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#2346 – Jim Lampley Podcast Episode Description
Jim Lampley is a sports broadcaster and commentator best known for his 30-year run on HBO World Championship Boxing. His new book “It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Broadcasting,” is available now.
https://jimlampley.com
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#2346 – Jim Lampley Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#2346 – Jim Lampley Podcast Episode Summary
Podcast Episode Summary
This episode of The Joe Rogan Experience features a deep, wide-ranging conversation between Joe Rogan and legendary boxing commentator Jim Lampley. The discussion centers on the history, evolution, and culture of boxing, with frequent comparisons to mixed martial arts (MMA), particularly the UFC.
Key Topics and Major Points:
Boxing Legends and Stories:** Lampley shares personal anecdotes about iconic figures such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Roy Jones Jr., Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Robinson, Julio Cesar Chavez, and Manny Pacquiao. He recounts Ali’s impact on his own life, Foreman’s comeback, and the unique talents of fighters like Lomachenko and Canelo Alvarez.
Broadcasting and Industry Changes:** Lampley discusses the evolution of boxing broadcasting, the influence of networks and promoters, and the decline of HBO’s boxing coverage after corporate changes. He highlights the importance of knowledgeable, independent commentary and the unique chemistry of the HBO broadcast team.
Boxing vs. MMA:** The conversation contrasts the structure and pay of boxing events with the UFC, noting how UFC cards are more balanced and engaging throughout, while boxing often focuses on the main event.
Fighter Safety and Controversies:** They address the dangers of boxing, tragic outcomes (e.g., deaths in the ring, loaded gloves scandals), and the psychological toll on referees. The fine margins between victory and defeat, and the impact of controversial decisions, are explored.
Training, Innovation, and Longevity:** The guests discuss advances in training, the role of intelligence and adaptability in fighters’ success, and how some athletes (e.g., Bernard Hopkins, George Foreman) extended their careers through discipline and innovation.
Upcoming Fights and Analysis:** There’s detailed analysis of the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford matchup, with insights into strategy, physical attributes, and the importance of mental strength.
Important Guests:
Jim Lampley:** Renowned boxing commentator, sharing decades of experience and promoting his memoir, “It Happened.”
Joe Rogan:** Host, providing MMA expertise and personal reflections as a lifelong fight fan.
Actionable Insights and Advice:
– The importance of adaptability, intelligence, and self-analysis for athletes.
– The value of independent, informed commentary in sports broadcasting.
– Recognizing the role of mental and physical preparation in achieving longevity and success.
Recurring Themes and Messages:
– The enduring drama and unpredictability of combat sports.
– The critical role of innovation, both in the ring and in broadcasting.
– The personal growth and transformation possible through sports.
Overall, the episode is a celebration of boxing’s rich history, the personalities who shaped it, and the lessons it offers about resilience, adaptation, and excellence.
This summary was created automatically by Speak. Want to transcribe, analyze and summarize yourself? Sign up for Speak!
#2346 – Jim Lampley Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
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00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train ai day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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00:12
Oh, really? That was your closest male friend?
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00:15
Unexpected. Unexpected. But over a period of time, we just got closer and closer and closer and, you know, very brotherly. And the last public appearance Emmanuel ever made was my wedding in September of twenty twelve. And that night the wedding was at our house in Del Mar, California, and that night he, his girlfriend came to me and said we have to leave early.
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00:45
Emanuel’s having stomach pains. He was in oncology by the next week. He was gone by three weeks later. Oh. So very touching to me and, you know, deeply symbolic of my love for him and thus the Kron Cat.
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01:02
Yeah. What a classic Jim. And he was one of the first guys to realize, like, if you crank the heat up, it actually gives guys better conditioning.
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01:10
He realized a lot of things. Yeah. And he he Emmanuel was a genius, in a lot of ways. And there were a lot of, sort of time honored rules and techniques in boxing that he quietly upended. Yes. Because he was more advanced in his point of view and thought process.
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01:31
And then everybody else sort of followed his lead.
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01:33
Once they understood what he was doing. Once he if you sai the McCrorys and Tommy and those guys, why wouldn’t you imitate?
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01:41
Right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. No. He was And
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01:43
he did it at both the amateur and pro level too. Mhmm. You know? So
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01:47
And he was always fantastic too as a commentator because he would give insight that you’re really not gonna get from someone that’s not, like, with these fighters day in, day out through an entire camp. He really
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01:58
understands consider the privilege I had, the expert commentators I work with, starting with Ray. Yes. That’s one perspective. Then gravitating through George Foreman and Roy Jones. Emmanuel’s in there. And to me, he was the best. I agree with you. The public responded more to Roy and Ray Of course.
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02:26
You know, famous guys.
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02:27
Because of their stardom.
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02:28
Meh. Etcetera. But And they were really good too.
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02:31
And they were good. But Emmanuel taught me more, you know, because he was totally well rounded Yeah. As a human being as well as as a boxing trainer.
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02:42
I was very pleased to hear you back on the microphone for that Ai Square event. Thank you. Because it had been so long.
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02:49
Six plus years.
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02:50
God. I was ai, that’s crazy. It didn’t make any sense. You were the best in the business. HBO was the best in the business. And when they stepped away from boxing, I was really heartbroken.
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03:00
Well, if if you look at what happened, we go from situation where, the television networks have the authority and the self belief to choose the commentators the way they want to Yeah. Then you get into a more subdivided and, widely disparate marketplace, and now the star promoters have a great deal more influence than you would have thought before.
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03:33
And now the star promoters start getting involved in, influencing who’s on the air. Sai PBC, Mayweather was never a fan. And we got along, but he, you know, he Was this
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03:51
a famous thing with Larry? Well, and Larry Murphy.
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03:54
And I guess he associated me with Larry, which makes all the sense in the world.
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03:58
Kind of, but you weren’t nearly as critical.
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04:01
I was just a blow by blow guy. Right. I’m not an expert commentator.
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04:05
Ai know? So Right.
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04:06
I tried very hard, not always easy, but I tried very hard never to go over the line into doing what the experts were supposed to do. Right. No.
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04:15
You were excellent at that. It just it didn’t make any sense to me that, you know and and Kellerman, he’s also excellent. That’s another guy we should And now he’s back. Yes. It’s nice. And Andre Ward is another excellent guy.
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04:26
Totally.
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04:26
It just, the the good thing about boxing was that HBO was completely independent from these promoters.
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04:34
And the bad thing about boxing is that the fighters don’t get paid as much on the undercard fights and don’t get paid as much coming up as is the case in the more broadly organized UFC universe. Right?
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04:47
Yeah. There is a difference. Yeah. There’s a giant difference in the undercard pay, but
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04:51
I learned that from Joe Rogan.
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04:54
Yeah. Well, the UFC treats the entire, card as an enormous event. So they have elite fighters fight in the entire card. It’s not top heavy. Like, one of the problems with boxing is you would just say, when’s the main event? When is Canelo fighting? And you didn’t the the other stuff is just nonsense.
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05:12
Whereas the UFC, you look at ai, oh, look who’s fighting first fight of pay per view. There’s five fights on pay per view. First fight of pay per view is a banger And everybody’s the the seats are packed and everybody’s excited to see it, whereas everybody starts shuffling in about twenty minutes before Canelo fights in one of these big boxing events.
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05:30
That, I think, is kind of unfortunate, you you know.
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05:33
I Ai totally agree.
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05:34
I’m a little bit short ai.
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05:35
And I I accede to your point of view because and I’ve made this point before. I’m not a UFC expert. Any comment I make about UFC is, atmospheric, but it’s not expertly informed. I didn’t have the bandwidth for that. I was trying to be knowledgeable out about every single tributary and every single meaningless pocket in the boxing world.
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06:02
And That’s
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06:02
a lot.
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06:03
That’s a lot. It’s a
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06:03
lot to follow.
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06:04
You know, it it took time. And and frankly, you know, I decided it would be distracting to me to try to keep up with two combat sports at once. Right. This is the one where I make my living. This is the one where the audience identifies me. This is the one that’s on HBO. Yes.
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06:21
And I and I know that Dana in particular, is said by some to have been quite upset that he had a deal with HBO and the deal with HBO went away. If that’s the case, and I don’t know, I’m very sorry to hear it, because I think it would have been good for both if UFC had been on HBO.
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06:44
I think so as well. I mean, HBO at that time was the premier network for combat sports. The work the work that you guys bryden in boxing was the top of the food chain. It was the best.
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06:55
Well, Larry Merchant, Ray Leonard, George Foreman Yeah. Roy Jones.
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06:59
It’s also the ai. Everything was on point. It was just so well honed.
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07:03
Good production.
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07:04
Yes. It was just a a well polished machine. One of the issues is they wanted to replace the commentators. HBO did.
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07:11
Oh, they did?
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07:12
Yeah. So if we came over there, I wouldn’t go over there as well.
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07:14
So Oh, really? Yeah. Because HBO was always about their own producer autonomy. Yes.
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07:19
Yeah. So they wanted to have control
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07:21
anybody telling us what to do. Exactly. Right.
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07:24
Yeah. The problem with that is in mixed martial arts, there’s a very small pool of people who have a deep understanding of the entire history of the sport. Yep. And you can’t just hire a regular sports guy to take that part. They they’re not going to be able to this episode is brought to you by DAZN.
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07:43
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08:13
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08:35
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08:52
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09:09
Get it. Well, going back to the developmental stages, and I try very hard not to use the word unique. It’s massively overused in American society. Sports media have beaten it to death. It means only one like this on the whole planet. But you were unique, in those days because you had the full knowledge of UFC, and you also knew some stuff about boxing.
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09:34
So I I think you were not just unusual, but unique.
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09:39
Well, all I was doing was just following my interests, and I’ve always been a huge boxing fan. From the time I was a child, I was And you
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09:47
remember what your first fight was?
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09:49
The first fight I watched, my parents watched it, which was crazy because my parents were hippies. And they were really interested in Ali’s rematch with Leon Spinks. Because Leon New Orleans. Yep. When Leon had beat Muhammad Ali because Muhammad Ali was he was a cultural icon as much as he was a sports figure.
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10:11
Oh, yeah. And Ai mean, like, multiply that by a 100, you know, to to get to where he was.
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10:16
He was very, very unique. And his his opposition to the Vietnam Ram made him a hero to many Americans.
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10:24
Well, I always say, he was my childhood hero, and he was my childhood hero as Cassius Clay. The very first live prizefight I ever attended was Cassius Clay versus Sonny Liston, 02/25/1964 in Miami Beach.
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10:42
Oh, you were there for the first fight?
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10:44
I saved lawn mowing and car washing money for months Wow. To buy a ticket that in my memory was a $100, but I don’t really know for sure what the cost of that ticket was. I didn’t save it. It would be worth millions now. And my mother took me my mother took me over from our crappy Southwest Miami tract house rental, and dropped me off to Miami Beach Convention Center and then came and picked me up afterward.
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11:10
And Ai I went in saloni. And that was the first live
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11:14
old were you?
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11:15
I was 14. 14. It was the first live prize fight I had ever attended. It was all about my hero worship for Cassius Clay. Yeah. Two days later, he stands on Brickell Avenue in Miami and tells two reporters that he’s a follower of the Nation of Islam, and now his name is Muhammad Ali.
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11:34
And I’m in shock. Okay? What do you mean? Ai mean, your cash is clay. You can’t. Right.
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11:41
And so Ai nowadays, I say the lesson he taught me then was a man’s identity is his own. Yeah. And it does not matter how much I love him or cherish him or feel connected to him. He has the right to say who he is. I mean, back in those days, Islam? What is that? Right. You know, I had no clue.
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12:03
But, you know, he he got over with me on that when I understood it was his right. Then he taught me my stance on the Vietnam War. Ai mother was double widow of two United States military heroes. I grew up with a basement filled to the gills with memorabilia from their tours of duty as b 20 b 17, b 24, and and b 29 pilots in World War two.
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12:34
So there was nationalistic and patriotic material all over my household.
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12:40
Wow.
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12:41
And when Ali said what he said about Vietcong I mean, about Vietnam, that moved the meter for me in that regard, and Ai understood. And eventually eventually, my mother said, you’ll go to Canada before I’ll ever allow you to accede to being drafted into the army and going to Vietnam because her thought was that it was a pointless war.
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13:07
Yeah. And she was correct. Yeah.
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13:09
She was right.
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13:10
Yeah. And they took three years of his prime. That’s what’s crazy. I always point to the Cleveland Big Cat Williams fight.
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13:16
That was his best. Yes. You’re totally right. That was his number one performance, and he was never 100% the same after that. But he still had his mind.
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13:26
Yes. But he didn’t train for three years. That’s part of the problem.
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13:30
Of course.
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13:30
And, you know, at 30 years old, in that day and age, it was just a different world. Like, you you don’t train for three years?
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13:37
Not as much knowledge of nutrition. Right. Not as much knowledge of training techniques, you know. The old fashioned stuff in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, not the same as no no hyperbaric chamber. Right. Right. Right. Etcetera etcetera.
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13:52
Yeah. It’s just they just robbed him. They robbed us too because he became back and he’s a different fighter then. He was much more easy to hit and, you know, he became, you know, he relied on his chin more and, you know, he didn’t have the fleet of foot movement that he had before then.
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14:07
But he found a way to rise to the top. Yes,
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14:10
he did. Wow. Yeah. The championship mind was always there.
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14:13
That’s a 100% correct.
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14:14
But as a fan of boxing, it drives me crazy. Because you imagine what we could have seen in those three years if Ali had never been robbed, never took his title away, and allowed him to fight all those guys like Joe Frazier, George Foreman, all those guys with keeping the same skills that he had when he was younger.
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14:33
But and I think you’re a 100% correct, Joe. But isn’t it in a perverse way a part of his mystique? Yes. The fact that he was able to come back from those three and a half years off, the fact that he was able to rise to the top again, the fact that he was able to beat Foreman the way he beat Foreman Mhmm.
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14:52
And beat Frazier in the third fight in Yeah. The kind of fight you would never have imagined him being in. Right. All these things ai to create the unique mystique of Muhammad Ali.
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15:04
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And then also the tragic ending, you know, the the staying in too long and too many beatings, you know, the the just to seeing him at the end of his life was just so horrible, you know, and we all know that that was trauma induced. We all know that. And it’s just it was just sad to see.
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15:24
We haven’t seen that yet in MMA. Right?
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15:27
No. Not quite. But you’re seeing some damage. You’re you’re you’re seeing some guys that are really struggling. You know, you just they’re not as public, so you’re not seeing it from a George Sai. Pierre or someone like that. George is one of the very unique former champions who has all of his wits, his faculties, retired as champion, very healthy. Roy Jones. Roy Jones is a good example.
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15:49
Yeah. And Roy, you know, Roy famously after Jerro McClellan was hurt when the Nigel Benn fight, he was really concerned because Jerrold McClellan was the guy that a lot of people thought was a giant threat to Roy.
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16:02
For a long period of time when Roy and I were working together, he was providing helpful financial support to McClellan’s sisters who were caring for Gerald and, you know, keeping them alive, on a daily basis, I think in Illinois or Ohio, someplace like that. But, yeah, Roy loved all other ai, and he did what he could to help with McClellan.
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16:32
I know that that loss that McClellan had and the subsequent medical issues, the stroke and the aneurysm, all that stuff really disturbed Roy and made him think, you know, about getting out early.
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16:44
100%. Yeah. Because because Roy was nothing if not smart. Right. Roy was brilliant. Yeah. Okay? And Roy very assertively fought in a style that would limit harm. He didn’t he didn’t wanna get hurt. His gifts.
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17:01
I mean, what a what a ai. Like, who else in recent memory There’s heavyweight boxing and then
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17:07
there’s weight class boxing. Ali is the unique physical specimen in heavyweight boxing. Right. Roy is the unique physical specimen in weight class boxing.
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17:16
Right.
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17:16
You know? Right. And so much so that
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17:18
he actually won the heavyweight ai, which is crazy.
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17:20
Exactly right. Whatever he wanted to do, if you put his mind to it Right. He could do that, you know. And and, a part of the ongoing cliche was he could play any sport. You know, he could be great in football, basketball, baseball, etcetera, etcetera. And, of course, he did go through the theatrics of playing a basketball game on the same day that he fought
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17:42
a fight. Which was so crazy.
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17:43
It was. It was insane. It was so crazy. But that was his talent was insane.
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17:47
But it was also, like, he was just showing people. He was ai playing with his food. He’s like, I sana play a basketball game and then go and easily win a fight sai night.
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17:57
It’s interesting he used the phrase playing with his food. Yeah. And I like it. Roy liked to play with his food.
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18:03
He gets to a certain level.
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18:05
Sometimes you do things because you can. Right. He knew what he could do. Right.
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18:10
So Yeah. I mean, his speed was so preposterous. When he would forego the jab to lead with left hooks, which was just so crazy.
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18:19
When he stood against the ropes in Miami against Glenn Kelly
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18:23
Yes.
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18:23
And put both hands behind his back and made Kelly miss miss and then hit him with one straight hand and knocked him out? Yes. That’s Roy Jones.
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18:31
Oh, it was incredible. How about the Vinny Pazienza fight when he didn’t get hit for the entire round? The only round in CompuBox history where someone never got hit.
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18:41
Yeah. It was crazy. And I was with Roy at the International Boxing Hall of Fame induction ceremony a few weeks ago, and we were talking about exactly that. You know, Ai we were, you know, talking about Pacienza, and I said, is he the guy that you shut out for around? And he said, yeah. Yeah.
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18:56
And I just I did it just because I wanted to do it.
