"I'm passionate and upset that the sport that I love is being manipulated by back office deals instead of the best fights being made. How in the world can a guy who says he is a champion at a lower weight not go up and fight the guys in the weight above? Sugar Ray Robinson went from 147 to 175 and there were no junior weight classes. So he went from 147 to 160, from 160 to 175; no 54 or 68 in between. Floyd Mayweather went from 130 to 154. Roy Jones Jr. went from 160 pounds to heavyweight. So what makes GGG any less than them to where it's not even asked that he does it, especially if he's that good? And then to say he's going to stay in that division because that's what Monzon and Hagler did; but dude, ain't nobody in the weight class now," stated former world champion Nate Campbell, who had a lot to say about undefeated middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, powerful advisor Al Haymon, the current state of boxing and more. Check it out!
PC: You always speak on agendas in boxing and plots and things like that. Could you elaborate on the point you're trying to get across.
NC: Here it is; Andre Ward is vilified for not fighting GGG when GGG should come up to fight Andre Ward. Andre Ward is the name; Andre Ward is the Olympic Gold Medalist. What did GGG do? I'll wait! You telling me that I'm in my country where I was raised and who I won a Gold Medal for and I gotta go to a guy that's beneath me? But wait a minute, you will allow Pacquiao to come over here and tell everybody he fought at 147 that they gotta fight him at 143. And the weight limit is 47. Wait a minute, I'm not through yet! I made a statement that white America couldn't build white boys to beat black boys in America, so they went overseas and got white boys from overseas and brought them back over here. They can call them what they want to, but they are related through bloodline if you go back far enough. So as far as that's concerned, they will take the Great White Hope from there and they'll embrace them here in the United States and make superstars of them. And then they will fix their mouths to say that GGG is the fighter that's so great that Andre Ward went up from 168 and went up to 175 to fight Kovalev...and I'm going to tell you right now, Kovalev would knock GGG's brains out. I believe if they fought right now and GGG went to 175, Kovalev would murder him to death. It doesn't make sense. You have to be a buffoon to make the argument that Ward moved up to avoid GGG, but he's going to fight Kovalev.
But then you got this full-fledged 160-175 pound guy standing there calling out Mayweather and people are okay with that. Mayweather is really not that big. I'm bigger than Mayweather. They want Mayweather to lose so bad and the only chance they have of dong it is to put him in so high over his weight then you can totally go back and destroy everything he has done. I don't blame Mayweather; I wouldn't fight again either if I had to take that fight. So the problem is, Joe Calzaghe was allowed to stay in England until all of the fighters over here got old and nothing was said about it. Nobody complained and when he beat Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins, they act like he beat prime fighters. Ricky Hatton was allowed to do the same thing. If I would have had a chance to fight Ricky Hatton, I would have took it. Here is another thing, how in the hell was Pacquiao allowed to come to 135 and fight David Diaz and then went up and fought De La Hoya and doesn't stop to unify the titles? Only one time was the lightweight titles ever fully unified in the history of boxing and that was Pernell Whitaker. Pernell Whitaker is the only man to have all 4 belts. That was the only time in the history of the lightweight belts since they had multiple belts that all of the belts were held by one man. They made me super champion as a way of shutting me up because I complained that he was allowed to go up and fight De La Hoya. And then, because Pacquiao had a deal with Golden Boy and Casamayor had a deal with Golden Boy, Casamayor, the lineal champ who was my mandatory, decided he wouldn't fight me.
PC: I feel you.
NC: I'll give you one and if anybody want to debate me on this, I'm about to put it out there; in the same year, we went and sat down with Golden Boy because we were trying to leave Don King. I know what happened and they know what happened. When I did it, I'll never forget it, I had a talk with them and Richard Schaffer made the statement, "We'll basically just fight around you if you're not with us." Look at everybody that Golden Boy signed in the 135-pound class and tell me if they didn't fight around me. The reason I say that is because you call GGG the world champion at 160 pounds, but you call me a world titlist at 135. I'm just saying. And it's not that I dislike GGG, but you see some systematic supremacy going on there. And people hate for me to say this, but it has nothing to do with race, unless it has something to do with race. I don't care what you say, there is no other guy that had one title and was considered the world champion in the world right now if he ain't of Caucasian persuasion.
PC: When people read this, and I've heard it before so I'll let you address it, they say Nate Campbell is a racist and Nate Campbell always seems angry.
