his newly-published autobiography<\/a>, and it memorializes a recently-departed man who, more than just a champion, was Lampley’s colleague and friend.<\/p>\nWhen Michael Moorer was counted out and George Foreman regained his heavyweight world championship at the age of 45 on November 5, 1994, Lampley watched as Foreman turned to pray in his corner and exulted simply:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happened! It happened!\u201d<\/p>\n
It remains one of Lampley\u2019s favorite calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this moment in time, in the wake of his unexpected death, how could I not love \u2018It happened. It happened?\u2019 he asked rhetorically during a recent conversation with BoxingScene.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing you read in the book is about the 19-year-old me watching the 19-year-old George winning his gold medal in Mexico City. His death was completely unexpected and the direct connection between him and the book is at least poignant and in some ways emotionally overwhelming for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another is his call of what remains probably the most startling upset in professional sports, when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in front of a passive crowd at the Tokyo Dome in February 1990.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is fond of \u201cMike Tyson has been knocked out,\u201d because, he says, \u201cit was the most low key, level headed way that I could say it without emotional embellishment. It was important to get that right.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A career spent ringside for some of the biggest bouts in modern history came screeching to a halt on December 8, 2018, on a chilly evening at a half-empty Dignity Health Stadium in Carson, California, when HBO Boxing aired its final live broadcast, bringing to an end 45 years of the network’s position as the \u201cheart and soul of boxing.\u201d For 28 of those years, Lampley had been the face and voice of HBO’s boxing broadcasts, but he has not called a fight since.<\/p>\n
That barren streak is scheduled to end on May 2 when, alongside former light-heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver and Ring Magazine journalist Mike Coppinger, he will call a junior welterweight triple-header highlighted by a returning Ryan Garcia taking on Rolando Romero.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lampley admits that, after such a long time away from the microphone, he was \u201csurprised\u201d to get the call for the event, which will take place in Times Square in front of an invited audience and will be streamed on DAZN PPV.<\/p>\n
At the time of HBO\u2019s departure from the boxing game, he \u201chad had 44 years of blessed life as a network television sports commentator. Why was it my God given right to demand more? It wasn\u2019t. It was at that point more logical and sane for me to accept what was happening and say to myself, \u2018Okay, I had a great run. I was very privileged for a long period of time. I got a lot of positive response from a lot of different people. Reflect, enjoy it, and go on to what comes next.\u2019 And if what came next was grandparenting, that was fine. I was not upset. I wasn\u2019t disturbed. I was curious, but curious was about as far as I was going to allow it to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps surprisingly, he admits to an element of apprehension as he prepares to return to the role after such a lengthy pause.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you say to yourself, \u2018Alright, six plus years have gone by, but I know I\u2019ll be just as good as I always was,\u2019 then you\u2019re crazy. And I\u2019m not that crazy. I\u2019m going to sit down in the chair, whether it\u2019s rehearsal or on the air or the first time in fighter meetings, whatever it is, I\u2019m going to go into it with the frame of mind that, \u2018Okay, I need to pay attention, I need to watch my P\u2019s and Q\u2019s, I need to make every effort to be better than I\u2019ve been before.\u2019 And that is sanity in this particular circumstance. It didn\u2019t seem sane that six plus years go by and nobody asked me to do it. It wouldn\u2019t be sane to go back into it without a high level of apprehension. And that\u2019s what I have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked what is the most important quality for a blow-by-blow commentator, he answers simply, \u201cWord economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viewers, he continues, \u201ccan see what they\u2019re looking at. At the end of the day, it’s a human sport; so, be open, be curious, and recognize, as always, that you don’t know everything, but that you do know enough to give viewers a fundamental guide to what’s going on in the ring: a road map, if you can. That’s what I think blow-by-blow at its best should be. I had the enormous privilege of watching fights that were called by Don Dunphy on Gillette Friday Night Fights, and he’s still, to me, the model. He’s the voice in the back of my brain when I think of what I want to do. I watched my very dear friend and trusted colleague, Barry Tompkins, for years before I replaced him on HBO Sports, and I still have a tremendous amount of respect for what he did. I’ve paid attention to other blow-by-blow commentators as well. We’re all different, and I will simply go back and try to be the best Jim Lampley I can be and remember everything I’ve learned about boxing going back to 1955 when my mother sat me down to watch Sugar Ray Robinson versus Bobo Olson one afternoon in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and do the best I can to piece it together from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
One aspect of Lampley\u2019s commentary that separates him from the rest is his willingness to become a part of an outlet for the emotions that prizefighting can engender. If Lampley is occasionally embarrassed by his public tears, he is unapologetic for the reason for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the fighters,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou could not spend the amount of time that I have spent in this sport, watching them give to us what they give to us, all of us in the audience, all of us who are ringside media; you can\u2019t watch the sport for as long as I have, without developing, I think, a huge human appreciation for who they are and what they do, the sacrifices they make as human beings, the work they put in, the preparation, the level of detail in the sport, it\u2019s all amazing when you buckle down and pay attention to it. So I try to bring to my commentary a real loving appreciation of who they are and what they do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I always say to casual observers or friends of mine who are just getting into it or something like that: when you watch two guys go at each other in a life and death 12 round fight, and they seem to be trying to beat each other to death, and you marvel at the level of punishment they dish out and can endure over the course of those 12 rounds to get from the start to the finish, what you have to appreciate underneath all that is that they are in the process of falling in love, that by the time they reach the final bell, they will know each other better than their mothers or their fathers do. They have tasted each other\u2019s blood, they have tasted each other\u2019s sweat. They have explored each other\u2019s vulnerabilities, they have felt each other\u2019s strengths and threatening elements. They know all that better than anybody else who\u2019s watching, better than the people in their corners, and it\u2019s something they share only with each other, face to face, breath to breath, ear to ear, as they lean in on each other, sweat to sweat. There\u2019s nothing else exactly like it in sports. And I\u2019ve seen it over and over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cArturo Gatti and Mickey Ward fell in love. Even Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales. I was at the induction ceremony for the Hall of Fame in Canastota earlier this year, and Barrera and Morales were there. If you had watched those three fights from a layman\u2019s perspective, the last thing you would have thought is that these two guys would be walking around more or less arm in arm, spending every moment with each other at Canastota. But they were, and it was yet another perfect portrayal of the uniqueness of the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
That thought returns him to his departed friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen George unexpectedly died a few weeks ago and people reached out to me, one of the first things I said was \u2018He\u2019s with Ali now, and they are at peace.\u2019 I believe that. I know that George at the end loved Muhammad Ali; I know that Muhammad at the end loved George. People don\u2019t always believe that, but it\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcast about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the \u201cFighter Health Podcast\u201d with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Lampley has called literally hundreds of fights in his career, but as he prepares to return to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[25262,1935,25263,25261,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-45871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-it-happened","9":"tag-boxing","10":"tag-george-foreman","11":"tag-jim-lampley","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114391462034253414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}