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18:59
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19:16
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19:33
Yeah. Well, he was just so far above sai many of the guys that he fought. They just had no business being in there.
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19:39
That he had to create competition Yes. By doing stuff like that. He
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19:42
had to have fun. Yeah. He had to play with his food. Well said. Yeah. No. He was spectacular. He, you know, he was one of those guys that’s a unique once in a lifetime talent vatsal, unfortunately though, his mistake was going up to heavyweight and then trying to go down to one seventy five, which is unbelievably grueling.
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20:04
Because he was when he was two hundred pounds at heavyweight, he was two hundred lean, muscular, fast pounds. That was not ai fat to lose. And so to starve himself to get down to one seventy five, like, he was diminished. And you saw that in the Tarver fight.
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20:21
I’m not here to feather your nest, but you’re brilliant. That’s 100% correct.
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20:25
Yeah. If I was in if I was in
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20:27
And he lamented it afterward because he understood how he had penalized himself in that way.
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20:33
25 pounds is so much weight to lose. Lean muscle mass.
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20:37
And you made the point. When it’s muscle Muscle. If it’s fat Right. You can go into the steam room and sweat it all off.
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20:43
Right.
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20:43
But once it’s muscle
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20:45
Yeah.
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20:46
It’s there, you know, and it it’s it’s a part of the structure. It’s a part of the building. Yep. Now how are you gonna rip it out? You know?
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20:52
Not only that, it diminishes his endurance. It diminishes durability, gets compromised because you can’t take a punch as well because you cut so much weight.
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21:00
It gets to his confidence. Yeah. And his confidence was unshakable. Right.
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21:04
You know? He was everything.
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21:05
Yeah.
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21:05
Like, when you go into the fight fatigued Mhmm. You’re feeling fatigued. And then you’ve got a guy like Tarver who’s infinitely talented and has legitimate knockout power and is talking shit to you
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21:15
Right.
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21:16
Right before the fight. Got any excuses tonight, Roy? Remember that? And then he knocks him out, like, holy shit.
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21:22
With a brilliant straight left hand against the ropes, I can see it in my mind. Yeah.
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21:26
And then the glass ai five
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21:27
after that. A few weeks ago when you mentioned the Times Square card.
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21:31
Yes.
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21:31
And Tarver was my, expert commentator on the Times Square card. So energetic.
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21:37
Yeah. Tarver’s great.
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21:38
So lively. Really good. Yeah. I I I was thrilled.
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21:41
Ai thought he was great. Guy that with his boxing skill went all the way up to heavyweight because he was just so much better than everybody else.
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21:47
How many southpaw heavyweights? Right.
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21:49
Very few. Very few. Michael Moore. Yep. Yeah. He was southpaw. But again, another
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21:53
He won the championship. Yep. Another light heavyweight
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21:56
and lost it to my man. George Foreman. One punch. Yeah. That was crazy.
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22:00
Yeah. That’s the title of my book. Thank thank you so much, George. Because you know the reason why my book is titled It Happened? Why? Where where where I came up with It Happened? So he was the expert commentator in the weeks leading to his fight with Moorer. He and I together had called Moorer against Holyfield when Moore Moorer won the the championship.
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22:24
And in the weeks before he fought Moore, I would pull him aside at crew meals and, fighter meetings and other occasions when I could get a minute with him. Three, four times, I asked him, George, how are you gonna beat Moore? He’s a southpaw. He’s a mover. He has great feet.
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22:47
Holyfield couldn’t find him, and Holyfield was much faster than you. And every time I said it, George would fix me with that implacable George Foreman gaze and say, Jim, you watch. There will come a moment late in the fight. He will come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out. Always the same words.
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23:09
He will come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out. Wow. So now as Moore is on the canvas, and Joe Cortez is six, seven, eight. And I’m thinking, what am I gonna say about this? How in the world do you establish this without being self glorifying?
Speaker: 0
23:31
You know, I’ve got I’ve got to say something that’s meaningful, but I want it to be about him. Yeah. And I thought about what he had said to meh. And what came out spontaneously sai, it happened. It happened. Yeah. It’s really me talking to George, saying to him, okay. I get it.
Speaker: 0
23:48
You told me it was gonna happen, and it happened.
Speaker: 1
23:50
Well, do you remember when George came back and he was three hundred pounds and everybody was laughing at him? And he was in his late thirties, I believe. Was he 34, 35?
Speaker: 0
23:59
Something like that. When he made
Speaker: 1
24:00
his comeback, he hadn’t fought in ten years. Everyone dismissed him. Like, what is he doing? He was very overweight.
Speaker: 0
24:07
And he started the bum of the month tour.
Speaker: 1
24:09
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
24:09
You know what I mean? And and that that’s not a fair way to say it. They weren’t bums, but they were people that he knew he could beat
Speaker: 1
24:16
Yes.
Speaker: 0
24:16
To build a dossier toward what he really wanted. And get in shape.
Speaker: 1
24:21
Yep. And no one believed in him. No one. I remember me as a boxing fan watching that comeback being sai. Like, oh, George Foreman’s coming back, and he’s all fat now. This is sad.
Speaker: 0
24:33
Well, I’m sure you’ve known a lot of people like this, Joe. You wanna see George do something? Tell him he can’t do it. Right. Right. Challenge his will, you know, because he’s self constructed person. You’re talking about a guy who, as a teenager, 17 or 18 years old, says to himself, I sana get out of the Fifth Ward Of Houston.
Speaker: 0
24:54
I don’t want this life as a gangster or, a laborer or whatever I’m going to get by living in the Fifth Ward Of Houston. I want something else. So he goes to the Job Corps in Hayward, California and enrolls in the Job Corps, and that’s where he learned to box. That that’s what set him up a year and a half later to win his Olympic gold medal in Mexico City.
Speaker: 0
25:20
And, and then go on to his storied professional boxing career. But, you know, he he was, in his own mind, proving he could do something that other people didn’t think he could do even at that point. He told me that when he first got to Hayward, he befriended one of the other people in the Job Corps, who was a white kid, and, sai, you know, they’re talking about things that they like, and the guy talks about Bob Dylan, how much he likes Bob Dylan.
Speaker: 0
25:53
So George got the first two or three Bob Dylan albums and listened, wanted to hear what this is all about and absorb the lyrics and paid attention. And when George told me this story, I said, George, you, Bob Dylan? You know, how am I supposed to process all this? And he began quoting lyrics for me.
Speaker: 1
26:19
Wow. Okay?
Speaker: 0
26:20
Ram Blowin’ in the Wind, from Don’t Think Ai, It’s Alright, etcetera. It’s from early Bob Dylan songs. Yes. He knew about hurricane. Yes. So he was just an amazing person, you know, so broad based, you know, and that was I think that was part of what burned in him was that everybody, myself included, gave Ali credit for all that.
Speaker: 0
26:43
And George wanted, in his own way, for people to see, hey. I’m not that different than that. You know? And, I mean, one thing he said to me was, you can’t win the heavyweight championship of the world without being smart. Okay? Sai stupid person couldn’t do this.
Speaker: 1
26:59
Yeah. It’s true.
Speaker: 0
27:00
Yeah. So he respected Moore’s intelligence, but he also understood something that I didn’t understand. He’ll come and stand in front of me late in the fight and let me
Speaker: 1
27:12
knock him out. Crazy that he predicted it that way because that’s exactly how it played out.
Speaker: 0
27:15
Yeah. Go to YouTube. You know? If you haven’t seen it, it’s it’s uncanny. It really is.
Speaker: 1
27:22
Giant Michael Moore fan when he was a light heavyweight. And I think a lot of people forgot how how dangerous he was at light heavyweight. He was one of the great light heavyweights.
Speaker: 0
27:31
No question. Tears up the southpaw punching power. You know, you don’t power at light heavy Sai don’t know if it’s true in UFC as it is in boxing, but you don’t see southpaw punchers very often. Southpaws are technical. They box. They take advantage of their foot skills and their hand speed, and they they beat you with boxing skills.
Speaker: 0
27:49
You’re not often gonna run into a southpaw that’s gonna knock you out. But we’ve already talked about Tarver, and and Murrura was another one who had punching power, and it’s, you know, kind of Cooney. Cooney was a southpaw with punching power. It’s kind of doubly effective if you’ve got that because you’re worried about the technical issues with a southpaw, and now he brings a cannon.
Speaker: 1
28:12
Right. Right. Yeah. The southpaw thing was always so confusing to people because if you ever boxed before, you’re so accustomed to that left hand being forward.
Speaker: 0
28:19
Right. And then
Speaker: 1
28:20
all of a sudden, everything’s reversed, and now you’re thinking.
Speaker: 0
28:22
Right.
Speaker: 1
28:22
And if you don’t have a lot of southpaws that you train with on a regular basis, things aren’t automatic anymore.
Speaker: 0
28:27
And one of the things that George used to talk to me about all the time was angles. That, you know, you’re you’re standing in front of another meh, you’re confronting him, you’re trying to deliver and stop delivery angles. It’s all about where does it come from and where is it going Right. And how can I deal with that?
Speaker: 0
28:44
Now Ai was never a fighter, so I can’t ai. But I can sympathize when I listen to that kind
Speaker: 1
28:51
of thing. Sai it. Right? And I think the greatest at angles of all time is Lomachenko.
Speaker: 0
28:56
Nobody. Nobody The greatest footwork? Oh my god. The greatest hand skills? The the most effective training by his father. Yeah. What a genius move to take him out of boxing for two years to study Ukrainian dance. And brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah. And and by the way, he had an effect on the national team for several years.
Speaker: 0
29:21
And what culture in the world has had more accomplishments and surprising new stars in boxing Right. Other than Ukraine. Right.
Speaker: 1
29:31
And Usyk, who is basically, like, moves like a giant Lomachenko, just not quite as effective.
Speaker: 0
29:36
That’s a really great phrase that I had never conjured before this moment. Thank you, Joe. A giant Lomachenko. That’s exactly what he is.
Speaker: 1
29:44
Quite move that well when you’re two hundred and twenty pounds. You’re just dealing with gravity and mass.
Speaker: 0
29:49
But you’re still creating unique angles. You’re you’re coming at them from unique approaches, etcetera.
Speaker: 1
29:55
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
29:55
You’re hard for your opponent to figure out. And Usyk is impossible Anybody can stand with.
Speaker: 1
30:01
Constant motion. Constant motion. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
30:03
Constantly cutting off the ring with his feet Mhmm. And hammers you to the body as often as he can.
Speaker: 1
30:08
Yep. Yeah. Lomachenko in his prime was just a magical thing to watch. Brilliant. It was like you were just watching poetry.
Speaker: 0
30:16
And I had the privilege of calling those fights. Oh, so good. An extreme privilege.
Speaker: 1
30:20
Yeah. It was, it was amazing watching him just do something where you’d seen so many different versions of boxers. And you watch him do it, and you’re ai, oh meh god. He put a new thing on this. That’s why
Speaker: 0
30:34
I can’t understand at this moment. I can’t really figure out what’s up with Teofimo Lopez. How do you Right. Beat Vatsal Lomachenko Right. And then wind up, you know, with somewhat indifferent results since that ai?
Speaker: 1
30:48
Yeah. The convulsified kind
Speaker: 0
30:50
of shah. Better than the other guys in Tyler Square. He did. Ai give him credit for upholding the card. But still, there’s nothing since the Lomachenko win. I mean, you lose to George Kambosos.
Speaker: 1
31:01
I think the Kambosos fight was I think he was just a little overconfident and he got caught, and then that really rocked him. That really shocked him. He got dropped early in the fight. Remember that?
Speaker: 0
31:13
It’s a bad sport to be overconfident in. It’s the worst sport.
Speaker: 1
31:16
The worst sport.
Speaker: 0
31:17
Whether you’re talking UFC or boxing.
Speaker: 1
31:19
Yeah. Any combat speak, when you don’t appreciate the potential that your opponent has to do damage
Speaker: 0
31:25
Well, I used to say to people all the time, these are fine margins of competition. You think you see a lot of wipe outs in boxing because you sai a second round knockout or third round knockout, and you think that means there’s a huge talent gap between the two ai? No. It means one fighter made a mistake. Right. Okay?
Speaker: 1
31:42
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
31:42
90% of the time, it means one fighter made a mistake. And if he thinks about it and trains against it, he won’t make that mistake again.
Speaker: 1
31:49
Sai Ai perfect examples, Juan Manuel Marquez versus Pacquiao.
Speaker: 0
31:53
100%.
Speaker: 1
31:54
They have three insane fights that are very close. Marquez lands one bomb and starches Pacquiao. This one error. He got a little overconfident, a little little too
Speaker: 0
32:07
Greatest counter puncher of his era. And power. Yeah. And with with power. With the straight ahead power from the shoulder. Marcus was a gifted fighter.
Speaker: 1
32:16
Very gifted. But just ai that one moment, like, if that had happened in the first fight, we would look at the whole thing very differently.
Speaker: 0
32:24
100%. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
32:26
This is ai the the arya, as you’re saying, are so small for victory that when you see, like, a spectacular result, you do automatically assume, oh, that person is just that much better. But sometimes it’s just one error. It’s a moment in
Speaker: 0
32:40
time. Right. You know, if it’s a knockout, you know, that now if if somebody gets knocked down six times, then you’re talking about something different. Right. But one knockdown that leads to a 10 count, that was a momentary mistake.
Speaker: 1
32:53
Right.
Speaker: 0
32:55
And that’s again, that goes to the fine margins of competition.
Speaker: 1
33:00
You
Speaker: 0
33:00
can’t make the one mistake.
Speaker: 1
33:01
Right. And then, you know, it’s also how do you bounce back from that. Like, some people, the one moment, even if just a knockdown, they don’t have the capacity to correct and stay safe and then regroup. Like, they get shook, and then now they’re fighting from this position, this defensive position where they’re a little bit gun shy.
Speaker: 0
33:22
So Mark has exposed the difficulties that Pacquiao could have against a great counter puncher. And now we get ready for Mayweather Pacquiao. Right.
Speaker: 1
33:32
And Mayweather just did such a smart thing, but also a devious thing. Waiting until Pacquiao was older, waiting till he slowed down, and then
Speaker: 0
33:40
Devious is not illegal in boxing. It’s it’s encouraged. Yeah. In any entrepreneurial sport, devious is not illegal. No. Devious can be an asset.
Speaker: 1
33:49
That’s how you retire with
Speaker: 0
33:50
a fifteen hour record. Floyd credit for brilliance. Okay? Oh, yeah. Floyd wasn’t just a smart fighter. Floyd was a brilliant fighter. He was on his own level. And so much so, you know, in any matchup between the great counter puncher and the great attacker, you know that the counter puncher has the advantage.
Speaker: 0
34:09
He’s got more options. He’s got more ways of winning. The attacker has to break through the wall, so to speak. So in the years before Mayweather Pacquiao, people would run up to me on the street, run up to me in the shopping center in Vegas, run up to me in a hotel. When am I gonna see Mayweather Pacquiao? And I would say, well, we don’t know, but what exactly is it you think you’re going to see? Oh, I can’t wait.
Speaker: 0
34:35
It’s gonna be such a great fight. No. It’s not gonna be a great fight. It’s gonna be watching like watching somebody pluck the legs off a a spider. Alright?
Speaker: 0
34:45
You know, vatsal step by step meh. And you’re going to watch Mayweather pluck the legs off the spider that is Pacquiao, and it’s going to be pretty easy for him. And it’s not gonna be wildly entertaining. But it is gonna be one-sided victory. So why are you so excited about the ai? Oh, no.
Speaker: 0
35:06
I don’t think that’s the case. But if you knew Floyd you know, Floyd was only about winning the fight. He’ll make fans other way Right. On the web. I call him the first great social media genius.
Speaker: 1
35:20
Yeah. He was great at talking shit. He got everybody upset at him so badly that they wanted to see him lose, and that would sell tons of pay per views.
Speaker: 0
35:28
He realized you could build an audience with negativity.
Speaker: 1
35:31
Yes. I sai.
Speaker: 0
35:31
You didn’t have to be an omnibus character. You didn’t have to be somebody everybody loved. You could be totally negative. Right. And that would build a following too.
Speaker: 1
35:39
Yeah. When he shifted from pretty boy Floyd to money Mayweather, changed the whole thing.
Speaker: 0
35:45
He knew what he was doing.
Speaker: 1
35:46
He definitely did. Look. The and it was it would have been an interesting fight had he fought Pacquiao when he was younger in his prime. It would have been a very different fight.
Speaker: 0
35:54
More interesting fight.
Speaker: 1
35:55
Much more different.
Speaker: 0
35:56
Because because It’s
Speaker: 1
35:57
a whole difficult fight.
Speaker: 0
35:57
Any go forward physical warrior like Pacquiao is going to wear down. Right. Exactly. And any brilliant counter puncher like Floyd is going to retain more. Yeah. So he did. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
36:07
It would have been much more interesting when they were younger. Also, the fact that Pacquiao fought sana with a bum shoulder, That was a disaster too. Money talks. Yeah. I mean, look, I guess he was faced with this thing legacy or I mean, it was the biggest pay per view of all time in boxing. Correct?
Speaker: 1
36:22
I believe so. I believe so. And I think it was like 4,000,000 buys or something crazy like that.
Speaker: 0
36:27
It was huge. So So, like, what
Speaker: 1
36:28
is that? Massive. Yeah. Just lured Pacquiao into
Speaker: 0
36:31
All those people who had run up to me on the street corners for years ai got the chance to see what they wanted to see.