NC: I'm not a racist and I'm not angry. Again, if it wasn't for a white man, I wouldn't even be boxing. I'm not angry; I'm passionate. I love boxing. Dude, I had a job working at Winn Dixie warehouse. I didn't need to box. I was making 30-something thousand a year way, way, way back. I left my job and decided that I can't tell guys that I want to be a world champion; I can't tell guys that they are fighting bad fights if I ain't willing to put it out there, so I did. Who else better to be passionate about boxing than me? Who else? Nobody has more of a right than I do, and I'm not angry, I'm passionate and upset that the sport that I love is being manipulated by back office deals instead of the best fights being made. How in the world can a guy who says he is a champion at a lower weight not go up and fight the guys in the weight above? Sugar Ray Robinson went from 147 to 175 and there were no junior weight classes. So he went from 147 to 160, from 160 to 175; no 54 or 68 in between. Floyd Mayweather went from 130 to 154. Roy Jones Jr. went from 160 pounds to heavyweight. So what makes GGG any less than them to where it's not even asked that he does it, especially if he's that good? And then to say he's going to stay in that division because that's what Monzon and Hagler did; but dude, ain't nobody in the weight class now. The middleweight division is a dead division right now. I remember having a talk, and he may remember this, he may not, but I was really hard on [Demetrius] Andrade. I was hard on him, you know why? Because I wanted the best for him. People were like, "Why are you so hard on him?" And I said, "Because this boy can fight, but they gonna freeze him out if he don't put it out there." And guess what; they finally thawed him out, but he was frozen and now they may finally keep him thawed out because they realize he's special.
PC: You also spoke to me about Al Haymon. Before I let you go, give me your take on Al and what he is doing and trying to accomplish in the sport.
NC: Al Haymon is the best thing to ever happen to boxing and I'm going to tell you why; fighters are getting paid. You hear about guys fighting on regular TV making millions of dollars and they can't even make that on HBO. I ain't never made a million dollar payday in all of my life. Hell, some of HBO's biggest stars right now not getting million dollar paydays. I never made a million dollars at one time throughout my career and Al Haymon is doing it without HBO. And they doing everything they can to make sure that that black man fails. Now, if I had to say this, I love Al, but I think that Al Haymon should put all of his kids in with the best fighters and I don't think he's doing that sometimes. It has been a few ducks out there on telecast, but he's doing a better job of trying to make great fights than they are. I'm so tired of people saying this man is horrible for boxing and saying this man is this and that. I don't understand why people don't get it and some people in his circle better watch who they communicate with because if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. If I was a guy that was in Al Haymon's circles, I wouldn't be in communication with someone who publicly dislikes him or throws shots at him. These people better wake up, man. How can you say Al Haymon is a horrible person? He is none of that. Let's be honest, people want to say Al Haymon is ruining boxing, but we are about to be honest here on FightHype. HBO was the #1 telecast in boxing, I know you remember that. And then they gave a 3-year contract deal to Golden Boy. Before that 3-year contract deal was up, Showtime had become #1 in boxing, so you tell me who ruined boxing. If I'm wrong, Google it. That is not a coincidence and they ain't corrected it yet. But they won't admit that.
I'm going to tell you the mark of a bad business man. The mark of a bad business man is when you don't correct bad business deals. Rather than say, "You know, I'm not going to keep investing good money into bad fighters or companies." People ask me why don't I have a job commentating. I do commentate, but I don't commentate for them [HBO] because you're not going to tell me to tell people that this job is good when it really ain't. I earned the right to tell the truth, I earned the right to say hell no, and I earned the right to call exactly what I see going on in that ring, not what you want me to see. You want me to commentate; I'm going to tell you the truth. People need to know the truth. The problem is the truth now is not what people want. People don't want the truth; people want what they like. You ever notice now instead of calling a girl fat, they call her thick. When we were growing up, the same girls that are considered thick were fat. Now you can't tell a girl she fat because if you do, you're a mean person. You can't tell a girl that's 5'1", 260 that she's fat. You can't call someone crazy; you gotta say they are bi-polar. You gotta put a name on it now to make people feel better. You definitely better not ever say anything about LGBT and hope to ever work again in real life. You can't even tell a good joke anymore and hurt somebody's feelings and you no longer can be a comedian. Everybody's so super sensitive, but it's okay for you to push your agenda on me in boxing and everything else. But if I don't like your agenda or I'm not with the popular agenda, they give me name. They put a name or label on me. I don't care how people feel about me and I'm going to tell you why I don't care how people feel about me; you can't do what I did. Not one person that says something about me can do what I did and do it the way that I did it
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]