Give Mayweather a chance to win the biggest fight of his life

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is scheduled Friday to begin a 90-day jail sentence that represents a term of uncomfortable uncertainty for a part of the business that dislikes him, yet needs him.

Like it or not, Mayweather’s pay-per-view revenue adds up to proof he has created an audience and anticipation for more from a gifted fighter who controls everything within the ropes, yet seemingly very little outside of them.

It’s the contrast that makes the next three months impossible to predict. Who will step inside the walls and bars of Las Vegas’ Clark County jail? The calculating fighter always able to dictate timing, placement and style in the ring? Or the mercurial personality charged with losing control in a confrontation with an ex-girlfriend?

He’s been reserved a room without a view in a place without personal choice. Mayweather will be told when to eat, what to eat, when to shower, what to wear and when to sleep. One of the few things anybody knows for sure about Mayweather is that he hates being told what to do. He rebels at what he can’t control.

I’m guessing that terse comments and no comments about him from Top Rank’s Bob Arum, Mayweather’s estranged promoter, and Golden Boy’s Richard Schaefer, his recent representative, are guided by that realization. But there’s more to it than that. Both know how the public, blow-by-blow accounts of talks for Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao drove the futile negotiations into the ditch. Any kind of speculation from either promoter might further endanger Mayweather’s chances at winning the biggest fight of his life.

I applaud them for saying as little as possible. Let Mayweather do his time without it becoming what I fear could become another chapter of HBO’s 24/7, which became one of television’s most popular reality shows because of its portrayal of his dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, Mayweather’s celebrity probably means he won’t be left alone, inside and out. How long before TMZ gets a collect-call from an unidentified inmate offering a salacious anecdote? Chances of that call getting made and reported are a lot better than a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.

If Mayweather is allowed to come to terms with what he has done and why, he can walk out of jail with newfound maturity and a much better chance at achieving the potential he has always possessed. He would prosper. Pacquiao, Arum and Schaefer would prosper. But if he surrenders to the demons that put him there, he loses. Everybody does. Let him win. Hope that he does.

A COUPLE OF COUNTERS
· Arum says he will discuss four possible opponents – Lamont Peterson, Tim Bradley, Miguel Cotto and Juan Manuel Marquez — for Pacquiao during a visit next week to the Philippines. Leg cramps also figure to be a talking point. Cramps in his last two fights, first over Shane Mosley and then over Juan Manuel Marquez, were the one opponent he couldn’t beat.

· New Year’s resolutions are like fighters’ nose. They’re there to be broken. But here’s one resolution I wish could be kept. At a San Antonio news conference for the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Marco Antonio Rubio news conference, Chavez was quoted as saying he’d be willing to die in the ring. Please, no more talk of dying. We only want to see a willingness to win.

AZ NOTES
· Top Rank and Showdown Promotions are planning a March 23 card for Showtime’s “ShoBox” at Tucson’s Casino del Sol featuring super-bantamweight prospect Roberto Marroquin of Dallas in the main event and 19-year-old junior-welterweight Jose Benavidez Jr. on the undercard. The initial date had been March 9, a month and a few days after Benavidez fights on Feb. 3 for only the second time in front of a hometown audience at Wild Horse Pass Resort & Casino in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Benavidez has been given final medical clearance for the Feb. 3 bout. He had been bothered by pain from a strained right wrist suffered in November during a victory before Pacquiao’s controversial decision over Marquez at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

· And Phoenix super-middleweight Jesus Gonzales, who has been searching for a fight since an impressive victory on July 8, is staying busy by sparring with Canadian junior-middleweight Janks Trotter. In the biggest Canadian showdown not on NHL ice, Trotter (7-0, 7 KOs) faces Adam Trupish (9-0, 6 KOs) on Jan. 13 in Calgary. On the July night that Gonzales got off the canvas to beat Francisco Sierra at US Airways Centre in downtown Phoenix, Trotter scored one of the knockouts of the year with a second-round punch that lifted Arturo Crespin high enough and long enough for some real hang time in the NBA arena.