Speaker: 1
36:36
Yeah. Give them a cortisone shah. Throw them out there. Yeah. Unfortunately. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. Stress in the workplace is becoming an issue around the world. Did you know that sixty percent of the global workforce has reported experiencing higher than normal levels of stress?
Speaker: 1
36:53
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37:14
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Speaker: 1
37:38
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Speaker: 1
38:02
There’s a lot of people who were upset that Pacquiao fought injured. A lot of the gamblers.
Speaker: 0
38:07
I never talked to Freddie about that. But, you know, at the end of the day, the fighter makes the decision.
Speaker: 1
38:14
Well, the money. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
38:16
And the money.
Speaker: 1
38:16
And the money. Yeah. That happens a lot in the UFC. There’s a lot of fighters that fight injured and, you know Yeah.
Speaker: 0
38:22
I gotta tell you this while we’re talking about him. Alright? I apologize for going off script here a little bit. I was with Manny three weeks ago, less than a month ago, at the Hall of Fame inductions in Canistota, New York where he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Speaker: 0
38:38
And, on the night before the induction ceremony, there’s a big banquet in a banquet hall at the Turning Stone Casino, and I’m sitting up on the dais between Roy and Ross Greenberg, my former boss, at HBO. And right across to the left of us ai the podium is Manny. And several people spoke. I didn’t know that I was gonna speak.
Speaker: 0
39:06
I was asked to get up and speak. I did. Roy did a speech, etcetera, etcetera. Eventually, Manny got up and made a speech. Now I met Manny Pacquiao twenty four years ago in a fighter meeting room in Las Vegas before his fight against LaChanola Ledwaba, which was his first appearance in The United States.
Speaker: 1
39:26
What weight class was that?
Speaker: 0
39:28
He was a kind of a throw in opponent. What weight class was that? Yeah. So that would have been one twenty two.
Speaker: 1
39:35
Ain’t that nuts?
Speaker: 0
39:36
And Larry and I were a 100% convinced that Ledwaba was the best hundred and twenty two pound fighter in the world. We had seen him on the undercard of Louis Rockman in, in Johannesburg, South Africa. There’s nobody nobody who could possibly be better than that. Grace, style, hand skills, all the stuff. And I meet Manny in that room. He can’t put three or four words of English together.
Speaker: 0
40:01
I learned his backstory, that he survived by selling stolen cigarettes on the streets of General Santos City in The Philippines. I get and understand that his big activity outside of the gym is to go play pool. Yeah. He’s a pool player in in ai bar level. In ballrooms. Exactly.
Speaker: 0
40:19
Yeah. He plays very little pool player, etcetera, all of that. And, and then fast forward 24, and he’s being inducted at the Hall of Fame. And without warning, he’s asked to speak that ai, and he stands up and makes a fifteen minute speech, maybe twelve minutes, but it was more than meh, all in English, all perfect, all more or less off the top of his head, unedited.
Speaker: 0
40:48
It was brilliant. And and I went to him afterward, hugged him, told him how much I loved him, and I said I said, Manny, I first met you twenty four years ago when you couldn’t put three words of English together, and I know that politics had something to do with this. And he sai, meh. But a lot of my political speeches were in Tagalog. And I said, well, some of them were in English. He said, meh. Some.
Speaker: 0
41:15
And I said, I don’t think there’s any sport other than boxing where somebody could have achieved the kind of personal transformation that you have achieved. This is the only one. And he said, well, it it sure helped me. That’s for sure. Now you probably know the story about Muhammad Ali and graduating from high school in Louisville. Yes. Okay.
Speaker: 0
41:40
So just for our listeners and consumers, Ali had very bad bryden, and in his senior year, he was flunking a math course. And in order to graduate, he had to pass the math course, and he was nowhere near it. And the math teacher went to the principal of the high school and said, I’m gonna give him a passing grade even though he has not performed on any of the tests and he doesn’t do the homework and stuff like that.
Speaker: 0
42:09
And the principal is like, why would you do this for for this kid? Why would you give him a passing grade when he hasn’t earned it? And the teacher said, you have to understand. He’s going to be the most famous man in the world, and we cannot be the high school that denied a diploma to the most famous man in the world.
Speaker: 1
42:31
That’s such a crazy statement. I wonder if it’s true. I wonder if it’s I wonder if
Speaker: 0
42:35
it’s true too, but it’s it’s a fun story to tyler, and, of course, it’s secondhand.
Speaker: 1
42:39
You’re you’re exactly right. It is. It’s so good.
Speaker: 0
42:42
I don’t know the teacher, and I don’t know the principal. I just know the story. And I know and I know Ali’s primary biographer, Tom Houser. So maybe I got it from Tom.
Speaker: 1
42:53
Yeah. I I’d like to believe that that’s true.
Speaker: 0
42:56
I’d like to believe it’s true too.
Speaker: 1
42:57
It makes it more fun.
Speaker: 0
42:58
Let’s make a pact to believe it’s true.
Speaker: 1
43:00
The thing about Pacquiao that’s so extraordinary is that he kept his power through eight weight classes. That is just wild. Like, who what other fighter can you name that went through eight different weight classes as a world champion?
Speaker: 0
43:14
I can’t. None. No. Obviously. What I what I did learn that may relate to that is Foreman was at great pains to explain to me and explained a couple of times that power punching is not a physical gift. Power punching is a science. Power punching is the product of real technical knowledge.
Speaker: 0
43:37
Power punching is about, footwork, weight shift, the angle at which you deliver the punch, you know, all sorts of things not directly related to your strength or, quote, power. And George was a disciplined and knowledgeable scientist, about stuff like that, and he he explained it all to me one time.
Speaker: 0
44:01
And, of course, if you watch the Murrah knockout
Speaker: 1
44:04
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
44:04
He lands the first one too ai on the button. Mhmm. And then having Murrah where he wants him, he puts a little more mustard on the second one too, and we’re out of there.
Speaker: 1
44:14
But there are physical gifts that you are just they’re just God given gifts of power. Big hands.
Speaker: 0
44:21
Big hands. Big hands or Shoulders. Yeah. Yeah. All that.
Speaker: 1
44:24
There’s just certain ai, though, that just have extraordinary power. Like, you remember Julian Jackson in his ai?
Speaker: 0
44:30
Oh meh gosh. Fuck. Oh my gosh.
Speaker: 1
44:33
Extraordinary power.
Speaker: 0
44:34
At some moment or another, he’s gonna get you.
Speaker: 1
44:36
Yeah. It was just disturbing Right. How hard he hit. It was just different than everybody else, and it looked like he was doing the same thing, but the results were so much different.
Speaker: 0
44:44
How about Andy Lee? Skinny, not somebody you would expect to have, you know Right. Heavy hands, ai everybody out.
Speaker: 1
44:52
How about
Speaker: 0
44:53
Deontay Wilder? Yeah. Another one.
Speaker: 1
44:55
A two hundred and nine pound heavyweight
Speaker: 0
44:57
Right.
Speaker: 1
44:57
That’s flattening people. I have two hundred ai pounds when he fights Tyson Fury the first time.
Speaker: 0
45:02
Some some of it is the bravery to commit. Right.
Speaker: 1
45:05
You
Speaker: 0
45:06
know? Can you can you push your weight forward
Speaker: 1
45:09
Right.
Speaker: 0
45:09
In a way that might leave you open to the counter and and believe that that you’re gonna get the better of that exchange. If you believe you’re gonna get the better of the exchange Yeah. Go ahead. Go forward. And and that enhances your chance of knocking someone out.
Speaker: 1
45:24
There but there is there’s physical gifts that you are just god given, and some people have them. And these are the extraordinary outliers, the Deontay Wilders, the Julian Jacksons, the, John Mugabis. Remember Mugabe? John the Beast Mugabe. Oh, I rewatched that Mugabe Hagler fight the other day
Speaker: 0
45:42
in the day. What a great fight. What a great fight.
Speaker: 1
45:47
What a fight. What a fight. Hagler was my hero when I was a kid. And he was So sai you’re
Speaker: 0
45:53
probably so I’m sure you’re an advocate with regard to what I call the number one elevator fight of all tyler. That sounds right. Hagler was the winner. No. The Which one? The number one elevator fight of all tyler. And an elevator fight is the fight where you’re Jim Lampley or you’re Joe Rogan or you’re any combat sports expert, etcetera, and you step onto an elevator with six people and somebody turns around and says, who won Leonard Hagler?
Speaker: 0
46:18
Okay? Okay. The debate about the decision. You know? Yes. And, you know, I’m sure you say haggler beat Ray. Yes.
Speaker: 0
46:28
And, of course, we all know that Ray partially won the judges and the crowd with showbiz with Yes. You know, with the way that he threw his arms up at the end of every round and, you know, called attention to himself. And he he was quite aware of what he was doing, and he was quite aware also that it would get under Hagler’s skin.
Speaker: 1
46:49
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
46:50
So, You know, there there was an element of genius in Ram, as we talked about already
Speaker: 1
46:54
For sure.
Speaker: 0
46:54
That that went to more than just his spectacular physical gifts.
Speaker: 1
46:59
Right. Yeah. No. He he game the system a little bit. He figured out how to flurry at the end of the rounds and make a big impression in the judge’s eyes. That was a very close fight, but that fight always bothered me. And one of the things that bothered me is Ai felt like there were moments where Hagler could have turned it up and didn’t.
Speaker: 1
47:20
And then when he retired after that fight and went to Italy and became a a giant movie star in Italy, the conspiratorial part of my brain was always like, was that ai one of those deals where everybody assumed that Hagar was gonna win? Hagar was a destroyer. Hagar had knocked out Tommy Hearns. Hagar had beaten everybody in the division, knocked out Mugabe. He was he was the meh, you know? You fought.
Speaker: 0
47:45
Right? Yeah. So you fought. I didn’t. I mean, I’ve I’ve only talked. But because you fought, you probably have an even stronger sense than I do of how difficult the sport is.
Speaker: 1
47:56
Yes.
Speaker: 0
47:57
The training is difficult. Mhmm. The fear factor is is certainly part of it. The level of concentration and devotion that it takes, it it’s not easy. No. Team sports are easier. For sure. And and, and so, you know, I’m I’m I’m thinking that every fighter reaches a point where enough. Yes.
Speaker: 0
48:23
And and they might reach that point without really cognitively knowing that they’ve reached that point where it’s enough. Right. Hagler went to Italy, as you say. Yeah. Maybe he had already reached something like enough Could be. Before he fought Ram in that fight.
Speaker: 1
48:38
Well, you know, he had accomplished so meh, and also his training camps were the stuff of legend. I mean, he would spar a 100 rounds a week ai, which is just insane. Mhmm. Hagler was a monster. I mean, his conditioning and his drive and his will and his discipline, he was a monster. He would scare the shit out of everybody just from his work ethic.
Speaker: 1
49:01
I remember I told the story, there was a news piece, when he was training on the cape, and it was in the middle of the winter, and he was fighting Mustafa Hamshow. And he was running down the sand dunes screaming war with combat boots on in the winter. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
49:17
And I
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49:17
remember thinking,
Speaker: 0
49:20
war. War. Ai you think
Speaker: 1
49:22
you’re disciplined. You think you’re driven. You think, you know, you’re speak. And then you see a guy like that. It’s like he’s what my friend David Goggins calls uncommon amongst uncommon men.
Speaker: 0
49:32
Great line. So where does Hagler Hearns rank among your all time favorites?
Speaker: 1
49:37
One of the greatest of all time. Great one of the greatest fights of all time. Because Hagler just threw caution to the ai. Fucked all this boxing. Just jumped jumped out.
Speaker: 0
49:47
So did Tommy.
Speaker: 1
49:48
So did Tommy. Tommy didn’t Both of them did.
Speaker: 0
49:50
Tommy didn’t go in with a self protective approach.
Speaker: 1
49:52
He tried to box. Remember after he broke his hand, he tried just throwing the jab out there. You could tell early on in the first round when he broke his hand.
Speaker: 0
49:59
Yes.
Speaker: 1
50:00
Because from then on, he’s moving. He’s a little but he’s already endured so much damage. Yep. I mean, they have just thrown each other into the wood chipper. Both guys were just blasting away. I hope a lot of people
Speaker: 0
50:12
are gonna listen to this and go watch Hagler Hearns on the on their, web attachment because it’s as great as as anything has ever been.
Speaker: 1
50:21
It was insane. I remember being in my living room when when Hearns went down and just go, wow. Ai, you can’t and this was after Hearns had knocked out Ram. And I thought nobody could knock out Duran. When Hearns ai Duran, I was like, good lord. Good lord. Like, to see Duran face down on the canvas is ai, you you have to check your eyes. Like, is this real?
Speaker: 0
50:44
Well, did Tommy break his hand with that right hand in the first round against Hagler?
Speaker: 1
50:49
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
50:50
There you go.
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50:50
There you go.
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50:51
You’ve lost your ai weapon.
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50:53
He has one knockdown attributed to him in his career, and it’s bullshit. The Juan Roldan fight. Mhmm. Bullshit. Not really a knockdown.
Speaker: 0
51:01
And now we deal with Canelo, who has had one knockdown attributed to him in his career, and in my view, it sai bullshit.
Speaker: 1
51:08
Which fight was that?
Speaker: 0
51:09
So it was Miguel Cotto’s little brother, Jose Cotto. It was the first time we had Canelo on, HBO. Believe it was an undercard of a top ranked pay per view. I’m not a 100% certain, about that. And, Cotto’s little brother, Jose, caught, Canelo with a right hand body punch to the chest, and Canelo hit the ropes behind him and bounced off the ropes kind of unbalanced.
Speaker: 0
51:40
He didn’t go down, but he came off the ropes ungainly, unbalanced, etcetera. And the referee, and I can’t remember which referee, stepped in and very technically ruled that the ropes had held him up. Ugh. So that’s the only official knockdown in Canelo’s career, and he didn’t touch the canvas.
Speaker: 1
51:58
That’s crazy.
Speaker: 0
51:59
Nobody has ever put him on the canvas. And this is part of what, Terrence is facing as he gets ready to fight him in September is you’re you’re fighting a guy who, up to this moment in his career, has been utterly knockout proof. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
52:13
Knockdown proof. Well, even against a guy like Bivol, who’s huge.
Speaker: 0
52:18
Yeah. You know? Exactly. A huge ai heavyweight. Yeah. But Bivol is Bivol is, I’m gonna say, at least fifty fifty a backup counter puncher, and they don’t muster exactly the same power as a go forward attacker. True. Ai you know, you notice that he hasn’t fought better be up, and I’m not sure that better be up would be the right matchup. But For Canelo. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
52:43
For Canelo.
Speaker: 1
52:44
The Kenobi and Ai matchup. Yeah. Better be up especially even though he’s almost 40 now. Right? Is he 40? He might be 40.
Speaker: 0
52:50
He might be 40. But but he’s still in shah, and he still comes forward, and he’s a, you know, naturally heavy hands, Big hitter.
Speaker: 1
52:57
One of the scariest of all time at one seventy five. He’s another one of those guys. It’s just like but with him, it’s volume. It’s not one shot, but it’s this thudding volume that never ends, this constant attack, which is Never ends.
Speaker: 0
53:11
Has made his two fights with Bivol sai spectacular to watch, you know. Because Bivol is not a make fire fighter.
Speaker: 1
53:19
Right.
Speaker: 0
53:19
He’s a natural counter puncher. Right. But if you insist on making the fire Yeah. And you’re strong enough to make the fire, then Bivol has to fight Yeah. Which he’s done twice against Badriyev.
Speaker: 1
53:29
Well, he made brilliant adjustments in the second fight. Brilliant adjustments.
Speaker: 0
53:32
He’s a brilliant guy.
Speaker: 1
53:33
Yeah. I mean, he really, really made the proper adjustments and the counter ai and the movement, and he was just much better in the second fight.
Speaker: 0
53:40
It’s another country with very good boxing training. Oh, phenomenal.
Speaker: 1
53:43
Do you think that they’re are they having a rubber match? I don’t know. Third?
Speaker: 0
53:47
I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
53:48
Yeah. I’m not
Speaker: 0
53:49
Sai don’t talk to promoters anymore. So Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure about that. I hope they do. Yeah. Ai I think it’s a fantastic idea.
Speaker: 1
53:57
I think Riyadh Saloni was trying to put that together. I think they’re trying to put together a third ai, and I really hope they do make that fight.
Speaker: 0
54:03
Go turkey.
Speaker: 1
54:03
Yeah. You you kinda have to do it now before Better Beev is just he’s probably past his power.
Speaker: 0
54:10
Forty one, forty two, etcetera. These numbers sound forbidding. Yes. But ai,
Speaker: 1
54:15
even though You know, god Remember,
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54:17
Foreman was 45.
Speaker: 1
54:18
Right.
Speaker: 0
54:18
What did he still have? Right. Power. Right? Okay.
Speaker: 1
54:22
And but in skill. The skill thing. Like, here’s the best example that Bernard Hopkins, who has maintained their skill deep into their forties. In fact, at a world class level at 49 years old, beating, like, top contenders at 49 years old.
Speaker: 0
54:38
One of the smartest men that I’ve ever met. Okay. Bernard Hopkins is smart beyond smart. He has, PhD type intelligence. He really does. And he was also a very critical and thoughtful self examiner. Mhmm. So those two things helped Bernard to sustain long into, you know, antiquity and an extremely disciplined personal life.
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55:06
Yes. That’s a big one.
