ESPN Chooses Not To Renew Dan Rafael's Contract

[Slippery Pete II]

This is being reported by a couple of boxing insiders.

There are a lot of people going through some tough financial times right now, so even though I never liked the guy all that much I'm not going to take any joy in this development.

With that said, I think he did himself no favours when he started to write in a derogatory way about some of the fighters and their styles. He went out of his way to insult a few of them in writing and even got into a war of words with a few.

You can say what you want about ESPN on air personality Stephen A. Smith, but he never came off as mean spirited in his comments, they was always a certain toungue in cheek to them, and when he had a little dig at a player, it was always with the understanding that it was never personal, he'd go out of his way to say the guy is a good person before leveling any criticism towards them .

I felt Rafael crossed the line when it came to that type of stuff. He's supposed to be a journalist, there's an expectation that you will have a certain level of professionalism in your work. He severely lacked that in the last couple of years and when you are using the written word people take it literally.

I also think his TV appearances were somewhat amateurish. He came across as a mouth breathing, disheveled slob on air and it has nothing to do with his weight. He didn't have the voice or look for TV. He was a writer but I felt he took it too far when he got personal with the insults aimed at certain fighters in his articles.