By Carlos Acevedo of The Cruelest Sport.

When Bob Arum arranged a 3:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time conference call on Saturday to announce that Floyd Mayweather had missed an "exclusivity" deadline, he brought boxing vaudeville into the 21st century with a wink and a nod.

The operator sounded like some ghostly remnant of the 1950s. A sputtering Michael Marley was promptly shot down by Arum, Steve Carp was apparently drinking a Big Gulp through a crazy straw, and tenacious Greg Leon was given the dial tone by the curmudgeonly Arum, who griped "Can we get another caller?" One reporter was actually surfing the web while on the line with Arum. "You’ve got mail" was heard in the background as Arum droned on. Halfway through the conference call, Arum sounded like he needed a Red Bull or two. Meanwhile, the rest of the boxing community needed a Mylanta/Ambien combination hotshot after it was learned that one of the biggest moneymaking fights in history was all but kaput. Read the rest here...