HBO's broadcasting of boxing ends after 45 years

[True Dough]

Some highlights:

Link to tweet

This marks the end of Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant's play by play and analysis. Max Kellerman is going to be doing color for ESPN boxing.

Here's what Lampley had to say:

“It might be the end of my on-air career, which is really an interesting thing. My on-air career began 44 years ago and it was something of an accident, because I wasn’t looking to be a television commentator. I was looking to be an executive. I went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina trying to learn how to be a broadcast executive, and while I was there, ABC Sports came up with a kind of one-of-a-kind gimmick idea. They wanted to put a college age announcer on the sidelines of the college football telecast. There was a national talent hunt and I was chosen from that.

“So I became a guinea pig for something that nobody knew whether it would work or not, and I went out and did something that had not been done before. And that ultimately led to 44 years of going from one opportunity to the next, and one step to the next, and putting one foot in front of the other, and eventually I landed at HBO boxing.

“The first moment that I came to this network and began covering fights here — I’d covered fights at ABC, and I knew that my destiny was boxing, and I’d always wanted my destiny to be boxing. I got started at ABC and once I was covering fights at ABC, it only made sense to want to cover fights at the place that was doing the best boxing telecast on the air.

“I’ll never forget, the first fight I did for HBO, 1988 in Tokyo, Japan, Mike Tyson against Tony Tubbs. At that moment I had 13 years as a network broadcaster, I’d been to five Olympics, I was a host at the Olympics already at that point, I had hosted college football for seven years on ABC. I was a pro, and I was not supposed to get nervous. And at that first telecast for (HBO) in Tokyo, my hand shook on the microphone. And I was shocked! I was standing in front of the camera doing a live on-camera, and I realized that my hand was shaking. And in the truck, the director had to tighten the shot so that it wouldn’t be distracting for the audience that my hand shook.

“When I walked away that night, I had to think to myself, ‘Why in the world did I get so nervous?’ And I realized that I got nervous that night because to me, this was the holy grail, you know? This was, to me, as high as you could go, to do boxing on HBO. To do a show where you didn’t throw to commercials. To do a show where you worked with people like Larry Merchant and all the other people that I ultimately worked with. To do a show at the television network which is more honored for its work in more different areas than any other network in any country in the world.

https://www.badlefthook.com/2018/12/9/18132686/jim-lampley-interview-final-hbo-boxing-card-post-fight

[Quemado]

1. Human cockfighting

I know this term has been applied to mixed martial arts, but, IMO, boxing is essentially human cockfighting.

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. It can all be catagorized as the legal attempt by contestants

to inflict brain injury on the other opponent. It is a shame that our society has not evolved past this point.

[Glamrock]

2. Awww man!

Really? That blows!