bradley like an amateur at times with the straight right. Bradley was getting into a nice groove in the 3rd round and, just as he said, it looked like easy work for him.
I don’t know man. Honestly, about 45 seconds into the first I said to myself, this isn’t going to be close. I admit that I’ve said similar things to myself in the past and been wrong, but in that I find it very unlikely that Nate had much of a shot on the puncher’s chance front (he will not hit Bradley like Holt did… it just isn’t going to happen) then I don’t see what chance he has.
If they make the rematch, I’ll watch for sure, but I don’t care if they do or not. Personally I’ve seen enough and want Bradley to move on to bigger things. But if it happens, I’ll tune in. And like I said, I’d be shocked to see Nate make much of a go of it. I think Bradley is a specimen, and it’s going to take someone with handspeed and precision to deal with him. Pacquiao, I think, would end up stopping him. But not before there was some drama up in there, cause I think Bradley can eat some shots too, and he’s very hungry. Has a little bit of an Evander thing going with his righteous warrior routine.
All in all, even after Nate’s statement – http://www.fightnews.com/?p=19394 – I have to admit that I doubt him, and it’s all based on interpreting his demeanor in the ring at the time the whole thing went down. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize to Nate, because like I said, I like him and I always have. Even if I’m right about the situation, I still have a lot of respect for the guy.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Good points Large, I’d change my prediction too – I still think that big 3rd round of Bradley, specially after the cut plays a big role in the way we see that fight.
Give me the first two rounds of Diaz-Campbell or Diaz-Marquez, then stopp it and I sure as hell won’t guess the right ending.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Yeah, but Trickster – Diaz got a bad cut against Nate (cause a certain somebody headbutted the shit out of him). And Marquez/Diaz – I honestly did guess the right ending on that one, even in the first few rounds, cause Marquez is a highly skilled guy who needs some time to figure someone out.
Is Nate that kind of guy? No way. Nate just has no advantages over Bradley, nothing to make you think, okay, he’s going to pull through and make it happen despite the disadvantages. Bradley could get hurt, I guess, break a hand. Shit like that happens. But other than that, I just don’t see it. Nate’s 37, he’s undersized at 140 and doesn’t look like he’s got real pop there, not to mention that he looked slow as fuck. Against Diaz, he turned to roughhouse tactics, but he tries that shit against Bradley and, well, he’s really going down the wrong path, cause Bradley loves him some roughhouse.
Nate’s just the wrong guy to beat Bradley right now, and I honestly think Bradley beats him 10 times out of 10. But hell, maybe they’ll change it to an NC and then do a rematch. I will seriously be hung out there if that happens, though I’d have to believe the odds on Bradley would be like +1000.
August 4th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Not to change to the subject, but following Roger Mayweather’s arrest the other day I can’t help but think HBO’s 24/7 Mayweather/Marquez just got a little more interesting. What would 24/7 do without the Mayweathers?
August 4th, 2009 at 11:24 am
nates offical statement
“First of all, I want to let everyone know that I am OK. There is no permanent damage to my retina. I was taken from ringside to the hospital, and was treated for what they called a vitreous hemorrhage behind my left eye. The ophthalmologist that treated me at the hospital advised me that the impairment to the vision in my left eye should clear up completely within a few days to a week at most. Never in my career have I had an injury like this where I simply couldnt see out of an eye. I’ve had cuts 100 times worse than this that I fought through, and would have done the same in this instance, however this was something different. This was not something my cutman could have dealt with.
“With regard to the decision to rule the bout a TKO, I think it is important for everyone to be aware of referee David Mendoza’s pre-fight instructions in the dressing room. Mr. Mendoza indicated that due to comments made to him by Team Bradley, he was going to be looking hard at me for thumbing, head butts, and low blows. He also gave me a very stern warning that in the event that I was fouled by Bradley, intentionally or not, that if I retaliated I would be penalized and likely disqualified from the fight. He further instructed me that if I were fouled, I was to take a step back and alert him of the foul. I complied 100% with his instructions.
