Las Vegas There’s no crying in baseball, but the waterworks were flowing in boxing.
Victor Ortiz said he was “crying like a baby” in the shower after his controversial fourth-round knockout at the hands of Floyd Mayweather in their welterweight title bout Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
In between, though, Ortiz seemed absolutely giddy, smiling as he left the ring a loser and then quoting “Gone with the Wind” in the post-fight news conference.
“Like Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day,” Ortiz said.
Later at the news conference, Mayweather was brought to tears, perhaps overwhelmed by the moment.
“I’m here for a reason,” Mayweather said. “God don’t make mistakes.”
Well, if God paid $59.95 for the Mayweather-Ortiz fight, God might have been crying as well because he made a mistake.
It was a night of boxing at its most bizarre, when the fighter who committed the most egregious act — Ortiz, with his blatant Mike Tyson-like head butt — wound up being portrayed as the victim of some sort of ring injustice.
The fight ended when Ortiz, after hugging Mayweather to apologize for committing the foul, apparently wasn’t paying attention when referee Joe Cortez pointed to the timekeeper and said, “Time in.”
Time was already running out for Ortiz. He was being outclassed by Mayweather, who seemingly hit Ortiz with right hands at will. Ortiz was on his way to taking a beating.
The head butt — and the subsequent attempted ring hugs that followed by Ortiz — appeared to be an exit strategy. Then came the two shots by Mayweather that put Ortiz down and counted out.
“Time was in. The fighter needed to keep his guard up,” Cortez said. “Mayweather did nothing illegal.”
At least in the ring Saturday night he didn’t. Mayweather still has four felony and four misdemeanor charges against him in Las Vegas, including a domestic dispute with the mother of some of his children, and could face jail time.
And then, of course, there is Manny Pacquiao, whom everyone wants him to fight — except Mayweather.
The irony is that Mayweather created Pacquiao. After beating Oscar De La Hoya in 2007, Mayweather insisted on the lion’s share of the purse in their rematch, believing De La Hoya had no other place to go to earn the kind of money that was at stake.
But De La Hoya pulled Pacquiao — a talented, popular but smaller fighter — out of his hat, and stunningly, Pacquiao stopped De La Hoya in the eighth round, beginning the new Pacquiao era in boxing.
Boxing’s latest embarrassment Saturday night is just background noise until Mayweather faces Pacquiao.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