Speaker: 0
55:08
You know, he he kept his prison tattoo on his arya, and he kept that number on his arm to remind him that he was never going to go back. And and I asked him one time, I said, what what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? And he said, well, the hardest thing I’ve ever done was to walk off nine in the neighborhood in which I grew up.
Speaker: 0
55:32
I said, what do you mean walk off nine? Nine years of probation. Nine years of living on and in the same streets where I was, the king of the streets when I was, on the other side of the law. Ai years of reminding myself that I could never go back, that my my behavior had to change completely. That’s what he called walking off nine.
Speaker: 1
55:56
Wow.
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55:57
What a phrase,
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55:58
Yeah. What a phrase.
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55:59
What a guy. Yeah. Really, what a guy.
Speaker: 1
56:01
I meh when he was middleweight champion, and he wasn’t getting the credit that he felt like he deserved, and he was, you know, squabbling with promoters. They kept him on the shelf. I’m like, my god. He’s, like, wasting away in the prime of his life. And I felt like we’re sana, like, miss out on the prime of his life. And then, here he he gets into the Felix Trinidad fight.
Speaker: 1
56:22
And I was like, this ai this is crazy watching this guy, like, completely outclass Tito Trinidad. I’m like, this is nuts.
Speaker: 0
56:32
Of all the fighters I’ve ever known, if you were to ask me, who is the one most likely to still be holding ai himself. He protects his family. He protects everything about his experience in an extremely devoted way. Why? Walking off nine. Wow. Never wants to go back.
Speaker: 1
56:58
Wow. Well, those are the stories that are so inspiring about boxing. Right? Is the the the people that have used boxing as a vehicle to get out of their circumstances.
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57:07
Totally.
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57:08
You know?
Speaker: 0
57:08
Yeah. And Bernard’s one of the greatest examples imaginable.
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57:11
Yeah. I
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57:11
love him. And, you know, I had him on my shah, The Fight Game on HBO. I had him do technical pieces because he was better than anybody at explaining footwork, technique, etcetera. Andre Ward could have done it too, but Andre was still fighting, at that period of time.
Speaker: 1
57:31
Yeah. That was a great show, man. That was another bummer when when HBO stopped doing boxing.
Speaker: 0
57:36
Well, look. But it had
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57:37
ai be successful for them.
Speaker: 0
57:39
Ai why I wanted to say this. It wasn’t HBO. Okay? The minute that Time Warner was bought by a bunch of cell phone salesmen from Dallas, AT and T, the character of the operation changed. And the first thing that went away was boxing. It’s in my book. You’ll read it. There’s an anecdote about, meh, at a post Emmy Awards or post Golden Globe Awards event in Hollywood shortly after AT and T had purchased HBO.
Speaker: 0
58:12
And I was seated at the table of Richard Plepler, the, ai brilliant chairman of HBO, my beloved boss. And, Plepler said, see that guy over there in the gray suit? And I said, yeah. He said, that’s your new boss. That’s John Stankey, the CEO of AT and T. I think you ought to go say hello.
Speaker: 0
58:34
I think you ought to go meet him and just spend a little time with him. So I took his advice. Saloni went over and had a ten minute discussion with Stankey. Very ai, very cordial, fun. And I walked back to Plepler’s table, and he said, so what do you think? I said, I think boxing is dead. He said, I agree with you.
Speaker: 0
58:55
I just wanted to be sure that we were on the same page. Oh, god. Yeah. So it was clear. It was clear from that moment that they they were not interested in going forward with something as
Speaker: 1
59:05
Why did you think boxing was dead? Ai you say that?
Speaker: 0
59:08
Well, I meh, Sai could just tell from the way in which he spoke to me and the Oh. And then, you know, the So you
Speaker: 1
59:15
weren’t saying it based on your personal opinion?
Speaker: 0
59:17
Replies to questions ai, are we gonna do this fight? You know, what do you think about that? Stuff like that. It was abundantly clear that they just they saw it as a negative rather than a positive.
Speaker: 1
59:29
And In public perception or profitability? Profitability. Really?
Speaker: 0
59:34
Too many unpredictable meh unpredictable in boxing. You schedule a show, somebody gets hurt, etcetera. Ai I think they didn’t want that kind of, real life upheaval. And, also, they saw it as unsavory or at least it felt that way to me. Yeah. You know? So, Yeah. Well, that This goes to the fact, and you know this as well as I do or maybe better. People from outside combat sports don’t understand combat sports.
Speaker: 0
01:00:03
You know, you’re either in the culture and you get it or you’re not. Right. You know? And I, you know, when I first started calling fights, I was assigned to call boxing at ABC Sports by an incoming new president of the sports department who wanted to get rid of me and who thought and who thought that I would be such a misfit in boxing that if he assigned me to boxing, the audience would reject me.
Speaker: 0
01:00:32
Really? If they would see me as the successor to Cosell, that would cut my throat, and then I would walk away from my contract, which is what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to he thought my contract was absurd, too lucrative. He didn’t like the guarantees for, relative to exposure. And he told my agent flat out.
Speaker: 0
01:00:51
He said, I’m gonna get rid of Jim. I’m gonna make him walk away. And his first method for doing it was boxing. Wow.
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01:00:57
So, of
Speaker: 0
01:00:58
course, that means he didn’t know that the very first sports event my mother ever sat me down to watch when I was six years old after my father died when I was five was Sugar Ray Robinson versus Boba Olson for the middleweight championship on Gillette Friday night fights that I had grown up all through my childhood and teenage years watching Gillette Friday night fights. And later, people would say to me, who’s the voice in the back of your mind when you’re calling fights? Is it Cosell? I said, oh, hell no.
Speaker: 0
01:01:27
I would never try to emulate that. Don Dunphy, crisp, precise, factual, on point. That’s who I’m hearing in the back of my head when I, when I call fights.
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01:01:39
Interesting.
Speaker: 0
01:01:39
Yeah. So he he thought he could get rid of me by signing me to boxing. And, he also did not seem to be paying much attention to the fact that his division with leadership of a guy named Alex Wallow, who was a boxing freak, had just signed a get acquainted look see contract with a 19 year old heavyweight from Upstate New York whose name was Mike Tyson.
Speaker: 0
01:02:02
Yeah. So the first fight I ever called on TV was Mike Tyson versus Jesse Ferguson in Glens Falls, New York. And this is the famous ai his nose bone into his into his brain fight.
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01:02:15
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:02:15
Alex went to do post fight interview after Tyson had obliterated Jesse’s nose with an uppercut. There was blood all over the ring. And, and Alex said, you know, Mike, tell me about the uppercut. And Mike said, taught me that the purpose of the uppercut is to drive the opponent’s node bone into his brain.
Speaker: 0
01:02:35
I was trying to drive his node bone into his brain. And I’m standing on the other side of the ring listening to this, headset on, and I thought to myself, oh my god. Look at what I’ve stumbled into here. This kid is not only gonna be the biggest attraction in boxing. He’s gonna be the biggest attraction in American culture if he can keep coming up with quotes like that.
Speaker: 0
01:02:56
And, of course, within the next few weeks, they all started spilling out. Boxing is a hurt business. Everybody’s got a plan until you hit them. All the things that D’Amato had taught him, which he memorized and then reproduced in his media contacts.
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01:03:14
One of my favorite TV fights was him versus Marvis Frasier because it was such a terrifying execution.
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01:03:22
I’m giving away too much of the book, Joe. Ai mean, my my publisher would say, wait. Don’t tell them the whole book.
Speaker: 1
01:03:27
Come on. People are gonna buy it anyway. Don’t worry about that.
Speaker: 0
01:03:30
Sai Alex Wallow Alex Wallow and I lived five blocks apart on Upper Fifth Avenue in New York. And when we went to Upstate New York for the Tyson fights, of which there were several, we would always ride up in his, green Arya, and he knew the route. I mean, he would drive, play me his esoteric rock music. You ever heard of Cock Robin? Try him out sometime. No.
Speaker: 0
01:03:54
And, and so all the way up to Albany for the Marvis Frasier fight, Alex is saying to me, you know, I’m thinking of saying in the opening on camera that Mike will knock him out in the first round. Do you think that’s too audacious? And I said, well, Alex, you’re the expert. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:04:17
I’m just a throw in blow by blow guy who’s trying to get my feet wet here. I’m the last person who’s gonna tell you what it is you should say. So if you believe Mike is gonna knock him out in the first round and you’re confident saying that, first of all, no one’s gonna penalize you on Monday if you’re wrong.
Speaker: 0
01:04:34
Nobody’s gonna print some big headline that sai, Wallow was crazy or something like that. It’s it goes into the wash at that point. And second of all, if you’re right, you will get credit for it. If you’re right, Rudy Martzke will say so in USA Today. And so that’s our position for two thirds of the trip to Albany.
Speaker: 0
01:04:55
And now in the last, oh, 40 or 50 miles, he starts saying, what if I said he’s gonna knock him out in the first minute? Do you think that’s too brave? Same thing. Alex, if you believe he’s gonna knock him out in the first minute, go ahead and say he’s gonna knock him out in the first minute.
Speaker: 0
01:05:13
I’m not here to control you or tell you what to say. Say whatever you want to say. I think I’m gonna say that he’s gonna knock him out in the first minute. So the following day, we do rehearsal for the opening on camera, and he says he’ll knock him out in the first minute. Then when we do the live opening on camera for the show, he gets a little more cautious, and he pulls it back to there you are.
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01:05:35
Look at
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01:05:36
young Hampton Lampland.
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01:05:37
Yeah. Look at you.
Speaker: 0
01:05:39
Hair ported on the right. We’ll get to that in a moment. He, he pulls it back, and when we do it live on camera, he says, Mike will knock him out in the first round. Was it thirty three seconds or thirty one seconds? Yeah. I think it was thirty three seconds. And all the way back to New York, he just sai the morning, and he had groaning. Why in god’s name didn’t I say what I really believed?
Speaker: 0
01:06:05
And he was like, Alex, Alex, you said he’d not come out in the first round.
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01:06:08
And you were right.
Speaker: 0
01:06:09
Going to get credit for that. You were right. Yeah. But I could’ve gotten more credit if I’d said what I really believe.
Speaker: 1
01:06:16
That’s such a silly perspective.
Speaker: 0
01:06:17
You we talk about fighters freezing. Yeah. Marvis froze on Saturday. I mean, on on Bryden, the day before the fight.
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01:06:24
Well
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01:06:24
Marvis was frozen.
Speaker: 1
01:06:25
Well, we knew. We knew coming into that fight. We knew. It was a perfect fight for Mike to showcase because Marvis had the giant name because he was Joe Frazier’s sana, and Joe Frazier had been trash talking Ai. And It helped to create what ultimately became
Speaker: 0
01:06:41
Yeah. The myth Yeah. Of Mike Tyson. The notion that he was going to knock everybody out And it was in that way. So it’s an execution. Because of stuff like that that Douglas is a 42 to one underdog in Tokyo.
Speaker: 1
01:06:53
Yes. Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:06:54
When if you looked at the record for the preceding year, year and a half coming into Tokyo, Mike went the distance with James Bonecrusher Smith. Right. Mike went the distance with Tony Tucker. Right. Mike went the distance with James Quick Tillis. Yeah. There were scores at ringside in Upstate New York who had Tillis as the winner in the fight. He went to the last ten seconds with Jose Rivolta.
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01:07:15
He went the distance with Mitch Blood Green.
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01:07:18
Mhmm. What
Speaker: 0
01:07:19
did they all have in common? They were all taller than Mike. Mhmm. Some of them have a right hand that would come over the top where he would have difficulty seeing the delivery. And, when you get to Douglas, best athlete of the group, former college basketball player with good feet, had a big right hand.
Speaker: 0
01:07:39
I mean, looking back, pure logic, no way in the world Mike should be a 42 to one favorite against Buster Douglas.
Speaker: 1
01:07:46
But Buster Douglas had underperformed most of his career and had not been motivated, then his mother dies.
Speaker: 0
01:07:52
That’s correct. 100% correct, and you’re right on point for saying it at this moment.
Speaker: 1
01:07:57
Yeah. His mother died. And then And that lit him up. Lit him up and
Speaker: 0
01:08:02
never again. And Ai was at the height Yes. Of his differences with Robin Givens.
Speaker: 1
01:08:08
Right. Right. Constant turmoil and, yeah, and partying and and feeling invincible.
Speaker: 0
01:08:16
Nothing that can do more damage to a good man than the wrong woman. Right? Yeah. And she was the wrong woman.
Speaker: 1
01:08:22
She’s the wrong woman, period. Yeah. That was there’s there’s there’s certain women out there like that that they could tank your life. Yeah. And unfortunately
Speaker: 0
01:08:34
OJ used to say to me, if you sana to know what the daughter is gonna be like, look at the mother. And if you looked at her mother and the background relative to Dave Winfield and all of that Mhmm. Maybe you could have predicted. You probably could have. Or as Merchant sai, in our on camera ai to the Tubbs Tokyo fight, Tyson versus Tubbs in Tokyo. Mhmm. First fight I ever did on HBO.
Speaker: 0
01:08:59
Larry had a line before the fight where he said, this is the beginning of the Robin thing. Cuss had died. Jimmy Jacobs had died. No. Cuss hadn’t died.
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01:09:10
Jimmy Jacobs had died. At any rate, with Kevin
Speaker: 1
01:09:15
Kevin Rooney was already out.
Speaker: 0
01:09:16
Yeah. Right? That’s right. Yeah. Larry said, since the beginning of organized boxing, heavyweight champions have often consorted with actresses and never to their benefit. It’s a classic merchant line. Among many classic merchant lines. I love him.
Speaker: 1
01:09:41
That was one of the best things about you and Merchant and just the entire commentary team at HBO was that there’s you had these intelligent, articulate people involved in what many people think of as the most barbaric of all sports. Yes. So it defined it in a very different way. That’s the HBO way.
Speaker: 0
01:10:02
Yeah. Elevate it.
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01:10:03
It. Yeah.
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01:10:04
Yeah. And that
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01:10:04
certainly was elevated.
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01:10:05
Elevate and and and HBO’s executives were smart enough to see that you can treat it as an intellectual event. Yeah. And and if you’re doing it right, you’ll be away
Speaker: 1
01:10:15
with it. Be with the commentators. It it it frames everything. The same exact event with crude commentators is not the same experience because you don’t get that intelligent and articulate analysis and a guy like Larry Merchant who’d been around boxing for his entire life and had a deep understanding of it and you.
Speaker: 1
01:10:34
And then it’s even the funny back and forth banter between Larry and George Foreman when they would disagree on things. It was Brilliant.
Speaker: 0
01:10:41
Absolutely brilliant. And I’m very proud to say, not blowing my own horn, but Larry and George in particular, There’s a sports television columnist in the New York Daily News named Bob Raisman, r a I s s m a n. And at some point in that arc, Raisman wrote in his TV sports column in the Daily News, Lampley, Merchant, and Foreman are the greatest three man broadcasting team in the history of sports television.
Speaker: 0
01:11:11
Now think about that.
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01:11:13
That’s amazing.
Speaker: 0
01:11:16
This is not Monday Ai Football. This is HBO boxing. Right. Yeah. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:11:21
You know
Speaker: 0
01:11:21
what I mean? And so he was saying in effect, this is better than Gifford, Meh, and Coasell. Wow. And, you know, I was I was very, very flattered by that, you know, which I should have been.
Speaker: 1
01:11:33
Yeah. That’s incredible. Yeah. Having a great team like vatsal. And and it was also there was the flow where you guys had worked together so often.
Speaker: 0
01:11:42
You really knew. And there was the between rounds, though.
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01:11:47
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:11:47
What set Showtime and HBO apart from ABC, CBS, and NBC? No commercials.
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01:11:54
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:11:54
And and no commercials means you get one of the most meaningful and communicative parts of the narrative, which is what goes on in the corner between rounds. Right. So you’re watching Tyson Douglas, for instance, and you see these two novice trainers Right. Struggling with a condom filled with water Right.
Speaker: 1
01:12:16
Right. Right. To try to
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01:12:17
to try to do something to ease the swelling in his eye. Yeah. No end swell. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. I remember Ram Ray nearly fell off his chair when he saw that.
Speaker: 1
01:12:27
It’s just so hard to believe that you could achieve the highest level of combat sports, the heavyweight champion of the world, and yet have this really rank amateur corner.
Speaker: 0
01:12:39
There was so much that was taken for granted about Mike
Speaker: 1
01:12:42
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:12:43
During that stage of his career. The only person in that camp once D’Amato died, the only person and Jimmy died. The only person in that camp who was really aware of how vulnerable he could be was Mike. Mike Mike was a boxing genius. Mike knew much more than those guys about how to prepare for a fight, etcetera etcetera. Right. But, again, before Tokyo, he was distracted.
Speaker: 1
01:13:09
Yeah. He was distracted. And it just it comes with success, all the trappings. I mean, he was just constantly, you know You know Mike. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Ai nice.
Speaker: 0
01:13:21
Have you had him in here?
Speaker: 1
01:13:21
Oh, a couple times. Yeah.
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01:13:22
One of the most lovable people
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01:13:24
in the world. Death. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:13:25
He’s great. You can’t not love Mike if you know him.
Speaker: 1
01:13:28
No. If you know him I mean, the first time I met him, it’s it’s hard to believe he’s really in the room. You’re ai you’re like, I can’t believe he’s real. Like, he’s right there. This is Mike Tyson. Yeah. Meh as a child, I remember when I was a kid, when Sai ai, I guess I wasn’t a child. I’m only a year younger than him.
