Ep. 77: Jim Lampley

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You. Clear it off while you have it. Well, this is exciting. It is for me.

You can pick us off. Mr. Jim Lampley. How are you?

I'm good. How are you, Bill? We're teammates now. We are.

We're met under a common watch word. We play for the same giant corporation. You're one of the staples. How many years did HBO?

It will be 30 in early 2018. So 28 years at this point. I think you and Barry Topkin have announced every big boxy match that ever happened with one exception of Elle Michaels doing Hagerna. Well, I think it's big fights on Showtime.

I mean, I think that Steve Alberts would filter into the mix somewhere. I don't know. I don't know if it acknowledges. The number of fights that took place at Showtime.

But I think Barry and I have been particularly privileged in terms of getting to call big fights. So, all right. Let's go. Mount Rushmore of?

The top four. Boxers or? No, no, for the best fights. Let me guess.

Can I guess the top four? Sure. Go ahead. Chavez Taylor has to be tough.

Great fight. Yeah. Definitely. In fact, the legendary Knights episode regarding Chavez Taylor is to me the best of all the legendary Knights episodes.

It tells you everything you need to know about boxing from a human standpoint and witheringly so. I still feel like it was a good stoppage. I don't know how the referee is going to know. There's two seconds left.

I mean, you guess you could say like he could have heard the tap at 10 seconds. But if he's watching the guy and trying to save the guy's life, I don't think he has a clock in his head at that point. Well, of course, there's a red light that comes on in the corner. But he's looking at the pair from this position that he could have seen that.

But at the end of the day, it was a fascinating human situation because when Richard Steele stopped that fight, there was an instant debate that began, okay, did he have the best interest of the fighter at heart? And if so, was that decision the way to service it? Given that the fighter in question, Meljor Taylor has fought the fight of his life and has clearly beaten Julio Cesar Chavez to bring him into Chavez's long unbeaten record and give Taylor a pestle that he deeply wanted to win. And in the early days of that debate, I think most people agreed with you that Richard had made a humane stoppage and had done what ultimately could be seen as the right thing.

And then not too long after that, the following year, Richard Steele stopped a fight between Mike Tyson and Raiser Rutnik in Las Vegas, and which Rutnik was standing up, had not been down, Tyson had landed a couple of shots in the middle of the ring, but Rutnik did not appear to be in any big trouble. And everybody in the arena wondered, what happened? Why in the world did he stop that fight? And the moment that Richard stopped the Tyson Rutnik fight at what seemed to be the wrong moment to do so.

And that called back into question, what he had done with Chavez Taylor. And the whole lot of people in the ringside media corps who had at one point said, oh, Richard did the right thing, then turned around and said, no, he was doing business. And the business, of course, was Richard's wife had at one point been employed by Don King. He was known to be personally close with Don King.

Julio Cesar Chavez was a Don King commodity. So you have some questions now. It raised a lot of questions. And it bedabbled Richard for the rest of his refereeing career.

Now this is a Hall of Fame referee. But every single time that I was in Vegas and saw him introduced following the Tyson Rutnik stoppage, he was booed. And ultimately he stopped doing it, I think probably because he didn't want to hear the booze anymore. Foreman Moore, definitely.

And there's a huge personal impact there because George was my friend and my expert commentator in addition to being who he was. But I always say to people that I think you have to look very far and wide in the sports world to find a greater accomplishment than to win the heavyweight championship twice, 20 years apart as two different fighters and two different human beings. Because George was different in every way in 1994 from the guy who had been the champion in 1974. And he was particularly different in the way that he fought.

In his first career he was all intensity and all fire. In his second career he could have fought in pajamas. He shambled around the ring in this extremely relaxed style and seemed to throw punches only when he wanted to. But it was something that worked very well for him.

And he legitimately won the heavyweight championship twice. So yeah, that's definitely one of them. I always thought that there was a chance he might have been replaced by a different human being and that the 1970s, George Foreman is still in a basement somewhere. It is like a personality transplant.

It's truly a lie. It really does feel like two separate human beings. So when you're, you obviously love George Foreman, you're a friend, you did boxing with him and you're watching him win the title, but you're trying to be balanced as the play by play by guy. Well, I mean, what was that like?

The great story is that I had spoken with George about the fight for months and the dialogue was always the same. George, how are you going to find Michael Moore? Vander Holyfield couldn't find him in the ring. He's a moving south ball.

He has a kind of mobility that you haven't had to deal with. How are you going to make an impact here? And he would say you watch. At some point late in the fight he's going to come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out.

And he said that to me at least a half dozen times before the fight. And I thought, well, that's a pipe dream. That's his fantasy. He was going through and preparing for the fight if he didn't somehow believe that.

And you would think that in preparation for calling that fight I would at least give some credence to the notion that maybe this miracle could happen and that it would be useful to have something really meaningful to say about it. But no, I was so dismissive of George's chances that I did not think about it in any way. And of course for eight or nine rounds Moore's batting him around the ring like a tennis ball. And then all of a sudden things begin to change.

And sure enough, just as George predicted Moore comes and stands in front of him and lets him knock him out. And as George is going to the neutral corner and Joe Cortez is picking up the count and Moore's lying on the canvas, I'm sitting there thinking why didn't I prepare for this? How could I be so stupid that I didn't think of something, a capsule line, something that takes care of this moment? And I'm struggling for what to say and the words just popped out.

It happened. It happened. And what I was thinking when I was saying it happened, it happened. You think about what George said?

What George said to me. Exactly what George said to me all those months. It happened. It happened.

And in 30 years of calling fights that's my most memorable call. That's the one that fans are most likely to mimic or repeat or remember as something that I said. That's awesome. It is.

What about, I don't remember if you call this, but I would say there's 80% chance you did Tyson Douglas. I did call Tyson Douglas. That's kind of in the top four. Well it's way up there.

I think you're three, Rushmore selection so far, they're all there. They're very accurate. The thing about Tyson Douglas of course is that last year when I was preparing to call Mayweather Pacquiao, media people asked me over and over and over, will this be the most important or the most significant fight that you've called? And over and over and over?

I don't know. I don't know until they get into the ring and do whatever it is they're going to do because none of us really know. And the proof of that is that to this moment, the most significant prize fight I've ever called was an utterly perfunctory Mike Tyson title defense in Tokyo against a guy who didn't even have a breath of a chance and to which most American newspapers who still had boxing writers at the time didn't bother to send anybody because of the cost of sending somebody to Tokyo for a fight, the outcome of which was never in doubt in any way, shape and form. And I'll never forget the quiet in the arena.

You could hear the slapping of their shoes on the canvas in the first round. The degree to which Douglas was completely in control from the opening bell, land the jab, land the jab. Let's drop in the right hand here. Oh, yeah, that works too.

And by the fifth round or so, Larry, Ray and I, our jaws were dropped. And because of the quiet crowd and the bizarre atmosphere, 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning, we wound up calling that fight, more or less the way you do a golf tournament. I mean, we were speaking in hushed zones because it would have felt very awkward to deliver the high intensity, excited call that you would normally deliver for such an event here in the United States with a loud crowd. These people didn't make any noise at all.

And I'll never forget, there was a great sports publication back in the day called The National. I was going to say that's the only reason I knew about Buster Douglas was they had a huge profile of them before that fight. And the National, I was like, oh, this seems like a sweet guy. I hope he doesn't get killed.

And the guy who wrote television criticism for The National, Norman Chad, wrote on Monday, greatest sports telecast of the modern era, professionals at work demonstrating that you don't have to oversell. You don't have to project all of this faux excitement. They simply sat back almost as though they were whispering to us and gave us a constantly understated, beautiful telecast. And I'm thinking Norman, that was an accident.

