Larry Merchant, a legendary boxing analyst, was rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles on Thursday night and is in critical condition, according to TMZ Sports. The ambulance came to Merchant’s building at around 6 p.m. local time and rushed him to a nearby hospital. It’s not clear what caused the issue or what his prognosis might be.
Merchant, 92, is known for his work on HBO, appearing on the network’s World Championship Boxing, Boxing After Dark and its pay-per-view telecasts. He’s been called “The greatest television boxing analyst of all time,” and his accomplishments on TV led to him having roles in the films The Fighter and Rocky Balboa.
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One of Merchant’s most memorable moments came in 2011 when he interviewed Floyd Mayweather Jr. after he defeated Victor Oritz. “You never give me a fair shake … They can put somebody else up here to give me an interview,” Mayweather said to Merchant, per the New York Post. “HBO need to fire you. You don’t know s– about boxing. You ain’t s– … All of these boxing experts—how can you be a boxing expert if you never had a fight before?”
This led to Merchant telling Mayweather, “I wish I was 50 years younger, I’d kick your ass.” Merchant retired from broadcasting on Dec. 15, 2012, after being in the business for 35 years. But he has since provided commentary for multiple Top Rank Shows.
In 2020, Merchant talked about the Mayweather incident with Bad Left Hook and what his wife had to say about it. “She was watching the fight at home. She often came to fights, but I don’t exactly remember why she didn’t come to that one,” Merchant said. “She was with a friend, and when it happened, they both fell on the floor laughing. But then the aftermath was a discussion that caromed around town with friends, and so forth, for a number of days, about my use of ‘was,’ if ‘I wish I was fifty years younger’ was correct grammar. One of the friends decided that since it was kind of a street-level exchange, that ‘was’ was okay.”
Merchant then talked about how he would do against Mayweather if he was 50 years younger. “No, I had no fighting experience at all, or very little of it,” he said. “When I was a little boy, I lived in upper Manhattan at that point, in Washington Heights. Two friends were giving me a hard time. And I ran into the alley, and called up to my mother about what was going on, and she poked her head out the window, and sized up the situation and said immediately, ‘Fight your own battles!’ So I always knew, I couldn’t wait for help. I had to hit or run!”
