It's too bad for boxing that Roger Goodell already has a job.

The sport could use the NFL commissioner to protect it from itself. And Antonio Tarver is lucky Goodell has guys like Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson to keep him busy or he wouldn't be fighting for a while.

Tarver, the former light heavyweight champion, is a colorful character who has done a lot of good for boxing. But last week, on a conference call to promote Saturday's Showtime-televised doubleheader in which he and WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson appear in separate bouts, Tarver suggested he might have been drugged when he was routed by Bernard Hopkins last year.

It was an unsubstantiated and out-of-line comment that only served to sully the sport's already seamy reputation.

That there was little outcry when Tarver made the remarks is indicative of the low expectations most have for the sport.

If Rex Grossman had accused the Colts of drugging him prior to his disastrous outing in the Super Bowl, the allegations

HBO Sports continued to move toward a contract extension with long-time color analyst Larry Merchant. Merchant's contract expired May 31.

On Tuesday, Rick Bernstein, the executive producer of HBO Sports, issued a statement announcing Merchant will be part of the broadcast team for Saturday's pay-per-view telecast of the WBA welterweight title fight in New York between Miguel Cotto and challenger Zab Judah.

“As we optimistically iron out a new agreement with Larry Merchant, Larry has agreed to work Saturday's HBO Pay-Per-View telecast from Madison Square Garden,” Bernstein said.

HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg has said it is his intention to re-sign Merchant and reacted angrily to newspaper columns in the New York Daily News and Philadelphia Daily News that suggested he was pushing the 76-year-old Merchant aside in favor of Max Kellerman.

LAS VEGAS – He has the endurance of a triathlete, the strength of a power lifter and the quickness of a tennis player. He has held one championship belt or another in each of his last 16 fights.

But Urijah Faber, who retained his WEC featherweight title Sunday at the Hard Rock Hotel by submitting Chance Farrar to a rear naked choke, isn't nearly the fighter now that he will become. And that's from no less of an authority than Faber himself.

"Every time I finish a fight, it's a relieved feeling for me because there is so much I need to work on still," Faber said. "I'm just starting to get my boxing down. I've been working a lot on my hands. My Muay Thai is starting to feel real natural to me.

"I'm still improving on my wrestling. I'm improving on my jiu-jitsu. I'm bringing in an NCAA national champ (in wrestling). I coached and was a teammate with Derek Moore, who won the NCAAs.

"I realize that high-level wrestlers are going to be getting into this, high-level jiu-jitsu guys are going

LAS VEGAS – WEC matchmaker Scott Adams offered a shot at his featherweight championship to five fighters, but none were interested in meeting title-holder Urijah Faber.

Faber proved why on Sunday at the Hard Rock Hotel, scoring a first-round submission of Chance Farrar after a more difficult than expected bout.

Farrar, who like Faber is a former college wrestler, extended the champion like he hadn't been extended before, but Faber managed to find a way to slip on a rear naked choke.

Faber, who defended a title for the 16th consecutive time, took Farrar's back after the fighters had been grappling on the ground. It wasn't long before Farrar had to submit.

Former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert doing color analysis for Versus, was amazed by the ground fighting.

"That was one of the most technical grappling matches I've ever witnessed," Mir said.

Faber, who is one of the strongest fighters in the sport, praised Farrar for his competitiveness.

But Faber

There are, oh, maybe 100 heavyweights in the world who would have beaten Min Soo Kim in a mixed martial arts fight on Saturday.

There are many who would have done it more impressively than Brock Lesnar, who needed just 69 seconds to dispose of the outclassed South Korean at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

And there are many who would have beaten Lesnar himself Saturday.

But be certain of this: Lesnar is going to make a lot more money than all but a very few of the finest mixed martial artists in the world after his showing against Kim on a pay-per-view card.

He had the act down. That much we knew from his days as a WWE champion. Lesnar was "the next big thing" during his pro wrestling career and could have been one of the most popular wrestlers in that company's history had he stuck with it.

Lesnar, though, didn't care for the travel or the contrived matches. A former NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion who had a 106-5 record, he is a legitimate athlete who loves to compete.

To compete on

Little that could happen at the Los Angeles Coliseum would be unfamiliar to Johnnie Morton.

He's been elbowed in the head there, whacked in the ribs, kneed in the face and all the other things that occur at the bottom of a pile in a football game.

But when Morton walks to the center of the Coliseum on Saturday, the former NFL wide receiver who starred at the University of Southern California won't be wearing shoulder pads and a helmet and he won't have to worry about a free safety looking to break his ribs.

Morton will, however, have to concern himself with Bernard Ackah trying to cause him as much pain as humanly possible in his professional mixed martial arts debut.

The fight has been plagued by a series of promoter missteps and fighter injuries. Ticket sales have been so slow that promoters have asked the California Athletic Commission for permission to give away 70,000 tickets. But little of that concerns the 35-year-old Morton, who said he wanted to try the sport while he could.

LAS VEGAS – Alex Karalexis had given up a job he loved, said goodbye to a family he was close to, turned his back on a comfortable life and moved across the country to live in an apartment with no furniture – all so he could take a job he wasn't sure he'd be good at.

He lived for more than a year in a tiny apartment with no furniture other than a bed and a box on which he could set his television. He ate his meals with plastic silverware and drank from disposable cups which he would clean and reuse.

He didn't have a car at first and used a bicycle to get around, often in scorching 100-plus degree temperatures. Even when he finally got a car, he often rode his bike because he couldn't afford gas.

There were, he said, more than his share of difficult times, but he said he was never happier than when he moved to Las Vegas to try his hand at becoming a full-time mixed martial artist.

"I lived for 13 months in an apartment with no furniture," Karalexis said. "There were times I'd get my

Despite getting clobbered by Quinton "Rampage" Jackson in the first round of his UFC light heavyweight title fight Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Chuck Liddell said his late-night partying had no part in his loss.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Monday that Liddell had been partying into the wee hours starting the Sunday before the fight. Then, on Tuesday, mixed martial artist Frank Trigg said in an interview with Las Vegas radio station KENO-AM that he had been out late one night with Liddell, but that Liddell had not been consuming alcohol.

On Thursday, Liddell admitted in a story in the Los Angeles Times that the reports were true, but said he did the same thing before his win over Tito Ortiz in December.

"It's nothing that I've never done before; it was just like any other fight," Liddell told the Times. "I just go and hang out. I don't drink. I just kill time, hang out with friends at whatever club they're at. I've been doing that as long as I've fought in