That was not planned. That just happened by nature of the chemistry of the event. That's funny because when I started doing the NBA show for ESPN, my biggest problem, the first couple weeks or so, we're in that quiet stage, right? And then it's like, all right, guys, 10, nine, and then you're on.

And it's just quiet. It's like silent. And watching like magic, just be able to come to life and have this energy. I'm like, how do I do that?

Does there button you're pressed? And like you just kind of have to learn how to do it because the environment brings you down. So I can imagine like calling a box and think like that would be kind of... It was quite unusual.

And one of a kind. I mean, I've never had another boxing telecast that was in any way atmospherically like Tyson D'Airent. Today, I mean, they must have been at least making noise when he got knocked down finally. It's not their nature.

It's not the way they approach a sports event. They could have been at an opera. They could have been at the ballet. They sat silently.

And at one point during the telecast, Larry speculated during the telecast. Are they being silent because they're shocked at what they're seeing? Are they being silent because they don't really understand what they're seeing? Or are they being silent just because it's their nature at an indoor event to be silent?

And I think really it was the latter, not the first two. I think it was just that's the way they are and that's the way they watch that event. That was either my sophomore or junior or college. February 10, 1990.

Sophomore. We were at a party that we were actually throwing the party in somebody's apartment off campus and the TV was on with the fight. But you know, a party, things going by the fifth round. Every guy was over where the TV was.

By the seventh round, the music was off and we're listening to the audio. That was one of those I remember where I was events, which I don't think happens a lot in sports. And it was also one of the old time word of mouth events. I mean, you can only imagine how many telephone calls there were from one guy to another saying, are you watching this?

You would not believe what's going on. It was a blessing for you. It was HBO. It was HBO.

It was regular HBO. It was a blessing that went to the tenth round because I think there were probably quite a number of people who tuned in in the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth having been told by somebody in their network of friends, you've got to see what's going on here. I remember at some point during the fight, I realized I was just watching his corner and it seems so chaotic. And it was clear that he just had his two buddies.

Aaron Snowwell and Jay Bright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he just feels off. The moment when they brought out the rubber glove filled with water to try to treat the swelling on his eye.

And Ray Leonard was saying, oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like this. And I think Larry used the line, it's amateur hour. And Mike's corner. I mean, that played a big part of it.

But Douglas was an awesome shape and everything came together. Well, I was seeing the big night of Buster's life and everything came together for him. And of course, he proved in his next fight against the Amanda Holyfield that he was not on a human level capable of handling that responsibility over a long period of time. I still think that's the greatest upset of my lifetime.

I'm only 46, but I don't think I've ever been more shocked by anything than Tyson losing. Well, he was never going to lose. I didn't have all the inside info of all the stuff that was going on with him personally. The way the Jets put the Colts away in Super Bowl III was shocking.

Yes, I don't remember that. But I don't believe it was as shocking an upset as Douglas over Tyson. I think that was the most extreme upset that you and I have been alive to see in sports. Like when Ronda Rousey lost, everyone kind of reacted, oh my God, there was no way.

Tyson was a 30 to one favorite. You know, it was inconceivable. Like you wouldn't even bet the other side. Well, and Tyson had had a much longer period of time and a far greater number of fights in which to build up that aura of invincibility.

Ronda got her aura of invincibility from four or five appearances. Mike had cleaned out the heavyweight division to a certain degree. I had had one fight on ABC and HBO and Mike had been around a while before that went down. So I'm going to say for the fourth one and I'm not 100% sure you called this one either, but I assume he did.

The first Tyson Holyfield fight. No, that was on Showtime. So what was that? So what was that?

So I had to cut that down to 98% of you and bad targets. But it was a very meaningful fight. You know, there's your Steve Albert call as a matter of fact. Steve Albert, shout out.

Hello Steve, how are you? Yeah, he called the first. He called both of the Tyson Holyfield encounters. All right, so then I'm going to go Corouse Castillo.

Well, that was on Showtime also. Yeah, that was not now. I have the entire guy. The entire guy.

The entire Barera Morales trilogy. They're quite a number of tremendous fights, but Max Kellerman, whom you and I both greatly respect, believes that Corouse Castillo was the greatest fight of the last 20 years. And I actually, if you watch it, you know, it's pretty hard to go away from that. And again, there's a story about the referee in Chavez Taylor, what Tony Weeks has to deal with in the 10th round of Corouse Castillo.

I don't know if any referee has ever had to make so many critical decisions within such a short timeframe as Tony had to make during that round. It built his reputation as a referee, and ultimately it helps to make even more colorful the dramatic outcome of the fight. So is that forward? Did we leave somebody?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a pretty good Mount Rushmore, and I don't think the guys at Time Warner slash HBO are going to be too terribly upset that we include Corouse Castillo. I can't believe that wasn't HBO.

Well, I think we should make it. You should just call it retroactively. We did you involve that one. The crowns Castillo was amazing.

I mean, that was like, I was sitting at home watching it on TV just where you were. Just oh my God. The Tyson thing. So you got, if you started HBO in 1988, you caught it.

Kind of when it was starting to peter out a little bit, although we didn't know. Well, actually it starts before then because I first started calling fights in 1986 at ABC. And the reason- Well, you had a couple, yeah. The reason that I was asked to call fights at ABC was that Cocell had stopped in 83.

Text cop. They had Cast about trying to find somebody to be the regular fight caller. Michaels did a brilliant job with Hagler Hearns, but his schedule was such that there was no way he was going to be able to do all the Saturday afternoon fights on wide world of sports. They brought down a guy named Don Chevrolet from Canada for a while.

Keith Jackson called some fights. I happened to be in an executive suite watching a closed circuit feed of Hagler Hearns talking to an ABC sports executive named Alex Wallow who was in charge of the boxing telly guy. And I was standing and talking to Alex and about midway through that unbelievable three round extravaganza he turned to me and said, wow, you know a lot about boxing. And I said, well, you know, when I was a kid it was kind of my favorite sport.

And he instantly said, how come you never told us? Why have you never said anything about this? And I just gave him a blank look. Like, surely you know the answer to that.

When Cocell was Cocell, he called all the fights. He didn't have an expert commentator. No, he else worked with him. The power was jealous enough of his turf that I always figured if I uttered the word boxing anywhere near the building, I would be raised.

And that would be the end of that. So I did all the things that I did in the first several years at ABC Sports. And I never said a word about boxing. So when you started ABC like 24?

I was 74. So I've been there almost a dozen years by the time Alex Wallow says me. You know, how come you didn't tell us about boxing? And they asked me to go down to Colify into a can, Colify into a tape machine in Atlantic City.

And the reason for the urgency was we've just signed to a contract this 19-year-old heavyweight from upstate New York who is going to be the next sensation of the division and his name is Mike Tyson. So the first fight I ever called on television was Mike Tyson versus Jesse Ferguson, February 22, 1986 in Glens Falls, New York. And that's the fight after which Mike legendarily said to the end-of-the-ring interviewer, I was trying to drive his nosebone into his brain. Customado taught me that when you throw the uppercut, you should be trying to drive the other guy's nosebone into his brain.

And so, you know, a star was born. The personality began to emerge. And I called his first, I think, five fights on ABC. I used to be Alex.

I used to be a fan of the answer. I was the answer. I was the answer. I was the answer to my commentator.

