Larry Merchant is stepping away from the ring.
After 35 years of a boxing commentator for HBO Sports, the Brooklyn native, 81, will hang up his microphone after Saturday’s season finale of “World Championship Boxing.”
The fight — featuring featherweights Nonito Donaire and Jorge Arce — will be broadcast from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
Merchant, whose contract was set to expire soon, insists he is not retiring.
“Starting in January I will become a Tom Brokaw-like senior kibbitzer on major news and events in boxing,” he said in a prepared statement yesterday.
“I’m looking forward to my new role and to new adventures in television, writing and the expanding media universe.”
During his colorful career as an analyst and interviewer, Merchant publicly feuded with many of boxing’s biggest stars.
Both Oscar de La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. lobbied the network unsuccessfully to have him blocked from working their fights.
Inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2009, he may be best remembered for going nose to nose with Mayweather last year.
“You don’t know s–t about boxing,” the fighter told him after refusing to grant an interview.
Merchant replied: “I wish I was 50 years younger and I would kick your ass.”