Speaker: 1
01:13:42
But when he lost to Buster Douglas, I didn’t watch it until after the fight. I watched a replay of it, and I still expected him to win. You know how crazy that is? That’s the kind of aura that Mike Tyson
Speaker: 0
01:13:58
in the paper and on the web that he’s lost, but you’re still expecting him to win.
Speaker: 1
01:14:01
I remember I heard about it in a gas station. Someone told me in a gas station. Ai can’t
Speaker: 0
01:14:07
believe this is true.
Speaker: 1
01:14:08
I was getting sai, and I heard, did you hear Mike Tyson got knocked down? And I remember pumping gas on, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, what? Like, Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyler. What? For real?
Speaker: 0
01:14:21
So we talked about the call of Forman Moore and where that call came from. The other call that is on that same level in terms of, you know, people remembering and stuff like that is that call. And you just came very close to identically articulating what my call was because, you know, I’m watching the rounds in Tokyo, and I’ve arrived in Tokyo with firm opinion that Mike is gonna knock this guy out in one, two, three rounds, something like that.
Speaker: 0
01:14:53
And as the rounds go on and you’re watching the debacle unfold, the, you know, water in the rubber glove to try to stop the swelling and stuff like that, you realize that the preparation might not be all there. And Douglas is getting more confident, and Douglas is landing his jab, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker: 1
01:15:11
And hooking off the jab.
Speaker: 0
01:15:12
And hooking off the jab, and Ai mean, it it people think that he knocked him out with a right hand. It was the left hook that that did the damage. The left hook was thunderous, and Mike stumbled to his side and then but at any rate, I’m sitting there in Tokyo. It’s 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning.
Speaker: 0
01:15:35
There are 34,000 people seated around me making no noise whatsoever. Right. The culture of a Japanese sports event. It’s as though they are at an opera, you know, and that’s just cultural. That’s the way they are.
Speaker: 0
01:15:48
And as that count is ai, five, six, seven, and it’s abundantly clear that Mike’s not gonna get up. And I’m thinking, oh my god. What am I gonna say about this? The very first live fight I ever attended was the biggest upset in boxing history. And now here in front of me, twelve, fourteen feet away, is the result that’s going to supplant that as the biggest upset in boxing history. Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:16:16
So what do I say? And I’ve told this story many times. If you’ve heard it, I apologize for repeating. But I was developing a golf relationship with the greatest actor of my generation, Jack Nicholson, who became a close friend and later served saved my career, but that’s another story.
Speaker: 0
01:16:36
And I had asked Jack on the golf course about two or three weeks before Tokyo. Sai, Jack, when you’re going to the set to deliver the fulcrum line in the movie, when you’re going to the set to do the one thing that everybody in the audience is going to remember, when you’re getting ready to go deliver, you can’t handle the truth.
Speaker: 0
01:16:57
What is it you have on your mind? What’s your mantra? He said, Lamp, same thing I’ve been saying to myself ever since I first went to acting class. Don’t overact. Sai I’m in Tokyo. The count reaches four or five, and I hear in the back of my mind Jack’s voice, don’t overact.
Speaker: 0
01:17:19
And that call became, Mike Tyson has been knocked out. In about that tone of voice, I wanted to make it as matter of fact as possible because there was nothing I could do to elevate it by screaming Right. Or shouting Right. Right. Or delivering any kind of window dressing, etcetera. It was what it was.
Speaker: 1
01:17:39
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:17:40
Mike Tyson has been knocked out. That was that.
Speaker: 1
01:17:43
I remember that. Yeah. Now that you said it, I remember that.
Speaker: 0
01:17:46
Well, thank you. I appreciate it because you
Speaker: 1
01:17:49
remember It was energetic, but matter of fact
Speaker: 0
01:17:52
Well, there it is. He’s he was it’s over. It’s over. Mike Dyson has been knocked out. Alright. So I did shout a little bit. Yeah. I did shout it a little bit. Alright. A little bit just a little bit. I ai myself too much credit for the matter of fact. But that, of course, was that’s my younger voice. It was a little bit ai know? That was what a what a Octavio Meiran was the name of the referee.
Speaker: 1
01:18:21
I just remember Buster Douglas winning that fight thinking, man, what what happens to him now? Now he’s
Speaker: 0
01:18:27
Well, what happens to him, of course, is that he goes on a celebration rampage. Yeah. He puts on, oh, I don’t know, forty, fifty pounds, something like that. He tries to train them off, but not effectively enough.
Speaker: 1
01:18:40
Then he gets knocked out.
Speaker: 0
01:18:41
He goes into the ring against Holyfield, and Holyfield delivers one left hook. Yeah. One perfect counter left hook in the first round, and we’re out of there.
Speaker: 1
01:18:49
Yeah. That’s what it was. It was a left hook? I thought it was
Speaker: 0
01:18:51
a right hand. Might have been a right hand.
Speaker: 1
01:18:53
I don’t remember. I could be wrong. See if you can find it.
Speaker: 0
01:18:55
Might have been a right hand. Well, they’ll ai it.
Speaker: 1
01:18:58
Yeah. Jamie will find it. But, yeah, he just never reached those heights again. That was it. He just never
Speaker: 0
01:19:07
I mean Money.
Speaker: 1
01:19:07
Yeah. I mean, also, like, the
Speaker: 0
01:19:09
Money. All the Money. Food.
Speaker: 1
01:19:11
Food. Yeah. He got real fat.
Speaker: 0
01:19:13
He was an addictive eater. Here it is. Okay. Let’s see.
Speaker: 1
01:19:16
On the right.
Speaker: 0
01:19:16
Right hand. You’re right. Yeah. Then there were then there was a left hook following, but the
Speaker: 1
01:19:21
right the
Speaker: 0
01:19:21
right hand is the one that did it.
Speaker: 1
01:19:23
I think the left hook missed.
Speaker: 0
01:19:24
Yeah. The left hook missed. You’re right. Yeah. Alright. So one for Rogan,
Speaker: 1
01:19:29
zero for Lampling. It’s it’s cemented in my mind because I remember what year was that?
Speaker: 0
01:19:37
Well, it’s 1990 when Buster knocks out Mike. Was it? Yeah. Not ’90.
Speaker: 1
01:19:44
No. No. That’d be earlier than that.
Speaker: 0
01:19:47
No. It was. It was it was ’90.
Speaker: 1
01:19:49
Well, it
Speaker: 0
01:19:49
was February 1990. Wow. February 10 in The United States, February 11 in Tokyo.
Speaker: 1
01:19:56
Boom. Okay. Right. And so this is probably ’91 then?
Speaker: 0
01:20:00
Then he It might have been ’90. Yeah. It’s the same Ai I I think it I think it was later in 1990.
Speaker: 1
01:20:06
Yeah. I just remember the you know, when when someone does something extraordinary and ai to the occasion, I always root on them. I always root for them, like, ai, he’s gonna turn his life around. He’s gonna be great.
Speaker: 0
01:20:17
So now you’re rooting for Buster to beat Holyfield.
Speaker: 1
01:20:19
Well, and also I was a giant Holyfield fan too, so it was one of those conflicted fights. And Holyfield, to me, was extraordinary because what he did with Mackie Shillstone in his training
Speaker: 0
01:20:29
10/25/1990. There it is. This ai, I was right.
Speaker: 1
01:20:33
Yeah. It was one of those things where Holyfield was one of the first guys that really embraced weightlifting. And, I remember as a a young fighter, I was always told if you lift weights, it’ll slow you down. Weights weights will make you stiff. Weights will slow you down. You should never lift weights. And so I listened to that, and Sai Ai never lifted weights.
Speaker: 1
01:20:52
And then, I remember watching Holyfield train for his heavyweight debut thinking, God. I’d remember I remember his fight with Dwight Muhammad Kawi. Meh that fight? Mhmm. Incredible ai.
Speaker: 1
01:21:05
Like, that was when he was a cruiserweight and I was thinking, how is this guy gonna go up to heavyweight? How is this gonna work? And then Strong mind.
Speaker: 0
01:21:12
Oh, yes. Very strong mind.
Speaker: 1
01:21:14
Un of course, Billy.
Speaker: 0
01:21:16
You wanna see Evander do something? Tell him he can’t do it.
Speaker: 1
01:21:18
Oh, for sure. Yeah. But also, one of the first applications of real modern science in regards to strength and conditioning. Yep. What Mackie Shillstone was doing was, like, very revolutionary. Yep. And to see him do all these crazy strength and cardio routines and and putting all that mass on and seeing all the doubters and naysayers.
Speaker: 0
01:21:38
So which other fighter looked at that and realized who Mackie was? Bernard Hopkins. Right. Genius.
Speaker: 1
01:21:46
He worked with quite a few fighters, didn’t he, Mackie? Ai believe Mackie worked with quite a few fighters after
Speaker: 0
01:21:51
that whole interview. Quite a few fighters.
Speaker: 1
01:21:52
Everybody saw, like, that the results were there. So Yeah. Everybody kinda changed their opinion on shah.
Speaker: 0
01:21:57
Did he work with any MMA guys? I don’t know. I don’t probably.
Speaker: 1
01:22:01
There’s probably a few
Speaker: 0
01:22:02
It makes sense. Yeah. I mean, MMA guys are led I
Speaker: 1
01:22:04
mean, this is with MMA, you have the grappling aspect of it. With without strength and conditioning, you really can’t compete. It’s not really possible at this day and age. Everyone uses strength and conditioning. There’s very few fighters that just train using skill, just just train skills.
Speaker: 1
01:22:21
Ai, George George Sana Pierre did that for a certain period of his career.
Speaker: 0
01:22:24
I wonder if there’s anybody left in boxing who who trains just using the gym skills. There were a lot of them when I was first involved in the sport who would never have touched a weight.
Speaker: 1
01:22:33
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:22:34
You know, they
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01:22:34
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:22:35
They ai totally to the notion that that was negative.
Speaker: 1
01:22:38
Right. And it the worst case I mean, they definitely did calisthenics, but that was it. It was just body weight exercises, you know, which is brings us to Crawford, which I think is really interesting. The Crawford Canelo fight.
Speaker: 0
01:22:52
Beyond interesting. Fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:22:54
Fascinating. Because how does Crawford compete with that size and, you know, we we have to ai, okay, well, when Canelo fought Floyd, it was a hundred and fifty two pounds. Right? So he had dropped down, which was a struggle for him, which is why Floyd was so brilliant in getting him to go down a hundred and fifty two because he knew he would be drained.
Speaker: 0
01:23:12
Fifty two or fifty four?
Speaker: 1
01:23:14
Well, the weight class, I believe, was fifty four, but I believe the clause in the contract for that fight was that he meh down to fifty two.
Speaker: 0
01:23:20
You’re ahead of me?
Speaker: 1
01:23:20
Let’s see if that’s true. Find out find out if that’s true. I’m pretty sure that that’s true that they had a fight at 100
Speaker: 0
01:23:24
I love fact checking on the fly.
Speaker: 1
01:23:26
Yeah. It’s interesting. That was a struggle. The 54 was a struggle. Now Canelo goes all the way up to 68 and then even to 75 and now back down to 68, whereas Crawford’s leapfrogging. He’s going he goes to
Speaker: 0
01:23:42
scoop the middleweight. Seven to 54 and now to 68. And the Madrigal fight in ’54 is 50.
Speaker: 1
01:23:50
Difficult fight. Yeah. Difficult fight. One fifty two.
Speaker: 0
01:23:53
52.
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01:23:53
You were twice weight.
Speaker: 0
01:23:55
Joe Rogan scores again.
Speaker: 1
01:23:56
Yeah. Well, I have a goofy memory. It it’s it works a lot of the time, but sometimes not. Ai sometimes it’s like
Speaker: 0
01:24:04
I don’t think you could do this podcast without having a spectacular memory.
Speaker: 1
01:24:08
Sometimes it’s super accurate and sometimes it’s just terrible. I don’t understand why. But, but certain things I do meh. And I do remember because of the weight cutting thing, because I remember thinking, like, what a brilliant move to get him to do that. The same thing that Gervonta Davis did with, Ryan Garcia. Yes. Like, you can’t rehydrate.
Speaker: 0
01:24:26
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:24:26
Like, which is like
Speaker: 0
01:24:27
No rehydration clause.
Speaker: 1
01:24:29
Sucker bet. That’s such a sucker bet. You’re gonna but it’s ai the same thing with Pacquiao taking the fight when his Well,
Speaker: 0
01:24:35
and some of that don’t you think some of that is Tank reading Ryan’s personality and playing him a little bit? Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:24:43
Yeah. You’re you’re fucking with him. Yeah. You’re giving other things
Speaker: 0
01:24:46
to Tank about. A brilliant con artist.
Speaker: 1
01:24:48
Oh, he’s so good. Yeah. He’s so good. And, boy, tyler Lamont Roach fight.
Speaker: 0
01:24:52
Oh. Well, that was a knockdown.
Speaker: 1
01:24:54
Oh, a 100% was a knockdown.
Speaker: 0
01:24:56
And that’s a You have to call that a knockdown. Dramatic mistake by Yes. The referee.
Speaker: 1
01:25:01
Without that, you have a decision victory for Roach, and he’s a superstar. Now you have this fucking draw
Speaker: 0
01:25:06
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:25:06
That they have to fight again. But ai, Gervonta knows what’s coming. They had fought in the amateurs. Correct?
Speaker: 0
01:25:12
They both have knowledge. Yes. You know, Roach knows that his counter punching can be effective Yes. Against Tank, and Tank knows that he has to make an adjustment if he’s
Speaker: 1
01:25:20
gonna land a power shot. Well, it’s also Tank is another guy that has experienced all the trappings of fame. All the success and the money and, you know, all the jewelry and all the craziness and the ladies and
Speaker: 0
01:25:35
And Roach hasn’t.
Speaker: 1
01:25:36
And Roach has not. And Roach is a hungry motherfucker who can really fight. Yep. He can really fight. And he should’ve got his flowers after that fight. And, you know, a lot of the boxing people ai, like, that was that was a knockdown. But forever in the history books, it’s not a knockdown.
Speaker: 1
01:25:51
When you take a punch to the face and then you take a knee, that is a fucking knockdown. Period. End of story. I don’t care if you got your hair fucking perm stuff ai your eyes.
Speaker: 0
01:26:00
Literary idiosyncrasy. Okay? And both of our sports, boxing and Meh, are littered throughout their history with these things that are egregiously unfair at the moment
Speaker: 1
01:26:13
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:26:14
But also prompt us to remember the fight Right. And and remember both fighters. If if you’re a fighter who has been victimized by a severe injustice in one of your fights, the audience is going to remember you sympathetically
Speaker: 1
01:26:27
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:26:28
And be more interested in your next fight. Absolutely. Sai this is an entertainment ai. Mhmm. And anything that contributes to your legend is ultimately going to pay you back somewhere down the road.
Speaker: 1
01:26:43
Yes. That’s true. There there’s definitely something to that. And then so Lamont will have a lot of fans on his side going to that side.
Speaker: 0
01:26:50
Big time. Yeah. In fact, I would put the fight in DC. Although Ai I I don’t think Tank would wanna do that. Is that fight scheduled? Not to my
Speaker: 1
01:27:00
knowledge. Ai to my awareness. Gervonta Ai.
Speaker: 0
01:27:02
I’m totally focused on Canelo Alvarez and, Terrence Crawford at this particular moment.
Speaker: 1
01:27:07
Are you calling that fight?
Speaker: 0
01:27:09
No. Alright. Least wait a minute. Let let me sai, I don’t know. You don’t ai? I don’t know. There was a there was a news conference in New York yesterday, and they announced that Max Kellerman is part of the broadcast team.
Speaker: 1
01:27:20
Okay. So so that’s only one person they’ve announced. Yeah. This is a Obviously, I’d love to call
Speaker: 0
01:27:25
the pipe, but I don’t know yet. August 16. Scheduled
Speaker: 1
01:27:28
for August 16. In Las Vegas. Wow. Boy, I might go to that.
Speaker: 0
01:27:33
I might go to that.
Speaker: 1
01:27:34
Maybe Ai go with you.
Speaker: 0
01:27:37
Maybe we should. That would be fun. Hey. We’re getting along really well here, aren’t we? For sure. Yeah. No. So I enjoy the conversation. It would be fun to go sit in a live fight, wouldn’t it?
Speaker: 1
01:27:46
Oh, no. Is that a is that a UFC weekend? Goddamn it. Let me check real quick because it might be. Yep. Shit. UFC in Chicago. Shah. Alright. I’ll call you later that night and
Speaker: 0
01:27:58
let you know. I’ll watch it.
Speaker: 1
01:28:00
I will have it on my phone. I’ll be I’ll set my phone up and have it there while the fight’s going on. Just
Speaker: 0
01:28:05
a ai. Looking forward to it. So who do you like in Canelo versus Crawford?
Speaker: 1
01:28:09
Well, I’m a giant Crawford fan because I think he’s the best switch hitter since Marvin Hagler.
Speaker: 0
01:28:13
I’m a giant Crawford fan because I called his coming out fight against Bryden Prescott. He’s special. And then various other stepping stones, throughout his career.
Speaker: 1
01:28:21
I also think he’s one of those guys that if you tell him he can’t do something, he wants to show you in shah.
Speaker: 0
01:28:26
Thousand percent. Absolutely right.
Speaker: 1
01:28:28
I also think Canelo is slowing down, and Canelo is a more of a one punch fighter now than the combination fighter he was when he was younger.
Speaker: 0
01:28:37
We’ll see. Not not meh ready to subscribe totally to that because, again, you’re talking about somebody who is stubborn.
Speaker: 1
01:28:46
Yeah. For sure.