Alex was breaking a sudden. And I owe him everything with regard to my boxing commentary career because before I ever called a fight, before I went to Glens Falls, New York to call Mike Tyson and Jesse Ferguson, Alex would make me come to his apartment which was five blocks away from my apartment in New York City. And I would have to go for three, four hours at a time over and over and over to watch boxing and Alex instructed me on how to see a fight. And I mean literally- So what were the instructions?

All the tiny details of, okay, watch when the South Paw faces off against the conventional fighter, how their front feet touch. Watch the number of times that the front feet overlap and one guy steps on top of the other guy's foot. Watch how they grapple for the space and each guy tries to get his front foot outside of the other guy. Watch how when they're on the inside against the ropes, a guy will hold on the side away from where the referee is standing.

All sorts of details. What corner men do? What cut men do? How they do it?

Et cetera, et cetera. He scooled me in every detail of seeing fights before I was allowed to actually call one on the air. So to this day, I can't call a fight without thinking of Alex because he mentored me in how to do it. Wow.

I'm 41 years in because I'm a child of the 70s and Ali was on web world of sports and they would show either the replays of his fights or some crappy fight he would have. That's when I started going all the way through and Tyson, you know, to me that's the pinnacle of just... Well, you know, the Tyson era, which ultimately becomes the Tyson Holyfield, Lenox Lewis era, is one of the two richest, most people call it the second richest era in the history of heavyweight boxing. The richest era of heavyweight boxing, of course, is Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Borman.

That's amazing. All the other guys who surrounded them at that time. And if you're a baby boomer like me, you have this sort of instinctive belief that, oh, that's the way the division is always supposed to be. I mean, I can't tell you how many times people have come to me over the years and say, why doesn't the heavyweight division have the kind of glamor it did when I was a kid?

And I was watching Ali and Forman and Frazier and all that. And I have to say to them, well, that was only one time in 125 years of loved prize fighting. Most of the time, it's the way you've seen it recently where there's one overwhelmingly dominant champion and a bunch of guys who are sort of satellites to him who don't have identity and none of them can actually beat him. You know, Jack Dempsey went three years without defending the championship because there was nobody legitimate for him to fight.

Joe Lewis fought what ultimately writers called the bum of the month club because none of them could compete with him. And, you know, that's how he racked up 25 consecutive title defenses in the heavyweight division. He didn't face the kind of competition that that guy's faced in either the Ali era or the Tyson Lewis Holyfield era. The Tyson, I think for me was just I've never been more excited to watch, you know, in the hour leading up to a fight for any other boxer.

But since Ali, then Tyson just like, oh my God, this is another one. Well, there was that intensity. There was that palpable sense of menace. There was the.

The studs in the city of the guy who, you know, wore a towel with a hole in it around his neck and had no socks and everybody loved that. It was though Mike had come straight from the street to the ring. And what ultimately it leads to is I think one of the most misunderstood personalities of all time because because, you know, the machine around him ultimately creates the notion of the baddest man on the planet. And Mike feels an instinctive need to live up to the title of the baddest man on the planet, when really who he truly was and is now again is the shy kid on the roof with the pigeons, the kid who's a little bit afraid of social contact and a little bit afraid of public exposure and to a certain degree just wants to be left alone and who has an age-entility that would never have fit with the persona of the baddest man on the planet.

And now Mike is able to be himself, but he had to fight a long battle. He had to give up a lot and he had to lose several times to get to the point where people could accept the fact that he wasn't the person they thought he was. It's interesting because I always thought he was so much more self-aware than he got credit for even as all that stuff was going on. He kind of understood, he was kind of stuck in the place that just the world had decided he's our big bad medicine boxer.

So then he would kind of try to play it up sometimes because that's what people wanted from him. I always felt like he always understood what was going on. And I think he did him so interesting. I think he had enormous self-awareness, which to a certain degree he hid from the public because it wouldn't fit his situation.

And then when you get to the stage of his career where everybody focuses on the fact that he bit Evander Holyfield's ear, he actually bit Evander's ear twice in that fight. But it wasn't just that he was Evander Holyfield's ear. He hit the referee in Scotland. He tested positive for marijuana in Michigan.

He tried to break Franz Boetas' arm. He ran across the stage and bit Lennox Lewis in the leg. I could cite various other incidents. He was trying to get out of boxing.

He was trying to bring an end to his career because he didn't want to face the ultimate humiliation of actually having to go in the ring against Lennox and be embarrassed the way that he knew he would. And I used to say this on talk radio shows to people. I would say Mike is trying to get himself banned from boxing. Mike doesn't really want to be the best heavyweight in the world anymore.

You have to understand that what he's doing is not what you think it's about. And people would say to me, how can you say that? And Mike would kill you if you heard you say that, et cetera. And I would say to them, no, no.

Mike would pat me on the back for saying this because he knows this a lot better than you do. And several years went by during his showtime period when we didn't see each other and we didn't speak to each other. But one day I interviewed him for a television show that we were doing at HBO. It was the first time I'd seen him in a long time.

And he turned to me just before we did the interview. And he said, you know, the guy that I used to be back in the day when you and I were together, I don't even know who that guy is. And that validated everything that I had thought all those years about him. And yes, you're right.

He had self-awareness that the public didn't see. You were talking about the Ali era. I think the more we get away from it, it feels like a historical fluke because it wasn't just the guys. Everyone always mentions the same guys, right?

It's like Ali, Frazier, Forman, Norton. But you also had this whole second level of dudes. And that's the reason why I think Ali is in the shape of now because from that Forman fight, the Frazier fight, but then he fought all these other fights against guys like Shavers. Ron Lyle had him, you know, he was ahead on the cards in the 11th round and spinks twice.

And he had this all these other second generation guys. It was actually a pretty good era for heavyweight boxing. Everyone's like, home, sweetie fight. Hey, Jerry Quarry was a real talent.

Yeah. Jerry Quarry was a real talent. Yeah. You know, lots of these guys were very big punches.

Cleveland Williams was a legendary, you know, sort of jailhouse roller-punch. Yeah, he had a bullet hole in his belly. That's a problem for boxing if the body punches. Well, the bullets were out there.

One of the things that the laymen sometimes fails to get about boxing, you know, you see the giant shot to the jaw and a guy goes down unconscious and you think, okay, nothing hurts like head punches. Fighters will tell you nothing hurts like body punches. Body punches do way more damage to the fighter over the course of the fight in the ring than a few headshots here and there. They train themselves to take punches to the head.

You can't train yourself to take a liver shot. You can't train yourself to be hit right on the kidney. You can't train yourself to take a shot right to the heart and your internal organs suffer damage over a period of time. Now, why is Ali the way he is right now?

Well, first of all, all of us are born with a certain chemistry. All of us have a certain gene structure. A guy like George Foreman could have 80 fights, take tremendous punishment in the ring, didn't phase in one bit. You know, there's no slurring.

There's no sign of any nervous disorder. There's, you know, there's nothing to show that George was in the ring for all of that havoc. Ali, different story. Frazier, different story.

Most of them are going to show the wear and tear. But my favorite body puncher who never gets mentioned ever in this discussion, and he didn't really last the long, but Jerry Cooney had a great liver punch. Jerry Cooney had a great left to sit in the bar. Tremendous, and listen.

I love Jerry Cooney. He just, I had time for him. I only saw him a couple of times, but I think he would have to say Rocky Marciano was a maybe most affected body puncher ever in the heavyweight division because he won his fights with body punching. And, you know, he was a grinder who broke people up gradually over the course of the fight.

