Floyd’s greatest achievements lay ahead, but he laid waste to Phillip N’dou when he could. – www.boxing.com
By AUGUSTINE MWASHINGWELE
IT’s nearly two months since I dropped ‘America hates Floyd Mayweather’, a presentation that got thousands of eyes ceaselessly racing along its text lines.
It is my noble task just now to thank all the readers and acknowledge views posted to the Daily Mail website.
While the few sworn haters of Floyd felt no restriction to post their undiluted bitterness in disagreement with the contents of the article, the rest equally felt duty-bound in their moral capacities to applaud ‘the truth’ I scrupulously preached in that lengthy sermon.
I hereby dignify all views alike, though today, I must state the mainstream Floyd syllabus will not be delved into; I am with Floyd out of the ring and completely far from Las Vegas, USA.
Most of the readers will recall at the closure of my sermon last December I pronounced words of invitation for Floyd and The Money Team (TMT) to take time off and visit Livingstone, Zambia…
Well, many people have in the past observed I speak as if I were a prophet. I never preached that sermon so Floyd must catch hold of it, but lo, behold, the magnetic tugs of my powerful intuition fulfilled the prophecy two weeks ago.
There was Mr. Mayweather in South Africa! In great pomp and style! He may not have practically come to Zambia, but it more than elates me that what I envisaged of him in Zambia was realised and better organised in South Africa.
I had just knocked off from office on Friday, February 17 when I stumbled on a live gala dinner interview of Mr. Mayweather anchored by SuperSport’s presenter Robert Marawa.
I surely got thrilled and rued the fact the telecast would have been happening in Zambia. Anyhow, South Africa – a country wrongfully classed out of the G8 kindred – was very equal to the towering task of providing all the honours and allures Floyd rates himself worthy of in the USA.
Of course a Zambian tourism crew would have done better to dash to Johannesburg to lure the champ and TMT into Zambia.
Alas, he passed Zambia by. My last hope was for South Africa to charter Floyd a plane to Livingstone, which, as they claim, is just as easily accessible as any tourist location in the northern extreme of South Africa’s Transvaal territory.
That aside, however, the most mattering fact of all is Floyd’s own assessment of Africa, which he said is still portrayed in wrong shades and bad light; he wished all Americans could come to the continent to see for themselves the excellency it has to offer.
What I tearfully regretted was the inadvertent anticlimax of the show, when Floyd re-united with Phillip N’dou, a boxer he pummelled just over a decade ago: departed champion of African liberty and human dignity Nelson Mandela (RIP), around whom the spirits of the two young boxers revolved then, was the only corner of the re-union triangle missing in the house. But this is reality, and I deliver my thanks to South Africa for, on behalf of Zambia and the rest of Africa, hosting Floyd Mayweather Jr.
What perhaps was forgotten asking Floyd was whether, in the trails of living legend Mohammad Ali, he would consider giving Africa, of course at Emperor’s Palace, Rumble in the Jungle Part II.