Palumbo knows damn well Levrone won't win.
He obviously did it to pull traffic to RX by sucking up to Levrone and getting exclusive pics/videos and interviews from him. I don't blame him, that's just good business. And at the end of the day, when Levrone places worse than he did in 03, Palumbo will say that "something happened" to screw up his last few hours before stepping on stage and completely screwed his look. He won't say it was political or a bad call, because he wants to stay in the good graces of the IFBB, but he also knows he can't just admit to being wrong because he'll lose credibility.