Which guy scares you the most right now who's active and who's, who's fine? I mean, I think, you know, there are two. I don't mean it's scary, but just like when you watch, you're like, oh God, he might tell us to do that. The two most dangerous fighters in the world are going to get up in in a circuit couple of it.

I always say, in instances where one fighter dies as the result of the action in the ring, usually two careers die, because it's extremely difficult once you've been in the ring with somebody and he died to go back in and have the same kind of menace and the same kind of. No one has abandoned that you had before. Two people have done it. To my knowledge.

One was Sugar Ray Robinson. Sugar Ray Robinson, through a left hook that led to the death of a fighter named Jimmy Doyle and went right past it. It never affected his career. He was the same Sugar Ray Robinson after Doyle died as he was before Doyle died.

We have like 250 fights. More than crazy. Yeah. Sergey Kovalev has already killed a man.

What? He's already killed a former Russian amateur teammate of his named Roman Simikov. Kovalev won't talk about it. He'll say nothing about it.

It was about, I don't know, 10 fights. Eight, 10 fights ago, something like that. And just as was the case with Ray Robinson, Kovalev has gone right past that. It did not diminish his ring violence in any way.

He's still just as violent a fighter as he was before that. And he's as capable of hurting you as any man alive as is Golovkin. They both have tremendous power. They both have craft.

And they both know how to do what they do in the ring. I don't think Canelo fights, I know HBO really wants the Canelo Golovkin fight. I know they really, really want it. I know you want it.

I know I want it. I think it's at least another year before Canelo gets in there. It's interesting. I had matchup for him.

We just taped the next episode of the fight game today at Ares tomorrow night on HBO. And I asked him when's the night. So that would be Wednesday night. So when people are listening to this, that night fight game.

That's right. March 16th. So I asked Max Kellerman. I said at what point does GGG Canelo, like Mayweather Pacquiao before it, become not a giant attraction to which we're looking forward, but a millstone around the neck of the sport that demonstrates boxing's inability to get out of its own way.

And his answer was if it has not happened by the first weekend in May next year, Cinco DeMaya weekend next year, 2017. Then at that point, the sell-by date has passed and the public will begin to get disgusted with the whole notion of seeing GGG Canelo because you'll begin to come to the conclusion that maybe it's not going to happen. Canelo says to me that he wants the fight, I hope he's telling the truth. You know damn good and well, Canelo wants the fight.

He's the larger man. So yes, it's the hope of everybody in the sport that it will take place. It is the fight. There is no other fight on the table that matches that for Majesty, although Andre Ward versus Sergey Kovalev comes pretty close.

It's just that Ward doesn't have the same kind of crowd appeal that Canelo has. And can you imagine if Ward, most people don't follow boxing just for the big fights in that? Can you imagine if Ward was an NBA player? Let's say he was, I don't know, Russell Westbrook.

And he's just not playing. And you don't know, I guess Derek- And he chose to be a little bit smart. Is it any player who chooses to play only 25 games a year or something like that? Is that what you're saying?

And he's just like, no, I'm going to leave again. Where you going? No, I'm going to come back. Well, he's a professional.

Well, he's a professional. He's a total perfectionist. And Andre's going to fight when every condition lines up in such a way that it satisfies him that he has a fair enough playing field that he wants to fight. And if it's anything short of that, he's not going to.

He describes that as principle. Some people describe it as reluctance to go ahead and apply his trade. I think it's his right and his privilege to protect his body in any way that he wants. But everybody has to respond in some way.

He's no longer on the top five pound for pound list on the fight game because my point of view is you have to be more active. You have to be more interested in proving that you're one of the five top fighters in the sport or else you don't belong on the list. And he would be number one on the list if you were fighting regularly because he hadn't lost a fight since he's 12 years old and he has pretty much incomparable skills. But until Andre decides that all those skills deserve to be shown to the public on a regular basis, I can't rank him among the top five pound for pound.

It's not much different than how Floyd played the last ten years. I mean, Floyd always was trying to be in the best situation for him with his fights. But the difference is he would actually fight. Yeah, Floyd took the fights.

He fought more frequently. He fought in an even more self-retective style than Andre. Yes. You know, Andre's an inside fighter.

He wants to get in your chest and develop offense with odd abrupt angles on the inside. No other fighter can do it exactly the way he does. But he's in the pocket. So he's in harm's way.

Floyd didn't stay in the pocket all that much. It was hard to find him. So he wasn't going to get tagged as often as Andre's going to get tagged. Nobody can tag Andre solidly.

That hasn't happened. But he still takes more punishment during the fight than Floyd did. Do you think Mayweather had a fight that people will be talking about 50 years from now? No.

Isn't that weird? Well, he's the best fighter in the last 12 years. I can't really remember a single fight he had that I was excited during that much. I know, I guess if there were people in this discussion who were alive when Willie Pep was fighting, they could point to one or two and say, well, Pep had a great fight against X.

You know, as a person who called both of the Castillo fights, I'll always remember the first Jose Luis Castillo fight as the fight in which Floyd was most threatened, you know, seemed to be in the most trouble. But none of his fights against top name opponents are truly memorable fights because his whole game was to let the air out of the balloon. You know, Floyd won his fights by eliminating any damage, any mayhem, any of the kind of stuff that make you and me put a fight on the Mount Rushmore of boxing. Yeah, I think when every boxer they go away, you end up remembering not just the fights, but one or two pieces about what it was like to watch them fight, right?

And for me, it seemed Floyd. I was lucky to see him in person a couple of times. And by the third round, the other guy would just kind of, he just kind of knew, it was like, I'm not going to be able to hit this guy. And you could just see his body change.

And I think that's for me, over and over again, Floyd sucked the life out of the other guy in a way. I don't really remember considering he wasn't like beating the shit out of the guy, right? But it was just, it was almost like, not only you're not going to hit me, but I'm just going to repeat the hit you in the face in a way that you're not going to get knocked out, but you probably will in a couple rounds, but your destiny is coming. And then it would just kill the guy.

So many people, hundreds, maybe thousands of people stopped me in the street, on airplanes, and shopping centers before last year's Mayweather Packout fight to say, I'm so excited about the fight. And you're like, why? I'm so excited. Why?

Yeah. Tell me why? Well, I think it's going to be a great fight. Really?

How many Floyd made the fights have you seen? Have you ever seen a great fight? Yeah, yeah, but this is Packout. Well, five years ago, I would have agreed with you.

But this Manny Packout hasn't knocked anybody out since 2009. Well, Mike has ruined him, too. Exactly. What is it you're thinking?

Well, you know, when you get knocked out cold like that for a minute, I just don't think you're the same. I really don't. I don't think you're ever the same after that. I know the argument.

I've seen guys who've come back from dramatic knockouts to fight well and fight at something near their peak again. Like 90%. But Manny was already diminished before Marquez knocked him out. So that's just, it's further fuel for the fire.

Did we ever get a good test of Marquez's urine after that fight or no? Well, drug testing and boxing is, you know, let's face it. You have drug testing and boxing runs from the sublime to the ridiculous. The sublime is Margaret Goodman's organization called Vata, Voluntary Anti-Doping Association.

The only legitimate drug testing service in the world which uses carbon isotope ratio testing are a test for every single battery of tests. Now, the significance of carbon isotope ratio test is that it will catch synthetic testosterone creams which disappear from the system in 24 hours for any and all other tests. You'll only catch that with the CIRT and only Vata uses it. So when fighters are testing with Vata, I can legitimately say to my friends and colleagues from other sports that boxing has the best drug testing in the world.

