{"id":68524,"date":"2025-05-02T13:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T13:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/68524\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T13:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T13:46:10","slug":"how-jim-lampley-fell-in-love-with-boxing-and-became-its-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/68524\/","title":{"rendered":"How Jim Lampley fell in love with boxing and became its voice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jim Lampley<\/a> has been the voice of boxing for a generation of Americans, which is remarkable because the assignment was only supposed to last one fight.<\/p>\n

In the winter of 1986, Lampley had a new contract and a new boss who wanted him out. So Dennis Swanson, the head of the ABC\u2019s sports division, ordered Lampley to cover Mike Tyson\u2019s first fight on network TV in the hopes, Lampley said, he would embarrass himself and slink away.<\/p>\n

Instead, Lampley nailed the assignment and a year later began what would be an unparalleled three-decade career calling fights for HBO.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew from the moment I called that first fight I was home,\u201d said Lampley, 76, whose work earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. \u201cI understood that was where I was supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

So 18 months later, on his agent\u2019s advice, Lampley walked into Swanson\u2019s office, signed the papers that separated him from ABC Sports, and never looked back. That\u2019s one of several stories Lampley tells in \u201cIt Happened: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television,\u201d an autobiography of an admittedly charmed 50-year career in broadcasting.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life story reads like a fictional narrative. That\u2019s the reason for the title,\u201d Lampley said. \u201cIt\u2019s the only way you can respond to something as totally counterintuitive, unexpected and filled with blessings as my career is to say, \u2018it happened.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t talk about anything that ever happened to me with anything less than astonishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of the book, written with journalist Art Chansky, is also a paean to Lampley\u2019s most famous call \u2014 the narration of George Foreman\u2019s stunning knockout<\/a> of Michael Moorer, which allowed Foreman to become, at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cDown goes Moorer on a right hand!. An unbelievably close-in right-hand shot! \u201cIt happened! It happened!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"George <\/p>\n

George Foreman, left, punches Michael Moorer during their heavyweight championship fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November 1994. Jim Lampley\u2019s call of the fight helped cement his place in boxing history.<\/p>\n

(Lennox McLendon \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In the book, Lampley takes readers inside locker rooms in every league and into the conference rooms of every network. He shares family stories of growing up in the South at the start of the civil rights movement and dishes celebrity gossip about some of the biggest names in sports and broadcasting.<\/p>\n

But if the career he describes was marked by good fortune \u2014 he got his first break at 24 when, still in graduate school, he was chosen from a field of 432 candidates to serve as the first network sideline reporter on ABC\u2019s college football broadcasts \u2014 he was also very good at what he did. Over his dozen years at ABC he called two Indy 500s, broadcast Major League Baseball, traveled the world reporting for \u201cWide World of Sports,\u201d interviewed President Ronald Reagan at Daytona, presided over the trophy presentation after Super Bowl XIX and covered the first of 14 Olympics.<\/p>\n

He interviewed Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig<\/a> after the U.S. hockey team\u2019s Miracle on Ice<\/a>, worked with Billie Jean King<\/a> at Wimbledon, saw Richard Petty\u2019s final NASCAR victory and was close enough to smell the sweat at every significant title fight between 1988 and 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven his long career across several networks, he probably has some juicy stories to tell,\u201d said Daniel Durbin, a professor at the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society.<\/p>\n

Yet it was a career that proved memorable as much for Lampley\u2019s timing as for his talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim was one of a group of 1970s college students who grew into sportscasters, that included Jim Nantz<\/a>, Al Michaels<\/a>, and Bob Costas<\/a>,\u201d Durbin continued. \u201cThey pursued careers in a sort of golden age of sportscasting when \u2018Monday Night Football\u2019 had shown the tremendous potential of prime-time sports and ESPN and, later, Fox Sports were just on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a consistently strong sportscaster. A very good, workmanlike boxing broadcaster; well-prepared, clear and effective in his calls.\u201d <\/p>\n

And every time his career seemed to reach a fork in the road, he inevitably chose the right path \u2014 one that has him returning to do blow by blow, this time on DAZN PPV, for a May 2 world championship card featuring Ryan Garcia<\/a>, Te\u00f3fimo L\u00f3pez and Devin Haney<\/a>, in separate bouts, live from Times Square. It will be his first fight call since HBO ended its boxing programming in 2018.<\/p>\n

\"Jim <\/p>\n

Jim Lampley waves to the crowd during his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in June 2015.<\/p>\n

(Heather Ainsworth \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In between his start at ABC and his return to his ring-side seat this week, Lampley was the first program host listeners heard on WFAN, helping it grow into the biggest sports-talk station in the country; anchored coverage of the Olympics and the NFL on NBC; appeared regularly on \u201cThe CBS Morning Show\u201d and had his own syndicated interview program, \u201cOne on One With Jim Lampley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was working all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cI was making piles of money, one paycheck on top of another.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s also remembered in Los Angeles for a life-changing five-year stint as co-anchor of the nightly news on Channel 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was forced out of ABC Sports, my next gig, my landing spot, was at KCBS-TV,\u201d Lampley said on an hourlong Zoom call from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he sat before a wall covered with dozens of the media credentials he has gathered over the decades. \u201cThe first thing I said to my agent was \u2018that\u2019s a local station. That\u2019s not a network gig\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It came with a big contract though. And when the station brought in Bree Walker<\/a> to join him behind the anchor desk, Lampley\u2019s personal life, as well as his career, took a turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a giant promotional campaign and a lot of hoopla,\u201d Lampley remembered in an interview long on detail and short on regret. \u201cYes, it probably boosted my image. [But] I found myself in a situation where I felt ill-equipped to compete with her particular studio skills on air.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided that my best defense would be to get her to fall in love with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she did, marrying Lampley and having a son with him before the couple divorced after nine years. It was \u201cAnchorman<\/a>\u201d 14 years before the Will Ferrell movie made Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone household names.<\/p>\n

Months after moving to Los Angeles, Lampley also signed his first contract to call boxing on HBO, the job that would come to define his career. It was a job he was always meant to have since one of his earliest memories was of his widowed mother sitting him down in front of a television set perched on a TV dinner tray and putting on a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. He was 6.<\/p>\n

Eight years later he was in the Miami Beach Convention Hall to watch his boyhood idol Cassius Clay knock out Sonny Liston<\/a>, and more than a quarter-century after that, Lampley was ringside in Tokyo for HBO when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson<\/a>, making him the only broadcaster to be present for the two greatest upsets in heavyweight boxing history.<\/p>\n

So it has been a uniquely lucky life. And, as the title of the book says, it happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the way it was supposed to go,\u201d Lampley said with a smile. \u201cIt was preordained.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lampley will be in Los Angeles for a pair of book signings, on May 8 at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove and on May 10 at 2 p.m. at the Wild Card Boxing Club. The event at the Grove will feature a Q and A session moderated by KCBS-TV sports director Jim Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Lampley has been the voice of boxing for a generation of Americans, which is remarkable because the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[501,6342,1935,29,34471,2308,25261,34470,2603,18642,79,3114,28503,16,15,19268,3118],"class_list":{"0":"post-68524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-book","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-career","12":"tag-first-fight","13":"tag-hbo","14":"tag-jim-lampley","15":"tag-los-angeles-times","16":"tag-love","17":"tag-may","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-time","20":"tag-title","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-voice","24":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114438549431452252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68524","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=68524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}