Speaker: 0
01:28:47
Who wants to prove everything he can prove.
Speaker: 1
01:28:49
100%. I agree with that too. But I think there’s this there’s a like, in boxing and certainly in MMA, there’s a certain amount of years where a fighter can keep the RPMs up. And, you know, when they’re in the red ai. And I there’s there’s some people ai to the idea of nine years.
Speaker: 1
01:29:06
There’s nine years is the most that a a elite fighter in MMA has performed at their prime. I think that’s a bullshit number because I think it’s entirely dependent upon lifestyle, nutrition, discipline, physical attributes. There’s a lot of factors.
Speaker: 0
01:29:22
George Foreman won the heavyweight championship of the world in boxing at age 45.
Speaker: 1
01:29:25
True. But he took ten years off.
Speaker: 0
01:29:27
Yes. That’s exactly right.
Speaker: 1
01:29:28
Ai off. So you have to, like, factor in
Speaker: 0
01:29:30
But were the ten years off good or bad? Well Did they dull his reflexes, or did they actually allow his body to recover in such a way that Ai mean Right. You could debate that all night. All night.
Speaker: 1
01:29:40
And George is biologically very unusual. I mean, he had canned hams for fists. They were gigantic fists. And intellectually unusual
Speaker: 0
01:29:48
as we discussed before.
Speaker: 1
01:29:50
Yes. And, boy, you know, one of my favorite all time heavyweight wars was him and Ron Lyle.
Speaker: 0
01:29:55
That was one of his all time favorite heavyweight wars. You know? Yeah. He he loved he loved to reminisce about the Lyle fight. You know? That fight was crazy. Every fighter loves drama, and they love having been a part of drama. Yes. So George loved that.
Speaker: 1
01:30:10
That was an insane fight. Insane. All the knockdowns. Yep. Both guys rocked and hurt. Yep. Whew. And Ron Ai another one of those guys ai just kinda lost in the the history books. You know, people sort of forgot, except for that fight. You know, there’s a few of those guys that, like, people just kind of ever forgotten.
Speaker: 0
01:30:28
They attached them to one fight.
Speaker: 1
01:30:30
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:30:30
Because they didn’t ever have that shining moment again in their career. Yeah. God. Shah a
Speaker: 1
01:30:34
cruel game. What a cruel game,
Speaker: 0
01:30:36
you know. Ali Ali and Cleveland Williams. Sure. Same thing. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:30:41
Right. Cleveland Williams is a murderer. He was. Nasty knockout puncher.
Speaker: 0
01:30:45
Absolutely. But
Speaker: 1
01:30:46
Ali just boxed his face off and put him away.
Speaker: 0
01:30:48
That’s exactly right. Big
Speaker: 1
01:30:49
fat. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:30:50
That that was the one that caused a lot of people to realize, oh, Cassius Clay is a really legitimate, meaningful talent.
Speaker: 1
01:30:59
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:30:59
You know? Yeah. And that’s on the way to the first Liston fight.
Speaker: 1
01:31:03
Mhmm. Yeah. Special. It was a special fight. The first Liston fight was crazy. It was crazy. And also, the the crazy thing was there was something probably on Liston’s gloves. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:31:16
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:31:16
With God and Cassius There was
Speaker: 0
01:31:17
unquestionably something on Liston’s gloves. And Cassius, at one point, asked Dundee to cut his gloves off.
Speaker: 1
01:31:24
Mhmm. That’s right. That’s right.
Speaker: 0
01:31:25
Because he was blinded. Yeah. So I I think it’s the fifth round where he ran and and had to stay away because he was waiting for his eyes to clear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then by the seventh round, he knocks Liston down Yeah. And Liston effectively quits.
Speaker: 1
01:31:43
What a dirty business to put something on your gloves to get in someone’s eyes when you punch them. So crazy.
Speaker: 0
01:31:49
What a dirty business to load someone’s gloves with what amounts to cement Yeah. And send them in to fight Miguel Cotto in a pay per view in Las Vegas.
Speaker: 1
01:31:58
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. They they put holes in the gloves, removed some of the stuffing, and watered it down. And then he also did something to his hand ram as well. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:32:09
He was hitting Koto with bricks. Yeah. That’s all I know for sure. And and he and he could’ve killed him. Yeah. You know, he Koto went through a life threatening experience.
Speaker: 1
01:32:18
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:32:18
And I always, you know, don’t don’t fall in love with a fighter. You could not know Miguel without falling in love with him. He was a wonderful, sweet, great person. So I was very, very, deeply disturbed and upset and sentimental calling that fight that night, not because I knew that Margarita’s gloves were loaded.
Speaker: 0
01:32:41
I I didn’t I just knew that
Speaker: 1
01:32:42
didn’t know until the Michelle was getting beat.
Speaker: 0
01:32:44
We didn’t know until the Shane Mosley fight.
Speaker: 1
01:32:46
Right. That’s exactly right. Right. Shane Mosley’s I think And I meh, you know, walking away from Vegas with
Speaker: 0
01:32:51
a bad feeling after the Cotto fight. How could that happen to Miguel, etcetera, etcetera. And then it’s I don’t know. Several weeks later, maybe three months later when we’re in LA getting ready for, the Moseley versus, Margarito fight. And I hear in my headset, there’s a disturbance in Margarito’s dressing room. They’re making him take his gloves off and And ai that moment, it all comes together.
Speaker: 1
01:33:18
Yeah. That was a hand ram thing. I’m conflating these two stories in my mind with Louis Resto and, Billy Collins. Plaster Pass. Yes. That so Louis Resto was with Panama Lewis.
Speaker: 0
01:33:33
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:33:33
With Panama Lewis who famously gave that drink to Aaron Pryor. Yes. Yes. Get me the one that I fixed. And then Aaron Pryor goes out and knocks out Alexis Arguello, which is alleged to have been cocaine. A lot of people think it was co because Aaron then went to famously have a cocaine problem.
Speaker: 0
01:33:50
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:33:51
But the Louis Resto
Speaker: 0
01:33:53
I don’t see how cocaine could help you in a fight.
Speaker: 1
01:33:55
I really It’s a stimulant. It’s a stimulant.
Speaker: 0
01:33:58
Yeah. I guess you’re right. It’s a stimulant. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:34:00
If you’re exhausted and all of a sudden you get a bump and you ai up and you go out there and fuck them up, it could help you, certainly if you’re tired. Yeah. 100% it would help. Ruins come I’ve never done cocaine, but I’m just guessing.
Speaker: 0
01:34:11
It ruins a lot of other things. That’s all.
Speaker: 1
01:34:13
Oh, yeah. It does. But in that moment, I guess, you know, in that moment, especially if you’re a person who imbibes and you you you know, you’ve had a a history of cocaine. And then, you know, what does it do? It boosts up confidence and it’s a stimulant. I would and that Alexis Arguello fight.
Speaker: 0
01:34:29
Whoo. Phenomenal. Oh ai goodness. Phenomenal. And he was, you know, again, another great person. Yeah. Another really, I didn’t know Aaron all that well, but Alexis was lovable in every way.
Speaker: 1
01:34:41
Wasn’t he murdered? He was a politician in Nicaragua. Right? Does he was he murdered?
Speaker: 0
01:34:45
Yeah. Yeah. Nicaragua. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:34:49
Meh, the the so I was conflating those the the so with Margarito, I think it was just the ram where they had put plaster Paris in his ram. But Billy Collins junior and Louie Resto was a fight where Billy Collins was this up and coming ai, and he fought Louie Resto. And Louie Resto was, like, breaking his face open with every punch to keep
Speaker: 0
01:35:11
And there are photos that you can find on the web of columns that show that.
Speaker: 1
01:35:15
Yeah. Yes. And so Resto then when the fight was over, Billy Collins’ dad grabs Resto’s gloves and gloves and realize there’s no padding in the gloves. Right. And then Billy Collins’ career
Speaker: 0
01:35:27
is over, and he winds up drinking himself to death. He actually drive drove into a tree. Yeah. So we don’t know whether that was suicide or not?
Speaker: 1
01:35:37
We don’t know. No. But, you know, the guys he couldn’t see after that fight.
Speaker: 0
01:35:41
It’s a great story.
Speaker: 1
01:35:42
Were fucked.
Speaker: 0
01:35:42
I hope everybody who is listening to this will go to the web and pick up some of these things because you are touching on a lot of the most meaningful and poignant stories. Yeah. Yeah. There’s the photo right there of Billy, and there’s his dad in the photo.
Speaker: 1
01:35:57
Crazy. Just crazy. I mean, his vision was fucked for the rest of his life for as long as he lived after that. Never fought again. And no and everyone was so confused because they couldn’t believe that this guy, Louie Resto, was not known as being this big puncher, was just busting him up with every shot he landed.
Speaker: 1
01:36:16
It was confusing. It’s a dirty businessman. And Panama Lewis was he did some corner work with Mike Tyson as well. Remember? Like, later in Mike’s career when everything was kinda chaotic and he had all those wackadoos in his corner, Panama Lewis was, like, on the sidelines there, but wasn’t able to be officially a part of it because he was still banned?
Speaker: 0
01:36:37
Well, you know, Mike, by late in his career, had a very clear understanding of his vulnerabilities. Now Ai was a boxing ai, and he knew better than anybody that styles make fights and that there were certain stylistic matchups, which for him would be difficult. He he had spent a week training with Lennox Lewis when they were 14 years old, because Lewis’s Arnie Bem, his amateur trainer, had brought Lennox from the Toronto area to Canistota I mean, not to Canistota, but to Upstate New York, to the Catskills.
Speaker: 0
01:37:16
And, Mike and Lennox spent much of a week, maybe all of a week watching old black and white bite films on the wall, sleeping in the same room, training, and sometimes sparring every day.
Speaker: 1
01:37:31
Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:37:32
And so Mike had known Lennox for a long, long ai, by the time they met, 06/08/2002 in, Memphis. And I don’t I don’t know that he would subscribe exactly to me saying he knew what was coming, but I I think he had a pretty good idea. And you recall that at the first news conference, he ran across the stage and bit Lennox on the leg.
Speaker: 1
01:38:00
Yeah. He went crazy. Lennox claimed that
Speaker: 0
01:38:02
he drew blood through through the vatsal leg. Yes. And, and my interpretation of that at the time was he wants to get the fight canceled. He wants to get this fight wiped away.
Speaker: 1
01:38:16
Well, you gotta think this is also twelve years after the Buster Douglas loss. Yes. It’s a long time in boxing.
Speaker: 0
01:38:23
Long time and and a lot of trials and tribulation. Prison. Yep. You know, you didn’t Ai don’t I mean, you might maybe you get a little chance to train in prison, but
Speaker: 1
01:38:32
No.
Speaker: 0
01:38:32
Not the way you train in a boxing gym. No. So Well, you know so he paid a lot of prices for a lot of experiences.
Speaker: 1
01:38:40
Here it is. Yeah. I didn’t
Speaker: 0
01:38:44
know this happened with this one. Throws a right hand. I’m not sure he landed that right hand. Might have broken his hand if he’d landed it on Tyson’s jaw.
Speaker: 1
01:38:52
Crazy.
Speaker: 0
01:38:52
That’s the hard part about bare knuckles boxing. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:38:55
Oh, yeah. They break their hands all time.
Speaker: 0
01:38:56
You know why? Ai problem in MMA ai. Why gloves emerged? Gloves emerged because John o’Sullivan got tired of breaking his hands. Really? Yeah. He was a big proponent of of ai the scenes of going to gloves. And then, of course, in the first gloved prizefighting heavyweight championship fight, he loses to Corbett.
Speaker: 0
01:39:17
Because Corbett was a boxing scientist.
Speaker: 1
01:39:21
And back then, they probably had terrible medical treatment for bryden hands. Like, what did they do?
Speaker: 0
01:39:27
I don’t know. But I mean,
Speaker: 1
01:39:28
they didn’t have the kind of surgery that they have.
Speaker: 0
01:39:30
Certainly not the sophisticated surgeries that take place now. Yeah. Yeah. If there were any surgeries at all.
Speaker: 1
01:39:35
Yeah. They probably He
Speaker: 0
01:39:36
got tired of breaking his hands. Saloni comes this idea, this phenomenon of gloves. Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s do that. Wow. And then he loses to Corbett.
Speaker: 1
01:39:45
Wow. Ai was, watching a piece yesterday about, it was a YouTube video on Sugar Ray Robinson and his training, and the the type of training that Sugar Ray would do, and how phenomenal his dedication was. And if you think about a guy that, like, when he had his first loss, how many fights had he won? 120. You you know how crazy that is?
Speaker: 0
01:40:12
Yeah. Stop and think. I sort of have a sense of it.
Speaker: 1
01:40:15
Yeah. Stop and think about how insane that is.
Speaker: 0
01:40:18
Did you ever drink in Jimmy Glenn’s bar in New York? No. Jimmy’s Corner? Oh, that’s too bad. Jimmy Glenn was a really great, well known corner man who worked with Robinson, worked with Joe Louis, worked with a lot of really big name fighters, and he had a bar on 40 Fourth between Sixth And Seventh.
Speaker: 0
01:40:37
It’s speak. Still to this day, I think his son is running it now. I hope he still is. The ultimate boxing bar. The photographs on the wall. Oh, wow.
Speaker: 0
01:40:47
Oh, there we are.
Speaker: 1
01:40:48
Oh, what a cool little tyler. Jimmy’s Corner. Yeah. 40 Fourth between
Speaker: 0
01:40:52
Sixth And Seventh. There’s Jimmy. Gone? There’s Jimmy down to the left. Is it still there, or is it gone? The bar, I think, is still there. Jimmy’s gone. What a wonderful, wonderful, loving man. He was like an uncle to me, because I spent so much time in the arya just his his stories were fantastic because of the people with whom he worked.
Speaker: 1
01:41:15
Wow. That’s awesome. You gotta go sometime. I would love to. I’d love to go sometime. Sugar Ray Robinson was one of the first guys also that showed how effective being a great dancer.
Speaker: 0
01:41:27
My mother’s favorite fighter. Really? Yeah. And I told you that the first fight she ever sat me down to watch was Sugar Ray Robinson versus Bobolos.
Speaker: 1
01:41:34
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:41:35
And the last thing she said before she left the room and left me in front of a little TV set on a TV dinner tray was, Sugar Ray Robinson’s my favorite fighter because he dances while he fights.
Speaker: 1
01:41:48
Wow. And he did.
Speaker: 0
01:41:50
And he did? He did. He,
Speaker: 1
01:41:52
you know, there was the the thing about his training, you know, this, video that I was watching was so interesting to watch someone who’s really just ahead of the curve, like, above everybody. Like, no one really understood how to move like that. And then, of course, Cassius Clay, his favorite fighter, Sugar Ray Robinson.
Speaker: 0
01:42:11
100%. He’s
Speaker: 1
01:42:12
like a heavyweight version of Sugar Ray Robinson.
Speaker: 0
01:42:15
So what’s the greatest asset for any fighter? Is it his punching powers? Is it his hand speed? Is it his footwork? Or is it his intelligence? It’s the mind. It’s the mind. But It’s the willingness to accept what you need to accept and to see what you can do. Right. That’s what makes for great fighters.
Speaker: 1
01:42:32
And also the ability to objectively analyze your skills and recognize where you need to advance Right. What you need to do differently.
Speaker: 0
01:42:39
Because you have a trainer to help you with that. Yeah. Yeah. But you don’t have coaches per se the way you do in organized team sports and stuff like that.
Speaker: 1
01:42:47
At the
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01:42:47
end of the day, you’re the one. You gotta figure this out, you know.
Speaker: 1
01:42:51
And you can have, an idea of what’s effective. But until you see someone come along and do something totally different, you were like, that’s the where the innovators come in, where the real groundbreakers come in. Like, Sai bet before Sugar Ray Robinson, nobody like, you you had Willie Pep.
Speaker: 0
01:43:08
Right? You’ve mentioned what I think of as the modern supreme innovator earlier. Lomachenko. Yeah. Yeah. He recreated, his, you know, our approach to the sport.
Speaker: 1
01:43:20
Well, you see a lot of that now in MMA. You see a lot of footwork and movement and switching stances. It’s like a a fighter that can’t switch stances in MMA is kind of archaic because
Speaker: 0
01:43:33
you I think we’ll reach that point in boxing too. Right. And I think eventually as as time goes by.
Speaker: 1
01:43:38
Well, Hagler was an example of one of the first guys to be a switch hitter that people sort of dismissed.
Speaker: 0
01:43:43
So you just you earlier, we talked about Canelo versus Crawford.
Speaker: 1
01:43:47
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:43:48
Do you think Terence Crawford can beat Canelo Alvarez?
Speaker: 1
01:43:50
Yeah. I think he won. Okay. I don’t know if he’s going to win, but I think he can win.
Speaker: 0
01:43:54
Sai He’s going
Speaker: 1
01:43:55
to have to he’s going to have to box a brilliant fight. Okay. What kind of a fight?
Speaker: 0
01:44:01
I’m I I’m gonna get to that. I asked the great Larry Merchant, ninety ninety four years old, living on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica, looking out at the ocean, reflecting on all the amazing things he did. And I asked Larry, I said, do you think Terence Crawford has a beat has a chance to beat Canelo Alvarez?
Speaker: 0
01:44:21
And Larry said, Jim, did Ray Leonard get an official decision victory over Marvelous Marvin Hagler? And I said, yes. He did. He said, well, if Ray Leonard could beat Marvelous Marvin Hagler, then Terence Crawford can beat Canelo Alvarez. And I said, why do you say that? He said, same equation.