But when we're relying on a state commission to do a post-fight urine test, you know, within 24 hours after the fight and that's the only thing that they're going to do, then they're going to be in its utterly useless. You know, the performance enhancing drug use is likely to take place in training camp well before the fight takes place. And anybody who can't mask or eliminate the traces of performance enhancing drugs given the time frame that exists between a training camp or boxing and when the fight actually takes place doesn't know what he's doing. Anybody ought to be able to do that.

So by and large, I think boxing, drug testing is impotent except when Vata is involved, in which case it's very powerful. It's is it even conceivable to fix boxing at this point? I've just given up mentally even thinking about it. What was Larry Merchant's great line?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I can fix it. I can't kill it.

I don't know. I don't know if I can fix it. Can't kill it. I can't fix it.

I can't fix it. Can't kill it. I mean, one thing that I say to anyone and everyone who integrates the sport is as long as human beings walk on this planet, men are going to fight men for money. Somehow or another.

The only question is how is it administered? Who administers it? And who are the guys who are allowed to fight against each other? But it's going to take place.

Somewhere, somehow. So you need legitimate governance. That's a responsible approach. Never having.

It's never happened. And it's never happened. That's exactly right. Performance enhancing drug use runs right up there.

Yeah as well. Yeah, well I mean just from the case of it feels like somebody's in charge Well, they make the top people fight against the top people But of course that's way the prize money. So the winner gets more and all that stuff More like the NFL model in the sense that you know any given Sunday top guys are gonna fight top guys, etc But of course what that eliminates for them is the pinnacle event when everybody has four or five losses You can't put together Mayweather Paco because the public wants to see people rise up way above the normal universe And then get together in some kind of summit meeting And that's where you get the you know the million by or the two million by pay-per-view or in the case of Mayweather Paco the 4.4 million by pay-per-view amazing UFC will never be able to construct an event like that as long as they use the model they're using I'm not saying it's wrong I think you know there are intelligent reasons for them to do what they do but we're always gonna have the bigger showcase events when they happen On the other hand you could say UFC is gonna have what? 15 to 16 events a year that there people the people who buy them always know it's a certain level of quality right and that's What they're doing.

Yeah, and that's why they're trying to ground rule double every time Whereas boxing can have the occasional just grand slam 4.4 million paper And it's a lesser number of rounds and they are shorter rounds and it's more violent so it suits Cyber era attention spans better than the 12 round fight does there are a lot of reasons why for young people at this moment You have see is probably more popular than boxing but you know, we're not we're not going away We're not evaporating from the landscape We still have a certain cache which goes with 125 years of love prize fighting existence and all of the Sociopolitical impact that our fighters have had it's oh, I agree with you I don't think it ever goes away. I think the thing that worries me a little bit for the future boxing is somebody who's always loved it is Just what happens if there's not enough stars like even you saw it last year? What was the most memorable big fight last year? It was made with a packet right?

Yeah, which is a fight We knew was going to be terrible like I had a chance to go and I would I would say to go to Spurs Clippers game 7 I just knew it was gonna be a better sporty event. Well, you know at HBO We we capitalized on one pretty audacious experiment Yeah, which was to try to turn a Filipino prize fighter in the lower weight classes who barely spoke English when he first came to these shores Into a crossover pay-per-view star and it worked and it worked because he has a unique personality It worked because he was willing to go on late-night talk shows and sing stupid and sip at American songs It worked for a lot of different reasons, but it worked now We're engaged in a very similar experiment, which may or may not work and that is can you take Eastern European stars with hard-bitten Eastern European backgrounds Who barely speak English and turn them into giant pay-per-view stars in America? And I'm talking about gonna I'd love can insert a couple of them and both of them understand that they can't let the language limitation hold them back Unlike Canelo who doesn't want to speak English in public until he's absolutely certain that he's going to speak it fairly flawlessly I love can and cover that they just go ahead and they they realize that the way they mangle English is Charming not off-putting. I mean fans love the things that can I he says whether they make any sense at all and And they adopt it, you know and have a good boy nation You know all of the phrases he used that that became a part of the mantra for his fans And I hope that canelo in particular will recognize what can I be and Sergey are doing and go ahead?

You don't have to speak perfect English canelo you just have to get across to the audience what your personality is Can I he has done that brilliantly the problem is canelo is not even in the remotely in the class of those guys I don't think probably not as good now. No, it certainly doesn't certainly doesn't have the kind of instant knockout power that both Gluv can and cover love have no I think those guys I think guys the decade goes on I just think people need the one or two great boxers in their life at all times It's almost like how you need a great TV show to why you need fundamental things I think people are always gonna gravitate to whoever the unbeatable boxers and it doesn't matter where there's from and and we you know We're cult sport and and my argument I mean you're better positioned to deal with this giant question But my argument is that all sports are cult sports now in the United States with the sole exception of national football League football and maybe for a few minutes March Madness, but college basketball is a cult sport It's not a general audience sport major league baseball is no longer to me a general audience sport It's a cult sport I think the NBA has a chance to get there just because of the under 25 people that grew up with the NBA being their favorite sport And as those people become adults, I wonder if that's gonna compound it might happen But but right now I think you would agree that there Yeah, the NBA does not have the kind of broad audience appeal and marketing power that the NFL has no nothing else does Only the NFL occupies that niche mask our racing is a cult sport an extremely popular cult sport But still a cult sport and we are to and and what we thrive on is the repetition of our audience the fact that our fans can't get it out of Their blood so they're gonna keep coming back and they're gonna watch chocolate She took on zealous even though you know, he's from Nicaragua And they're gonna watch gonna out he'll up and even those from package I mean Kazakhstan and and so on and so forth all the way through the ranks of our fighters and every once in a while a top American is going to emerge whether it's Keith Thurman or Danny Garcia on the other side of the political dividing line or whether it's Terence Crawford who's on our side of the political dividing line one of those three guys is going to emerge as a very top American fighter an Inheritor to a certain degree to to Floyd and and the public will latch on to them because they want to see an American star I think as the years go by I think sugar a has become a more and more of sugar a letter becoming more and more of an An obloy you think like a guy who wasn't heavyweight American born who was as charismatic as he was who fought really great I mean sugar is my guy on bias, but You know a couple of the greatest fights we've had in the last 30 years Well, it was true in the meantime, ideological foil So you had Marvel's Marvin Harvey Hearms he had he had all of the right kinds of guys to fight against and he emerged at a moment when the American amateur boxing program was still very strong and American amateur fighters went to the Olympics with legitimate chances to win gold medals The last American to win a gold medal at the Olympics was Andre Ward in 2004 And that's a that's a severe deficit. I mean that's that's something that really hurts us because to this day That's where talent development takes place. I mean you watch a guy like Vasilio Masehenko Ultra sophisticated audience people can understand who Lomachenko is and appreciate him.

He's from Ukraine. He doesn't yet speak English He's maybe the most well-schooled fighter of all time and his skill level is so off the board It just boggles the mind, but it's very hard to get the public to understand Hey, you need to watch Vasilio Machenko because they don't know they don't know him at all And and if he you know if he had fought against Americans in the Olympics if we'd had American amateur stars We're fighting at the moment when Lomachenko won two gold medals They would know him better, but they don't know him at all because there's no reason to watch American fighters fighting at the Olympics They're not a part of the competition Let's take a quick break to talk about sling TV college basketballs in full swing You might be like take the producer you're figuring out Which one of your friends will invite you over to watch games because you don't have cable or you're saving up to spend a lot of cash on drinks You can watch the sports bar or worst of all you're wasting hours looking for a shady live stream Oh, I hate those shady live streams. There's a better cheaper option. Sink TV is the best way to watch games live Just $20 a month yet more than 20 live channels including AMC adults swim and more importantly this month T&T TBS and true TV.