“During the 3rd round, I was butted hard by Bradley, more than once. Each time, I immediately stepped back, per Mendoza’s instructions, and alerted him to the foul. With the last head butt, within maybe 5 seconds, I knew something was seriously wrong. I knew I was cut, but I also knew it was more than that. I had a large spot moving across my eye, and could no longer see out of my left eye. The change in action in the round clearly shows that I made a conscious effort to shield my left eye from that point forward. Bradley flurried some pitty-pat punches, but nothing was really getting through. In no way was I hurt, or wobbled, or anything of the sort because of any punches he threw. Let me be 100% clear on that. This was entirely about my left eye after the head butt. The ringside doctor clearly stated to me that he saw blood behind my eye, which I’m told usually indicates a hemorrhage or damaged retina. And Mendoza’s own conflicting comments broadcasted on Showtime clearly indicate the injury was a result of the head butt. He said he saw a butt, and then a punch after that. The replays clearly show the punch didn’ land, but a better question is if Mendoza indeed saw that last head butt as he claims, why did he not break us apart and inspect both fighters at that moment? This wasn’ a case of me being hurt by Bradley’s shots and trying to get out of the fight. Other than the cut, I didn’ have a mark on me. No bruising, no swelling, nothing. Even the hospital staff was surprised that I had been in a championship fight due to the complete lack of any marks on me besides the cut.
“I fully intend to file an appeal with the California State Athletic Commission. I am confident that they will hear my case fairly, and reach the correct conclusion that the bout should be declared a no-contest. This appeal will give the CSAC an opportunity to send a message that in the event of an obvious wrong, they will right it as best they can. I personally had very little contact with them during our stay, but my people told me that the person they dealt with there named “Moe†seemed to be square-dealing. All I can do is hope that they make this right.
“And to those that would say “well Bradley was winning the fight anywaysâ€, I would say this. The last time I checked, championship fights are 12 rounds, not 3. I was behind after 3 in the Diaz fight as well, and we all know how that one ended. I’m an old-school fighter. I’m not one of these kids that just throw a bunch of fluff every round and hope the other guy tires out. I’m a 12 round fighter. I put in my work, and it pays dividends later in the fight. Before the butt, I was right where I wanted to be in the fight. I was landing nice shots inside to the body, and setting my traps. This was supposed to be a 12 round championship fight, not a 4 rounder. There are rules in place for a reason, and love me or hate me, those rules should apply to me as well. This fight ended due to an injury I suffered as a result of an unintentional head butt in round 3. The rules are quite clear on this. It should be a no decision.
“Thanks again to all those who support me, and I truly hope the new blood at the California commission does the right thing.â€
does anyone have a hard time believing nate? cuz i dont…especially when hes talking about mendozas instructions in the dressing room….about stepping back and alerting him of a foul….as i noted earlier…and nate also pointed out….that wasnt the first butt he caught
i just get the feeling that even if we saw a 12 round war that was razor thin….bradley would have ended up winning on every card by 4 points or so….if you can find the video…check when the doctor tells nate that it “cant be from a butt because its a diagonal cut”….which im unaware of…i just get the sense that this thing was a gary shaw job from the get go…shaws undefeated fighter…on shaws network…even though the whole angle of dirty promoters and corruption is an old and tired story…i think, sadly, it is the story…
i agree large…a rematch would probably have bradley around the -675 range…maybe a little more…whatever the case…id like to see campbell get a rematch or another two decent fights for the money…for his family…i think he deserves it
but uhhh yeah…good ole uncer rog…he must have had it pretty bad for this broad….i know the police saw her coughing and spitting blood…so i wonder if there is any possible way they wont press charges….because it make sense that floyd would just throw some money her way to make this go away if possible
August 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am
By the way – I’ve met the boxer ole uncle Rog was abusing. She’s pretty attractive for a boxer. I wonder if there was more to it than just a boxer getting into a fight with a former trainer.
See link:
http://www.myspace.com/lilmisstyson
I still haven’t seen the Bradley-Campbell fight so I’m reserving comments. I had a fighter (Jeffrey Resto) quit in the ring after having his eye damaged by a thumb. His career was never the same. He tried to fight on for a few rounds with it but he had pain in the eye anytime he tried to look on the periphery. He was taking a beating and decided it wasn’t worth it and quit. If Nate’s eye injury is real – I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. One thing you don’t want to mess with is your eye sight.
August 4th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Remember the ridiculous Barrera-Khan fight which obviously should have been called after the horrible butt? Instead the British ref waited will the middle of the fifth to call it. I know there are codes of masculinity we have to respect, but it’s a delicate balance. I just put up a piece up on boxiana arguing for the NC, but I generally agree it’s not necessary to do it again.
As for the Roger stuff. Unless those reports are wrong he’s going to be gone for quite a while. I believe he was still on probation for something.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
@rickey roe – I agree it is not hard to believe Nate. His statement does not have all the extra fluff that usually comes with a load of bullshit. He seems straightforward, and wants to step back in with Bradley. I’d say give the man his shot, and see what he has. He’ll be a heav dog after those first three rounds, but it might work in his favor. He knows what he is getting into, and will have aplan.
Roger Mayweather is known for smacking women around, but I don’t know if he is still on probation. His last bid was for beating up his son’s grandmother.