Speaker: 0
01:44:42
Get in, get out. Get in, get out. Yeah. Over and over and over. He’s got to figure the angles and the approaches that will allow him to step in, land to the body or occasionally upstairs, and then get out Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:44:57
Before he’s facing any damage. Right. That’s what Ray did so effectively against Hagler, and it frustrated Hagler. And the more you frustrate the opponent, the better off you are.
Speaker: 1
01:45:08
Yeah. Canelo has such unique skills. And one of the weird things that he does at very few people since Rocky Marciano does is he punches your arms.
Speaker: 0
01:45:17
Yes. He brutalizes your arms. He’s another brilliant guy. He has the greatest punch resistance in the sport. You know, we talked about it earlier. One knockout in the whole career
Speaker: 1
01:45:27
Knockdown.
Speaker: 0
01:45:28
And it wasn’t a knockdown. And it wasn’t really a knockdown in in my Right. Personal view. Sai because he didn’t touch the canvas. He’s never been on the canvas, and and we call it Chin. And I think that we kinda missed the point by calling it Chin because I used to be Canelo’s neighbor in Del Mar, California.
Speaker: 0
01:45:48
Used to run into Chepo, his senior trainer at the grocery store. I’d look into the cart and say, oh, he’s he’s eating tuna. And he sai, yes. And and he’s eating chicken, da da da. And, and so I also used to go down the hill from my house off of Via Meh La Valle in, Del Mar and watch him train at the equestrian center, where he would go to the equestrian center in the morning and do two and a half hours of hunter jumper riding before going to his gym in the afternoon to do three and a half hours of boxing training.
Speaker: 1
01:46:26
Hunter jumper riding? What is that?
Speaker: 0
01:46:28
Hunter Jumper is where you you go over jumps and you, With a horse? Yeah. On the horse.
Speaker: 1
01:46:34
Yeah. Why the fuck would you do that when you’re training for a fight? What if the horse falls?
Speaker: 0
01:46:39
He was riding horses since he was a little kid. He was skilled enough to do it. You control the height of the jumps. You say meh the jumps at 36 inches or 40 inches You know what the horse can do. It’s all about staying on the horse. And, and I asked him, you know, how can you do that?
Speaker: 0
01:46:57
And he said, everything I do in boxing is upper body, and everything I do, on this horse is lower body. And on on that basis, I am the one who theorizes that the reason you can’t knock him down is not because of his chin. It’s because of his legs. His base. You can’t get him off balance. He’s too strong from the waist down.
Speaker: 0
01:47:20
And, you know, if other fighters would pay attention to what Canelo does, they might go do a little horseback riding.
Speaker: 1
01:47:27
I wasn’t even aware then until you brought that up. That’s that’s
Speaker: 0
01:47:31
incredible. There he is with his horses.
Speaker: 1
01:47:35
That completely makes sense if you think about it. Squeezing with the lower legs, the core strength 100%.
Speaker: 0
01:47:43
Correct.
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01:47:43
The balance? The balance. Exactly.
Speaker: 0
01:47:46
The timing.
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01:47:47
All of it.
Speaker: 0
01:47:48
Yeah. I I trained hunter jumper for a couple years in the Really? Early nineties trying to please a wife who was a horse freak. Okay? And I I had a really great trainer, ai, the stables over next to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Fabulous trainer named Jonathan Ceraci. Hey, John. If you hear me.
Speaker: 0
01:48:12
And, I trained for, I don’t know, I wanna say three quarters of a year, riding hunter jumper. And I got to the point where I was jumping 36, 38 inch jumps, and I was riding quality horses, and I was doing pretty well. And one day after my training session, I was in the stall, combing the horse down, brushing to do the things the busy work that you’re supposed to do to be a part of it.
Speaker: 0
01:48:44
And Jonathan came in and said, how do you feel about your writing? I said, I think I’m doing pretty well, don’t you? He said, I think you’re doing really well. He said, but I think that this would probably be a great day for you to quit. I ai, quit.
Speaker: 0
01:48:59
What are you talking about? You just sai, I’m doing pretty well. He said, well, you’re doing pretty well because you love to do the fun stuff. You love the jumping, and you love the riding around the ring fast, etcetera, etcetera, but you don’t wanna do the busy work. You don’t want to do, what we call sitting trot. And the other things that help you to build your awareness and your command, of of what you do.
Speaker: 0
01:49:28
And the result is that you’re getting closer and closer to the stage at which something negative is going to happen. And the first time something negative happens, you’re not gonna be able to respond to it. So I think today would be a great day for you to quit. Woah. Ai. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:49:44
Did you listen to him?
Speaker: 0
01:49:45
I quit. I I went home and thought about it, and I thought he’s right. But wouldn’t
Speaker: 1
01:49:52
positive constructive advice being if you enjoy this, there’s some other stuff that you need to do.
Speaker: 0
01:49:57
Well, he I mean, he did say, look. I’m perfectly happy to keep training you if you will come and do the busy work that I need you to do to twenty to thirty minutes before you go out and and jump. But if you just wanna come here, sit on the saddle, and run and jump, you’re asking for trouble, and I’m not gonna be part of it. Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:50:17
Because, of course, if you fall off and I saw this one a couple ai. If you fall off, the horse can stomp you. Oh.
Speaker: 1
01:50:24
You get a hoof
Speaker: 0
01:50:25
on the chest or a hoof on the neck. Oh. And you’re in the hospital and you’re in big trouble.
Speaker: 1
01:50:31
If you’re lucky.
Speaker: 0
01:50:32
I saw it happen to a woman in the ring, a really good rider. Oh. So at the end of the day, you can’t do that. Yeah. There he is. Look at Canelo. Wow. Now that is that’s that’s a skill he has charried since his early childhood. That’s crazy. You
Speaker: 1
01:50:52
can’t knock
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01:50:53
him down.
Speaker: 1
01:50:54
That makes so much sense. Also, he’s got a square head.
Speaker: 0
01:50:58
Yeah. He’s he’s got to be and it’s got and it’s not a small head.
Speaker: 1
01:51:01
No. It’s not a
Speaker: 0
01:51:01
he’s got a but he’s he’s also got a brilliant mind.
Speaker: 1
01:51:05
Yeah. Alright. Clearly.
Speaker: 0
01:51:06
Give credit where credit is due.
Speaker: 1
01:51:07
No doubt. No doubt. I mean, the just the the evolution and the three fights with triple g. Triple g was one of my all time favorites. If you
Speaker: 0
01:51:15
can fight triple g and never be badly hurt Right. That’s a great point. That’s astonishing. Triple g never badly hurt him. Yeah. And he was destroying everybody else you put in his path. Everybody.
Speaker: 1
01:51:28
Yeah. Everybody.
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01:51:28
One of the heaviest punchers I ever saw.
Speaker: 1
01:51:31
And he would do weird stuff ai throw a a left hook over the top and hit the top of your head. Yep. He would throw a left hook like that. Yep. Like a looping over overhand left.
Speaker: 0
01:51:40
Ai the way, it’s very much like the shot that Douglas landed against Ai in the tenth round over the top with the left hand.
Speaker: 1
01:51:46
Yeah. But the way triple g would do it, it would be going down on you. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:51:50
Down on you. It’s weird. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:51:52
It was a weird punch. And he would hit you in the forehead, which is ai or the tempo, which is where a lot of people lose their equilibrium.
Speaker: 0
01:51:59
Well, whatever they do in Kazakhstan, it might be different from what they do in The United States.
Speaker: 1
01:52:03
No. He was special. He was very special. Another ai, we we gotta talk about Julio Cesar Chavez, who’s also one of my all time favorites. Julio Cesar Chavez in his ai, he would just systematically break people down and the volume.
Speaker: 0
01:52:19
Meh.
Speaker: 1
01:52:19
Constant constant attack and volume.
Speaker: 0
01:52:24
His volume volume was the real key. Yeah. Because his power shots did not look like hellacious power
Speaker: 1
01:52:30
shots. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:52:30
Okay? His left hook didn’t look all that devastating.
Speaker: 1
01:52:33
He wasn’t a one punch guy.
Speaker: 0
01:52:34
But it would hurt you. Yeah. You know, over time, he would break you down. Ai a magic Tyler fight. And then we go to the Taylor fight.
Speaker: 1
01:52:41
What is it? Two seconds before the final bell that the fight gets stopped? Yes. Larry Hazard stops it, and everybody wants to kill it?
Speaker: 0
01:52:48
Larry Hazard. It wasn’t? No. It was Richard Steele.
Speaker: 1
01:52:51
That’s right. Richard Steele. That’s right. Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:52:53
So you corrected me on one earlier, and now I got you.
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01:52:55
It was That’s right.
Speaker: 0
01:52:56
That was Richard Steele. And and And
Speaker: 1
01:52:59
he took a tremendous amount of grief for that.
Speaker: 0
01:53:01
And I think he deserved the grief. I thought it was a very bad stoppage. You had a an unbeaten American Olympic star who’s on the verge of his career defining victory. There’s no question at this moment that he has won the fight. When he stands up and Steele is counting, watch how he gets distracted when Luduba steps up on the ring apron.
Speaker: 0
01:53:23
And when he looks away from Steele, Steele uses that as his pretext to stop the fight Right. With two seconds left. Alright? Right. Giving Chavez a victory that he did not deserve. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:53:36
If if Ai crazy.
Speaker: 0
01:53:38
Duva had not stepped up on the apron and and distracted Meh in such a way that Meljorg looked away from Steele, then I think that Steele would have caught a lot more heat and wouldn’t have had any ballot pretext for stopping the fight.
Speaker: 1
01:53:54
What if that had been in the eighth round? Would you be
Speaker: 0
01:53:59
Ai goes on. With it? Fight goes on.
Speaker: 1
01:54:01
No. I Ai
Speaker: 0
01:54:01
mean, I’d I’d well, if that had been the eighth round, no. I still wouldn’t be okay.
Speaker: 1
01:54:06
Sai it’s but it’s the first knockdown.
Speaker: 0
01:54:08
It’s not as if they knocked him down three or four times.
Speaker: 1
01:54:11
Right. Melcher could won the fight. Yeah. No. It’s all it’s interesting, right, the subjective calls of stoppages by referees. Yeah. If things get very It’s one
Speaker: 0
01:54:19
of the toughest things.
Speaker: 1
01:54:20
It’s one
Speaker: 0
01:54:21
of the toughest things. It’s one of the toughest things. Bad stoppage, etcetera, etcetera. It’s one of the toughest things, and and I disciplined myself to be very, very careful about ever, criticizing a referee Yeah. In the moment. I’m not sure that I criticized Richard that night. But I’ll tell you one thing. This is, in some ways, part of the proof of the pudding.
Speaker: 0
01:54:40
Las Vegas boxing fans and Las Vegas boxing crowds are knowledgeable. Right? They’ve seen more of the sport than other people. They know what they’re watching. Richard was never again introduced in Las Vegas before a fight without the crowd booing.
Speaker: 1
01:54:56
Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:54:56
He was subjected to boos every time he was introduced Wow. Which shows you that a majority of the fans in that particular boxing capital agree with me that it was a bad stoppage.
Speaker: 1
01:55:09
Imagine what that did to his psyche. Like, every time you go out there, you have the whole crowd. I think he wound up committing suicide.
Speaker: 0
01:55:17
Steele? Yes. Those boos might have had something to do with that.
Speaker: 1
01:55:21
That’s what I was gonna say. Did Richard Steele commit suicide? Sai think he did.
Speaker: 0
01:55:25
That’s a great fact to check because I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:55:27
I think he did. And you gotta imagine the the ai of depression that would come just knowing that you altered the course of boxing history.
Speaker: 0
01:55:39
With that one momentary Yeah. Decision.
Speaker: 1
01:55:41
Yes. Yes. Yeah. But then Sai so
Speaker: 0
01:55:44
so Chavez Chavez is avenged in certain ways. Meh Loyah beat him twice.
Speaker: 1
01:55:51
Yeah. There’s one where he didn’t where he won, but he shouldn’t have won. Pernell Whitaker. Yeah. That’s right. Who’s another genius. Yes. One of the one of the greatest defensive boxers of all time. Like, certainly in the top Genius.
Speaker: 0
01:56:06
Certainly in the top five.
Speaker: 1
01:56:07
Yes. Genius. And And I remember that decision being called and I was like, what the fuck is this? That that one was nuts.
Speaker: 0
01:56:15
Oscar was Oscar, you know, and and he had a glamour image that was difficult to deal with at that time, you know. So, that kind of that kind of thing was part of the reason that my dear friend Fernando Vargas was in some ways jealous of Oscar. You know? What other fighter would get a decision over Pernell Whitaker in that circumstance?
Speaker: 1
01:56:37
But wasn’t it Chavez? Didn’t Chavez have a decision win over Pernell Whitaker as well?
Speaker: 0
01:56:42
Sure.
Speaker: 1
01:56:43
That’s that’s the one that I’m talking about.
Speaker: 0
01:56:44
The one that you’re talking about. Yeah. Ai thought you were talking about Delaware. So is
Speaker: 1
01:56:48
that one similar as well? Ai No. I don’t really recall that one
Speaker: 0
01:56:51
last month. Gets a decision win over Whitaker on a night when Larry and a lot of other experts thought that Whitaker deserved the decision.
Speaker: 1
01:56:58
Yeah. Well, Whitaker was, like, underappreciated because he was so defensively brilliant.
Speaker: 0
01:57:02
Well, sure.
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01:57:03
I meh, you know, they knocked a lot of guys out
Speaker: 0
01:57:05
of the world. Defenders never get as much credit as the I mean, Hopkins.
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01:57:10
Right.
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01:57:10
Hopkins had to become a media star late in his career Right. To really get credit for what he had done.
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01:57:15
Yeah. When you look back at your career and all the fights that you called And and think about the beginnings, and think about when they were trying to just get you out of the business and by giving you boxing. Like, it’s almost like it’s a very much a storybook tale.
Speaker: 0
01:57:35
Oh, yeah. It really is. But but the part of the reason for using It Happened as the title of the book is that there are so many circumstances in my career which are like that, counterintuitive, Somebody wanted to do something with me that turns in the other direction, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker: 0
01:57:54
That was not the first time that that that kind of thing had happened to me. The you know, my whole career begins when I win a talent hunt in 1974 to become one of the first two people ever to stand on the sideline of a college football game with a camera and a microphone.
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01:58:12
How do you do what is a talent hunt? How does that work?
Speaker: 0
01:58:15
So first of all, this emerges from the Munich massacre. Alright? This emerges from the nine, ten, eleven days of captivity, of the American athletes excuse me, the Israeli athletes, by Black September terrorists in Munich. And during that period of time, ABC is, of course, the broadcast ai for The United States.
Speaker: 0
01:58:41
And during that time, two reporters, Howard Cosell and Peter Jennings, are pushing the control room. How can we get more information? How can we get sound out of the dorm room? How can we get pictures from some adjoining building through the windows, etcetera, etcetera? And in trying to service the needs of those two reporters, Jennings and Cosell, ABC Sports learned things about radio frequency cameras and microphones, wireless cameras and ai, that they had not known before.
Speaker: 0
01:59:18
So they came back to New York, and they convened a meeting. This is after the seventy two Olympics. They convened a meeting among the sports division, the news division, and the engineering division to figure out, okay, now that we know these things, now that we’ve learned what we learned in Munich, what can we do with it?
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01:59:35
And one of the first ideas that gets adopted is we can put a reporter on the sideline of a football game. So in nineteen in 1974, Roone Arledge’s chief administrative assistant, a guy named Dick Ebersole, who later became a constant and meaningful factor in my career. Dick Ebersole takes two lieutenants out to conduct a search at 16 different college campuses, and they talk to a total of 432 college age or extremely close to college age candidates for this job.
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02:00:10
I am at first harvested out because I’m number 34 out of 36 on a 97 degree day in Birmingham, Alabama. I have driven overnight from Chapel Hill to get there. I’m wearing my best discount plaid suit. I look ridiculous in a pair of, shoes I bought with two and a half inch heels sai they’ll make me look taller.
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02:00:39
And and I go into the room and have the screening interview, and the screening interview is twelve minutes. And before and when we all have to draw numbers out of a fishbowl to determine in what order the interviews are gonna take place, and I’m number 34 out of 36. So I know I’m gonna have to sit around in the Parlum Meh House Hotel lobby for hours in Birmingham waiting to go in.
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02:01:03
And by the time I go in, I’m grinding my teeth. And, the first thing one of the other guys in the room, Terry Jastrow, says to me is, what do you think of our our idea here? What do you think of what we’re trying to do? And I couldn’t resist. I said, I think it’s the biggest crock of crap I ever heard in my life.
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02:01:24
And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, you tell us that you’re going around the country to interview 432 people for eight to ten minutes each. And on that basis, you’re going to choose what you describe as the face and voice of the American college student. He said, yeah. I said, I rest my case.
Speaker: 0
02:01:45
I think this is ridiculous load of crap, and I’m embarrassed that I drove from Chapel Hill overnight to be a part of this. Later, much later, I was shown the evaluation form on which Ebersole had written arrogant, abrasive, alienated, antagonistic. When I was finally chosen as one of the two people, that became known in the college football production truck as the poor a’s.
Speaker: 0
02:02:15
Every time I would bitch about something, every time I would get up strappers about something and raise my voice a little bit, there it is, the four a’s, arrogant, abrasive, alienated, antagonistic. But, you know, the bottom line was through a long and highly unusual process, I was the person who was chosen. Now what was ridiculous about it?