They're all there You can watch live basketball you can watch March Madness You can also add on channel packs like the sports extra package for just five dollars a month extra no installation No extra gear, no annual contacts, no BS All you need is an internet connection start your seven day free trial at sling.com slash Simmons for the best of live TV on your tablet phone laptop, Roku, fire TV or Xbox Might even see my own employer on that package restrictions they apply sling.com slash Simmons and since we're here Let's talk about our buddies at MailChimp If you're just getting started or if you're already building a growing business MailChimp makes it easier to connect with your customers and sell more stuff Totally free to get started. No expiring trial. No credit card required more sophisticated marketers can go with MailChimp Pro It's the only email platform with multi-variant testing you can create and test out the eight different email campaigns within intuitive easy to use interface Maybe this would say mark or Rubio's campaign We're using MailChimp right now at the ringer. We used it to launch our new newsletter for the ringer.

Thanks to MailChimp We are heading I think we've passed it 150,000 subscribers in less than a month unbelievable our first two newsletters were wearing success great new content in there We loved it When we start sending emails about our 20% off t-shirts with tates face on them We will be MailChimp. Tati ready for that. You know make fun Thanks to MailChimp for helping me and everyone at the ringer build their audience It's incredibly easy to use check them out at MailChimp.com and now back to me and Jim Lampley How often do people mention concussions to you because in football it's now the constant theme of you think about it during games It's a thing off the game CT all the stuff in boxing which your goal is to punch the other guy potentially until he falls down And it's kind of just oh that's boxing that's how it works And the same thing with UFC and all these other sports does that even is it a topic that comes up to you at dinner parties or wherever? Absolutely where I live in San Diego.

I have two very good friends who are attorneys We're both involved in the giant collective class action suit against the NFL So they talk about it with me all the time and radio talk show hosts will out of ask about it too And the point that I always make is you know you have to understand We're talking about two different things because when you go into a boxing gym to learn how to fight first thing that A trainer is going to teach you is how to throw a left jab and a right cross And then once you've learned how to throw one too pretty shortly after that They're going to start teaching you how to move your head And they're trying to start teaching you how to avoid getting hit nobody in football or hockey is trying to avoid getting hit They're out there operating under the illusion that the hard helmet is going to help them And they are flying around using their heads as weapons they are inviting CTE A lot of fighters are going to wind up with those symptoms But it isn't because they asked for it It isn't because they went into the ring and sought to get hit Fighters go from the opposite perspective If I can get through 12 rounds and nobody lands a big shot on my head That's better A hockey player he's out there you know flying at people and football players are the same way And somebody has deluded them into believing that the helmet protects them When you know as well as I do that a brain splash is a brain splash whether you're wearing a helmet or not I don't believe the helmet is of any protection whatsoever In fact when I was hosting college football at ABC back in the early 80s 1982 or 1983 I did a feature piece for my studio football show at ABC about lawsuits in the helmet business And the difficulty that Riddell and bike and other helmet makers were having Because of civil litigation at that time And I remember sitting in the studio and saying that the solution to the problem Was to go back to the soft leather helmets that we used to see at Ohio State and Michigan Back in the early 50s which had a soft leather pad in the middle of the top of the crown of the helmet And that if you went back to using those kinds of helmets people would tackle with their shoulders And the problem wouldn't exist to the degree that it does Nobody ever paid any attention to that of course They're still flying around using hard helmets and the concussion problem appears to me to be getting worse and worse Do you ever see a future of boxing? Professional boxing having headgear? No professional boxing? I don't either Professional boxing couldn't possibly thrive and wouldn't exist without headgear And I'll say this It's Riddell It's uh it's dehumanizing in a certain way But I've covered hundreds maybe thousands of prize fighters And I am 100% certain that I've never met one who didn't know the risk Who did not understand what he was doing You know they're like people who climb the sides of tall buildings and wash the windows for a living Or go down into coal mines and earn their living that way They're giving up their bodies to feed their families That's a blue collar ethic That we in the white collar world don't really accept or understand But if you live in the blue collar world you understand what that is Every day you give up your body to feed your family That's what fighters do And that's the thing with Floyd Mayweather When he gets criticized about it he doesn't take a pun that he doesn't want to mix it up And he's gonna get out of boxing with more brain cells that he started with Than just about any superstar ever right?

And that's completely his right and his privilege And I admire the artistry that he projected in the ring But as a fan of competition I wanted to see better competition Yeah I think all of us that love boxing have never totally reconciled the whole like Like Pecu I got knocked out for a minute You know and you think like when he's 70 he's gonna be feeling that You know that's the equivalent of just if he crashed his car He crashed his car no telephone pole at 50 miles an hour You know and that's one of those things where it's like Alright I've been watching this for 40 years I know what it's about I'm gonna put that aside I'm still gonna enjoy this But like a 10% of me feels like a hypocrite right? Well yes and by the way you know you're watching the fight I'm calling it and I'm earning a living from it Yeah so I've dealt with that feeling of I don't want to say guilt that's too big a term That sense of disquiet That goes with the fact that I earn my living Covering and glorifying something where people risk their lives And give up their bodies piece by piece So that's why we have to respect them That's why we have to honor them for what they do And that's why we have to do everything we can within the limitations that exist In the sport to try to make it as safe and as productive And as humane over the long term as it can possibly be Boxers need a retirement program Boxers need medical insurance There are lots of things that should be done You know I've gone back and forth over and over in my head About the notion of a federal commission But at the end of the day it's a responsibility If we're going to allow people to go into the ring and do this For our entertainment We really should do a better job of protecting them Alright I have two random questions And then what time is it? We've been going for a while Favorite box movie ever? Favorite boxing movie ever Well that's interesting You know body and soul Don't wave back The professional, the setup Those are great movies that I could watch over and over and over More recently Rocky 1, Rocky 4, Creed is very good Where you go Rocky 4 over Rocky 3?

I could be confusing them Which one? Rocky 4 was Drago, Rocky 3 was Mr. T and Hulk Hogan I go Rocky 4 I love Rocky 4 I like that international flavor And you know it was prescient in the sense that the Clichcos hadn't come along At the moment when Dolph Lundgren was playing Yvonne Drego It was a little prescient Right, it was And Clevver Lang was basically Mike Tyson You know like less, more loquacious But more loquacious mentality behind him Sweet like Mike How did movies have you been in for a vaccine? I've been about, I don't know You've been a couple of rockers Six or eight Yeah and two of the Rocky 1s And I was in two this year Yeah, Sal Po and Creed And I must tell you I was so fascinated and pleased There's a guy named Andrew O'Hare Who writes politics and film criticism for Salon He's one of my favorite opinion columnists Brilliant writer And when the Oscar nominations came out He was writing his critique of the Oscar nominations And O'Hare Wrote, he said I have a lot of friends who think that Creed Should have been nominated He said to be honest with you I think both Creed and South Paul were worthy of best picture nominations That's pretty stunning Wow You know and I was thinking to myself Wow, what if I had been in two movies in the same year And both of them were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award Of course, of course they're not But you know as I go through the list of my favorite boxing movies I think both Creed and South Paul would be On a best 10 list for sure I thought the boxing scenes in Creed were incredibly well done And I thought they were I thought it was really well directed And I thought it should have been nominated Did you find those boxing scenes to be more graphic and violent Than you've seen before in movie boxing?

