Larry Merchant is a boxing scholar and deserves all of our respect. He is an excellent boxing journalist. Put a boxer in those shoes and you get silliness eg. George Foreman and Roy Jones Jr. You put a standard journalist in there and you get Kellerman and Lampley. Merchant puts them all to shame and is great on his own terms. He deserves respect. I hope he sticks around a lot longer, he will be missed when he is gone.