Speaker: 0
02:02:39
The most ridiculous thing ai it, which I’ve never really revealed until this year, the book, Media Appearances, this, the most prominent media appearance with your 19,000,000 followers, was that Rune Allich was still the dictatorial and canonized president of ABC Sports. And I when I was under 11 years old, maybe 10 or 11, 12, living in Hendersonville, North Carolina, had asked my mother while watching Ai Borula Sports one day, is this guy, Rune Orlidge, is he related to the Arya who live around the corner from us?
Speaker: 0
02:03:21
Yes. He’s their son. So I grew up around the corner from Arledge’s parents. I caddied for both his mother and father at the Hendersonville Golf And Country Club. And when I was finally the person chosen, counterintuitively because I was 25 instead of 22 and because I had already done a lot of sports broadcasting, this person was supposed to be completely fresh, when I get chosen, I meet Rune in the restroom at 1330 Sixth Avenue in New York.
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02:03:55
And, hi, Rune. I’m Jim Lamplio. Great to meet you, etcetera, etcetera. And as he’s going out of the restroom, I say, by the way, how’s your dad? And he turns around, quizzical expression, says, why would you ask a question like that?
Speaker: 0
02:04:08
I said, well, I guess nobody told you because probably nobody could have known, but I’m from Hendersonville originally, and I’ve caddied for both your mom and dad. In fact, my mother’s in the same bridge club with your mother. The famous red face turned white, and he said, don’t ever tell anybody that.
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02:04:26
Never ever reveal that to anyone. So, of course, now it can be revealed.
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02:04:31
And why would he want that revealed?
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02:04:34
That they had chosen out of 432 candidates the one who grew up around the street from his parents? He didn’t know. Well, but yeah. He could say he didn’t know and somebody might kick back and said at any rate, his his first instinct was to sai, don’t ever tell anybody that.
Speaker: 0
02:04:52
A long time has passed. Roon has passed. There are ai reporters everywhere now.
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02:04:57
Yeah.
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02:04:58
So, you know, I can very easily reveal and let you know that they accidentally chose the other accident was, they had already installed a guy from Stanford named Don Tolleson. And they knew that Tolleson was gonna be chosen. He was in the first batch of 16 people they talked to.
Speaker: 0
02:05:17
His credentials were unbelievable, and so they were dead set in their minds on choosing Don Tolleson all along. And, and now they were two, three weeks away from the first game, Four weeks away from the first game. It was August 8, and the first game was September 7. And on August 8, 1974, I ram at a rented beach house in Swan Corner, North Carolina with a friend of mine named Buck Gol Goldstein and his wife.
Speaker: 0
02:05:45
My wife Linda and I are there, and the phone on the wall rings. And to this day, I don’t know how Ebersole got that phone number because the house was rented in the name of Buck Goldstein. So Buck picks up the phone. Hello? Yeah. He’s right here. Jim, it’s Dick Ebersole. I asked, What is this? Hello? And Dick says, you know, I’m so glad I found you.
Speaker: 0
02:06:10
We are getting ready to announce the college age reporter thing, and we think we’ve settled settled on one person, but, Rune is a little concerned about putting on the air somebody who has never had any on air experience at all. And within that discussion, that brought us back to you.
Speaker: 0
02:06:30
Would you be willing to go to Birmingham, Alabama and do a a film, in those days, 16 millimeter film, do a film audition for us. And I said, what do you want me to do in Birmingham? He said, well, there’s a quarterback there named George Myra. He’s now with the Birmingham Meh of I think it was the World Football League. He’s already been busted out of the NFL, the AFL, Canada.
Speaker: 0
02:07:02
This is his last shot as a pro football quarterback, and we think it’s an interesting story, and we want you to go interview him. So, of course, they didn’t know that I had watched George Myra play all three years of his college career at the University of Miami. He was a huge childhood hero of mine.
Speaker: 0
02:07:22
I had once hitched a ride in his very dull beige, Ford Falcon, going to speak up basketball on the campus of the University of Miami. I knew more about George Ai than probably some members of his family did. I still had a number 10 green and orange George Meyer jersey in ai, closet in Chapel Hill.
Speaker: 0
02:07:46
So they they think they’re putting me on the spot here to send me to interview George Myra, and I’m gonna have to do a quick research job with no web in those days to find out what I need to ask this ai, and I know more about George Ai than people in his family. So I I go down to Birmingham. I’m laughing about it. I do the interview.
Speaker: 0
02:08:06
I go through all these things in his college career and stuff like that, his 40 experience, and send the film off to New York. And about a week before the first game, I meh a call and he said, you’re gonna be on the sideline. You’re gonna be we’re gonna have two college football reporters. You’re gonna be on one sideline. Don Tollefson will be, on the other.
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02:08:28
Roone feels a lot better about this because he can see that you have on camera performance skills and understand what you’re doing.
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02:08:36
Wow. What are the odds that they ai did not
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02:08:40
play there? The odds are astronomical. So good. The odds are beyond all belief. They could choose any story in the world they wanted me to do as an audition. They choose my childhood hero.
Speaker: 1
02:08:50
It kind of almost makes you feel like it’s meant to be. Correct.
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02:08:53
There’s there’s no other way to to describe it other than this was supposed to happen.
Speaker: 1
02:09:00
Yeah. Well, I think you’re the best ever. So if that that’s how it had to play out. That’s how it had to play out. And that’s
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02:09:07
and that’s how it played out.
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02:09:08
Speak thing? Did he kill did he commit suicide? Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry, Richard.
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02:09:14
Somebody else committed suicide. Ai, I mean Meh
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02:09:16
Hazard commit suicide?
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02:09:17
Richard’s dead. Larry Hazard’s still around. I’m pretty sure.
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02:09:20
Yeah. Larry Hazard is a athletic commissioner right now.
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02:09:22
New York State. Mitch Halpern.
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02:09:24
Mitch Halpern.
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02:09:24
Or New Jersey. Excuse me. New Jersey, not New York.
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02:09:27
Oh, Mitch Halpern committed suicide.
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02:09:29
Mitch Halpern committed suicide.
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02:09:32
Oh, that’s right. Alright.
Speaker: 0
02:09:34
So what so what is Mitch Halpern’s marker? Oh, Ai, you know, I covered it. There was a ai. Yeah. I covered it. It was it was one of mine. I can’t remember right off the top of my head, but yes.
Speaker: 1
02:09:46
But it was a very controversial fight. Right. Right? Yeah. A similar type situation.
Speaker: 0
02:09:50
Similar type thing. Something that stains your reputation Yeah.
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02:09:55
Going forward. My apologies to Richard Steele. I’m sorry.
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02:09:58
Halprin is, I believe, h a l p r I n. R h a l p e r I n.
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02:10:07
R n. What was the big controversial fight? Garcia
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02:10:13
Green. Can’t remember right now. I saw Rich Alperin referee a number of fights. You’re right. He did he did kill himself.
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02:10:20
Yeah.
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02:10:20
Yeah. I ram That’s right. Ai connecting to it now. And as soon as we find out exactly what the fight was, I’ll remember what
Speaker: 1
02:10:26
What’s the problem with, like the circumstances. Again, I told you my memory sucks sometimes.
Speaker: 0
02:10:31
Like it’s ai Joe. Joe, I’m 76 years old. Okay? My wife worries about whether I’m going to remember to put socks on in the morning. Really? Oh, Gabriel Willis. Yeah. Gabriel Willis and Jimmy Garcia. Oh, yeah. Oh my god. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:10:45
So one of the oldest dictums in the sport is that when one fighter dies, the other career dies too.
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02:10:52
Yeah.
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02:10:53
Gabe was absolutely never the same. Right. Right. And he allowed that fight to go on way longer than it should have. 05/06/1995. Never forget it. Hot day ai in back of Caesar’s Palace. My wife was sitting with Jack Nicholson. Can’t resist the name drop. You know, there were a lot of things going on, but Gabe was never ever the same after that. That’s true.
Speaker: 0
02:11:19
And he, you know, Gabe went to Colombia or Venezuela, I forget exactly where, for the funeral.
Speaker: 1
02:11:30
Oh, god. Look at this. And also Richard Greene committed suicide after the Mancini Kim fight. Similar situation. Yeah. Similar situation with Duk Koo Kim when he dies famously on national television, Ray Boom Boom Mancini. And then that referee wants him to commit suicide. Shah.
Speaker: 1
02:11:43
Mancini, and then that referee wants of committing suicide as well. It’s,
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02:11:51
you know, it’s a a haunting thing because it’s so intimate. You’re in the ring. You’re four or five feet away from these guys. You’re watching somebody land shot after shot after
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02:12:02
shot. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:12:03
You’re trying to gauge in your mind what is fair to the guy who’s taking the beating. Right. Because he can always land one big comeback counter punch Right.
Speaker: 1
02:12:11
And win the fight. And there’s been so many instances over time Many. Of guys recovering and coming back to win the ai. Many. Absolutely. Many fights that could have been stopped, and if they were, who knows what we’ve gotten with Over and
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02:12:24
over and over. So, Ai mean, you know, I was
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02:12:29
always
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02:12:31
disciplined and restrained about criticizing referees live because what they do is an extremely important and critical job. And sometimes they’re the only they’re the only safety barrier between life and death.
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02:12:47
I was just thinking of the Diego Corrales fight. Diego Corrales, who with that crazy fight where he’s knocked down multiple times then comes back to win by knockout.
Speaker: 0
02:12:56
Arguably the greatest fight of all time.
Speaker: 1
02:12:59
Who was it who was it against?
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02:13:00
Corrales versus Castillo. Name is right on the tip of my tongue. Corrales. Jose Luis Castillo. Is that not it?
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02:13:09
That might have been it.
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02:13:11
Castillo. It was it. Corrales Castillo.
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02:13:14
That was it.
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02:13:14
Jose Luis Castillo.
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02:13:15
In that’s that’s
Speaker: 0
02:13:16
Arguably the greatest fight of all time. It was a Ai fight, by the way. I was watching it on, TV. Easily could have been stopped. Easily could have been stopped.
Speaker: 1
02:13:25
100%. And Corrales comes back and wins.
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02:13:27
Yeah. Exactly.
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02:13:28
And I believe he died in a motorcycle accident.
Speaker: 0
02:13:30
Corrales died in a motorcycle accident. Yes. He did. Yeah. After after a lot of salacious revelations regarding his troubles with women. So but he was a sweet guy. You could not know Chico without loving him. Okay? And that’s true of many very violent fighters. You couldn’t know Chico without love him.
Speaker: 0
02:13:55
You couldn’t know Mike in the early days without loving him. Sai, the sport is filled with ironies. I’m sure Ai is exactly the same thing.
Speaker: 1
02:14:05
It is. It really is. Listen, I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I really appreciate it. It was really fun. Two hours just flew by.
Speaker: 0
02:14:13
Great.
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02:14:14
Yeah. Ai think
Speaker: 0
02:14:15
I’ve I’ve had a fantastic time with you, and, Ai really enjoyed every moment. And, yes, thank you. I’m glad we had a chance to talk.
Speaker: 1
02:14:24
And your book is available. It Happened. Did you do the voice over? Please tell me you did.
Speaker: 0
02:14:29
I did. Thank you. I did record the audiobook. Especially people people who heard the audiobook recommend it.
Speaker: 1
02:14:35
They you have to do it. With you, it has to be. Well Can you imagine if somebody else if they force somebody else to
Speaker: 0
02:14:42
Do you know the boxing writer Tom Hauser? Yes. So Hauser’s one of my dearest friends and and a great man, ai Ali’s primary biographer. Hauser has written a book about his mother, and he knows about my relationship with my mother. Ai the way, I read that you were raised by a single mother.
Speaker: 0
02:15:02
Is that correct?
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02:15:03
Well, I was stepfather. Stepfather.
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02:15:05
Yeah.
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02:15:06
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:15:07
I was raised by a double widow who never married again. Hauser has deep and great affection for his mother, so he wrote a book about his mother. And I’m thrilled to tell you that he called me and said, would you record the audio version of my book? Oh. So now I ram going to record, when I get back to Chapel Hill, Hauser’s book about his mother.
Speaker: 0
02:15:33
And
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02:15:33
That’s awesome.
Speaker: 0
02:15:34
If you ai hearing my book, then you’ll probably enjoy reading or hearing my book about Howser Smother two.
Speaker: 1
02:15:40
Well, I’m gonna listen to your book because I that’s how I absorb most of my ai.
Speaker: 0
02:15:43
Well, I’ve given away a lot of it too.
Speaker: 1
02:15:45
No. I don’t give a fuck. I’m listening to the whole damn thing. And I really hope that Netflix chooses you for the Canelo fight, the Canelo Crawford ai. That would be fantastic. Ai like I said, it was made me so happy to hear you on the the Madison Square, the Ai Square card.
Speaker: 0
02:15:59
Too bad the fights weren’t
Speaker: 1
02:16:01
Yeah. That that was true. But what do you think that is about? You know, because there’s a lot of people that have said that Turkey is spending so much money, that he’s spoiling these guys and they’re afraid to lose and that they’re fighting safe.
Speaker: 0
02:16:15
Far be it for me to say anything about Turkey. Okay? Yes. He anything negative. He put me back at ringside.
Speaker: 1
02:16:22
Right? I’m Ai very happy with that
Speaker: 0
02:16:24
he’s sana parochial level, I am a huge Turkey fan. Yes. I think that, more attention has to be paid to what real match matchmaking is. If you put two counterpunchers in front of each other, that’s not gonna make a fire. Right? Two attackers, guaranteed fire.
Speaker: 1
02:16:42
Right.
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02:16:43
An attacker versus a counterpuncher, that can also be really good. Some of the greatest fights ever have been attacker against counterpuncher.
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02:16:50
But Do they it’s a matchmaking issue?
Speaker: 0
02:16:53
I believe it was. That night, you had too many instances where two counter punchers were standing in front of each other and waiting for the other guy to, to move. I also think that Rolly Romero, very intelligently beefed up, put on strength, and went into the fight with, Garcia with a defensive frame of mind.
Speaker: 0
02:17:14
I’m gonna take the air out of this balloon. I’m gonna slow the punch rate down. I’m gonna land selectively when I want to, and I’m not gonna allow him to ever land a left hook. He did a good job of that.
Speaker: 1
02:17:28
He also land that left hook of his own. Exactly. And rocked him and dropped him, and I think that changed the the entire Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
02:17:35
Mentally changed the fight. You know? Garcia is in there trying to land his left hook, and all of a bryden, he gets dropped by one. That’s that’s got to affect your mentality.
Speaker: 1
02:17:44
What did you think about Devin Haney’s performance? Because I I felt like that was an example of a guy, like, coming off of the Ryan Garcia fight where he got dropped multiple times.
Speaker: 0
02:17:53
He needed to put on a show and he didn’t. He just looked different.
Speaker: 1
02:17:56
Yeah. He if you go back to him versus Loma Chaney. Of course,
Speaker: 0
02:17:59
there’s a lot of months in between, you know? Right. You know, so we it’s not as if he’s coming back two months later, and you can draw a straight line from the mentality
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02:18:09
Right.
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02:18:09
Of of his Garcia fight to what he’s doing in the ring that night. That doesn’t happen to be the case, but it was definitely a disappointing performance.
Speaker: 1
02:18:18
Well, you definitely can draw a line between a guy getting rocked and dropped on multiple occasions from a person that he was supposed to beat easily. Right. If you look at his boxing skill, you look at what he had done to Kombosus
Speaker: 0
02:18:32
Yes. I
Speaker: 1
02:18:32
mean, he just boxed his face off. He looked fantastic in that fight.
Speaker: 0
02:18:35
But you get you get the benefit of being able to say to yourself if you want to, okay. He tested positive for a performance enhancing drug. That’s the reason he knocked me down three times. You know? If you can convince yourself of that
Speaker: 1
02:18:50
The problem is once you start saying that, people start saying fuck you, and then the boos get louder.
Speaker: 0
02:18:56
I’m talking about saying it to yourself.
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02:18:58
You can’t say
Speaker: 0
02:18:58
I’m not talking about saying it, but no one But here’s the thing. You are a 100% correct about
Speaker: 1
02:19:03
saying No one says anything to themself anymore. If you say something publicly, the whole world responds now. It’s not like a guy living in 1976. This is the different world we’re living in.
Speaker: 0
02:19:15
Tell me about it. I’m sitting here on the Joe Rogan experience with the possibility that 19,000,000 people are talking, arya listening to me. I’m sure I’ve made a mistake or two.
Speaker: 1
02:19:24
Well, we both did. Yeah. It’s part of the fun. Just don’t read the comments. That’s the key. Jim Lampley, I appreciate you very meh, and I’m a Giant fan, and I’m I’m really glad you’re back in boxing. It means a lot to me. And your book, It Happened, A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television is available now. Thank you, sir.
Speaker: 0
02:19:41
I really enjoyed it. By Taylor Sheridan.
Speaker: 1
02:19:43
Meh, oh, I love that guy.
Speaker: 0
02:19:44
I have to take care of my friend. Has he been on the show? Yes.
Speaker: 1
02:19:47
Yes. I love him to death. He’s a good friend of mine.
Speaker: 0
02:19:50
Friend of mine too?
Speaker: 1
02:19:51
I love him.
Speaker: 0
02:19:51
Alright. So we have a mutual friend?
Speaker: 1
02:19:53
Yes, sir. Alright. This is a lot of fun. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker: 0
02:19:58
I appreciate it. Thank you. Alright. That was all, everybody.
Speaker: 1
02:20:00
Alright. I really appreciate it ai.