It wasn't it was just how they did the camera And how they did it with one shot for three minutes Almost like they were doing a play I just watching it I saw in the theater Well first I watched it on my iPad Because I was interviewing Mike Bichard And then I saw in the theater And I was trying to figure out how they cut it I was like there's no way they did that in one Well here's what I was told And this is a fascinating story And you'd have to get it from the principles to be certain But this is what I was told By people around those movies Jake Gyllenhaal fell in love with boxing He went into the gym It seems like most actors do And they hit the box if they all love it They identify with the fighters They identify with the uphill fight The struggle etc etc So Gyllenhaal predictably fell in love with boxing When he went into the gym And when he and Antoine Fuqua, the director of Southball Were getting ready to shoot the scenes Gyllenhaal came to Fuqua and said I want to get hit I want to allow myself to be hit in the ring And the beauty of that of course is that If Gyllenhaal is going to allow himself to be hit Then the other guys with whom he's in the ring Have to allow themselves to be hit So lo and behold The boxing scenes for Southball were remarkably graphic Remarkably violent And the reason was that Gyllenhaal allowed himself to be hit So what I was told Was that on about the second or third day Of the creed shoot Sylvester went to Michael Bee And said Michael Bee Oh this is true He told this story on my podcast We are the second movie He hit theaters this year And the other guy allowed himself to get hit So kid Here you go You've got no choice You've got to give us a chance to compete etc So Gyllenhaal allowed himself to be hit And he hit the other guys And therefore he got two boxing movies With unusually graphic, violent, colorful Unforgettable to me boxing scenes I think in Rocky IV Longin was sitting with Sitting Stallone And actually heard him And they had to like postpone I think he broke his ribs or something Well I know about that When I do know that when they were doing Rocky Balboa Stallone developed an intense dislike Oh yeah yeah I heard about that And wanted to hit him And one day Sylvester went ahead and cut loose And fired a hot shot And I believe hit Tarver in the body And Tarver immediately pivoted and turned And knocked him down Wow With a shot to the side of the insta That's what I was told Yeah and I was also told that Sly loved it You know that he just He was in his glory Because finally he got hit with a clean shot From a real fighter And he went down but he took it You know and all that And he was very happy with it Alright last question Because this isn't the only time we're doing a podcast You're having a good time I'm having a blast This is fun right? It's great Alright last question It's a Bill Simmons podcast Everybody wants to do this You're to blame for sideline reporters We just gotta get it out there You were the first sideline reporter You were the first one I was just the game of this monster I was the guinea pig not the scientist You can't blame me I told him you were the first one You were the first sideline reporter Exactly Along with another guy named Don Talison There were two of us For a 24th For college football Do you know how it evolved? You know how it happened? Wasn't it a Dick Eversal idea It was a Terry O'Neill idea That Terry O'Neill Sold to his buddy Dick Eversal That ever sold to Orlidge But what really got the ball rolling was The coverage of the Hostage crisis at the 72 Olympics Because They learned while covering the Israeli Hostage crisis at the 72 Olympics In Munich That radio frequency microphones And radio frequency camera signals Would penetrate much farther away From the transmission truck And penetrate more effectively Into remote areas And you know behind walls Behind buildings etc etc Then they had thought it would be the case So when they came back from the Munich Olympics in 72 Orlidge convened a meeting of the top Production people in sports With the people from engineering to say Okay what did we learn at Munich That we can use in some other area And the biggest thing was The way these RF microphones and cameras work We could put somebody on the sidelines Of a football game Well they chose college football Because you're going to put somebody On the sidelines of college football Who ultimately helps to portray The difference between college football And pro football The color of the pageantry All that kind of stuff And that's when they put together This national talent hunt idea And they went out and interviewed 432 people around the country And there's a long and ball story That goes into how I was ultimately chosen Long drive college I was a graduate student At the University of North Carolina The original idea was to put it in Oh you made Tate Notting Tate Went to North Carolina Oh Tate loves you now Don't hug Lampley Don't touch Lampley We're not done with the park as yet The hug is subliminal You know It's a telepathic hug If God is not a target Why is this guy coming in?

But at any rate Now I was a graduate student The original idea had been to hire Someone between 18 and 22 I mean the way they build it was We're going to give you somebody Who is the face and voice of the American college student And I didn't fit the profile I was 24, 25 years old I was in graduate school I wasn't exactly what they were looking for I was originally screened out of the process Early on And were sold in like me And they used that stack of resumes The 432 resumes As a talent pool for various other jobs That they wanted to fill So I wound up interviewing as a production assistant Didn't get that job Interviewed for Olympic research Didn't get that job Then finally The last job I interviewed for Was in program planning I was going to get paid $150 a week To sit in a cubicle And learn from two guys Name Jim Spencer and John Martin How to negotiate for and buy the rights to sports events I was a broadcast management graduate student That was the ideal job for me I was so excited You know See you weren't even thinking about Singing at this point Didn't have any interest in it You know I had been announcing Little crazy You had a little bit of graduate school And the guy who ran the University of North Carolina Football and basketball radio networks Already pulled me aside And said look Do yourself a favor Don't get seduced into this on- Earth thing You could wind up carrying equipment New burn when you're 48 years old You want to be in management You should maybe try radio sales There are all these other things you should do Besides being on the air So, Ebersall calls me The night of August 9, 1974 The day that Nixon resigned from office And he reaches me on the phone And he's kind of hemming and holling And I'm like Why is Dick Ebersall calling me? And finally he says Look You know We're running to a little bit of a log jam on college football thing And Roon wants you to do an audition And I'm immediately into my dick I've taken a job in program planning I'm not even interested in this thing anymore I'm coming to work first of September For John Martin and Jim Spencer And Satter etc etc And Dick says you didn't hear me Roon wants you to do an audition And by the way If you wind up doing college football thing We'll hold that other gig for you And you can go to work there in January Because we're going to have Somebody else on the sidelines next year So of course I wound up doing 3 plus years On the sidelines They hired another guy from Chapel Hill named Bob Greenway To work in program planning It all went away But they told me late in the college football season This is going to go well for you And I'm still talking for money 41 years later It's the job has changed So then reporting It changed within six weeks I mean we started out trying to do all of the features And the wrap around material That they had originally intended for us to do So you're right above them in the broadcast Yeah again we had time in the pregame Had time and a half time You know tried to do a lot of stuff from the sidelines during the game But Keith Jackson was getting more and more disgruntled About throwing down to the sideline And eventually it got to the point where Okay if we're going to throw the sideline You have to be able to take it Do something and get it back before the start of the next play That became a cocktail party game Give us the history of the world in 24 seconds Yeah World War II in 24 seconds Satter etc etc And I learned how to edit myself And be very concise And after a while I figured out That the only way to get on the air comfortably And get off the air Without thoroughly disgruntled Keith Was to do injury reports And the sideline reporting became injury reports Uh and you know by the second or third year I was popping up three or four times a game And uh and I was thinking to myself This is meaningless It's all going to go away We're not going to see sideline reporters in another 15 or 20 years This thing is going to die I only would have been right I wasn't I was wrong It's really around Call that injury report up to the booth Hey Russell Westbrook sprained his ankle Say that coming out of the next break And then we're done I don't have to go to the sideline reporter The very last game I ever did I did the most meaningful thing I had ever done As a sideline reporter And maybe that's why it continued The last game I did Uh early in that fourth season Was a Notre Dame pit game Pit had won the national championship The preceding year And 76 Now as they began the 77 season pit with Hugh Green And Matt Kavanaugh at quarterback Is ranked preseason number one And they're playing Notre Dame Which was also a top five team And second quarter of the game Kavanaugh went down under a host of Notre Dame tacklers And he got up holding his wrist And he instantly Went toward the sideline And a trainer came out and met him And together they ran toward the tunnel To the dressing room So I chased him I ran with my microphone backpack And all that stuff on I ran down the tunnel And I couldn't get close enough To talk to them But as they turned and went into the door Of the dressing room I saw blood Around Kavanaugh's wrist Ooh And instantly I came back I went on camera I took a shot I said Matt Kavanaugh has a compound fracture of his wrist It turned out to be correct It changed the national championship race instantly It was the best thing I had ever done on the sidelines And you guessed it Pretty much the last thing And it was a guess Yeah, it was a guess And I can remember the producer Chuck Howard saying to me Are you sure he has a compound fracture of the wrist And I'm thinking in my head I saw blood I don't know any other reason it would be there And I said yes And it turned out he had a compound fracture of the wrist Did Cocell ever talk to you or acknowledge it? I was Howard's cup reporter On a show called Sportsbeat Oh I like sportsbeat Sportsbeat Sportsbeat Consistent to TV critics love sportsbeat Pack up some serious issues Sportsbeat consisted of Howard sitting in the studio every weekend Interviewing Booycoon Sunny Wurblin George Steinbrenner All of his close friends I was the one who would have to go out Get on a plane And do a feature piece So that the show would have some content Other than Howard sitting in the studio talking to his buddies And so For a couple of years there I had an office on his floor And it was an amazing experience Because I would sit in my office And I would listen to Howard come out Into the front reception area And talk to the secretaries about me And it was always either The kid is the only other one here Who can complete a competent sentence The rest of them are morons But I have him on the show Because he actually has the potential to Sunday do something in this business Or the opposite was He's a sophomore Hired, promoted, has a six figure salary I have no idea what the hell they're doing with him Etc. You know so I was always either up or down But many many times He would go to 21 Two blocks away And have his three martini lunch with Sunny Wurblin Three And then he would Light day and then he would come back To the office And after he'd been in the office About 15 minutes I would get a call from the secretary Please come over and talk to Howard Howard has something very important to talk to you about And what was very important was That he would open the drawer To his desk And we'd pull out the galleys for his latest book Whichever it was And he would say sit still You have to hear this You're the only other person who can conceivably understand What I'm getting at here And he would read me chapters from his books And my job was to say Howard that's amazing That's fantastic There's nothing else like that etc etc etc And you know And it worked out I was his cover reporter on SportsBeats for a couple of years The book that should have happened Was the Howard Co-Sell oral history Well I think there are things out there like that Everybody has seven stories And Kenzard wrote a great book about Howard and Ali Yeah that's good reading material And he was an amazing character But I've always said Maybe the unhappiest man I've ever met Howard would drink a quarter of vodka at night Wake up sweating spitting coughing at 5.30 in the morning Desperately afraid that somebody else was going to read the New York Times before he did He had to be first at everything Were you at the 30th anniversary of Wide World of Sports?

I was at the 1st anniversary of Wide World of Sports Things The one, maybe 25th I was there It was in the World of the story of Ballroom in New York When Ali came out standing ovation Jim McKay, they did the whole Ali I think I'm the only person who ever saw this It's not on YouTube Which I was crazy Everything is now on YouTube Except for this one 25th day they did this It ended with a Bob Dylan song for every young And then Ali came out with Jim McKay And it's like a real moment In Ali's hands trembling And you can tell it's Howard had an obsession with for every young I wonder if he was involved with that His daughter Hillary introduced him to for every young And he fell in love with the lyrics And if you go back and watch The rematch of Ali versus Leon Spinks The second fight In New Orleans, Fall of October, 1978 You will find that in the 12th round of that fight As Ali is just sort of Mapping up on his way to what's obviously going to be A clear unanimous decision over Spinks Co-cell is reciting the lyrics to for every young Wow May your heart always be joyful May your wishes all come true May you always do for rubbish And let others do for you That must be why they used that then During a boxing match Man, that's amazing Yeah It was amazing Jim's memory might be better than mine I'm looking at Joe I mean you're rattling off dates I'm not going to get it dates anymore Tates and disbelief Your memory is amazing How do you do it? I'm accused of having a photographic memory You're accused of it or you actually have one Well I think I have a very good memory And I would say it's better than very good I have a specific reason My father died when I was five years old And I can very clearly remember thinking to myself That if you did not remember things you lost them So it was very important to remember everything That you ever did And after my father died For several years I can remember lying awake Making sure That I could remember Everybody who'd ever been in a classroom with me And where they sat That I could remember All the lyrics to every Kingston Trio album In the order in which the songs appeared On the album Later it became Every starting lineup For every Carolina basketball team For 25 or 30 years Because my first broadcasting gig Was the Dean Smith Show Yeah Free game and post-game shows On the radio at UNC I did Bill Doolie also Did he smoke in cigarettes All over you in the post-game or not? Well you break him out He didn't smoke cigarettes in front of me Or in front of the players You never saw Dean He was always a sneaky smoker He was a sneaky smoker I don't know He was hiding it All the time Kate you know that Stake's not an audience fan For you audience people Take his nodding He knew about Dean He caught the cigarettes And hiding the cigarettes And stuff like that That's amazing So you trained yourself Through everything Because I thought I'd better You know that if I didn't remember things If I forgot them That they were lost forever And I didn't want to lose anything else So that was it So yeah I mean I can tell you the dates Of a lot of the boxing match I mean you were talking about George Foreman before I mean I couldn't remember Was I HBO or Showtime? I don't know I remember Corralis Castillo Was I Showtime Jim Lampley this was a pleasure We could do this again Right?

With the four big fights Absolutely Could we do a three man with you Me and Max? That would be wonderful That'd be great I didn't even ask you about Larry Merchant So we'll have to save that for next time Have you ever had Larry on the podcast? No You think you come on? I think you can pronounce Sullivan Barrera I think you can pronounce Sullivan Barrera I met at a trouble Barrera And then Pacquiao Pacquiao versus Bradley on April 9 Gennade Golovkin April 23 And Canelo Alvarez Against Amir Khan on May 7 Which is a very interesting fight Usually that's Cinco de Meyer Weekend fight is usually the fight of the year That's not the blockbuster Uh oh it could be pretty good Alright now your thing's going off Jim Lampley thank you Alrighty thank you very much Bill I really enjoyed it That was fun Alright thanks to Jim Lampley That was awesome That guy's an icon Thanks to Sling TV It's the best way to watch games live for just 20 bucks a month You get more than 20 live channels Including the March Madness channels TNT and TBS entry TV No installation No extra gear No annual contracts All you need is an internet connection Start your seven day free trial At sling.com Slash Simmons restrictions Apply and thanks to MailChimp They make it easy to connect with customers and sell more stuff And to put out things like the Ringer's newsletter Free to get started No expiring trial No credit card required They helped us collect 150,000 Subscribers and counting for our new newsletter Check them out at mailchimp.com And subscribe to our new newsletter That we're making with their help At theRinger.com Thanks to HBO Now You don't need cable or satellite to watch HBO anymore Download the HBO Now app And start your free one month trial today We're gonna have some Ringer news With HBO Now Very soon Stay tuned for that We love HBO Now Thanks to Seeky the presenting sponsor of the BS podcast And channel 33 And we are done We will be back later this week Go Holy Gosh We'll pop this video Anytime y'all wanna see me again We wanna extract right here Close your eyes I'm gonna go A pitch and be rove