Jim Lampley
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
I mean, his speed was so preposterous.
When he would forego the jab to lead with left hooks, which was just so crazy.
How about the Vinny Pazienza fight when he didn't get hit for the entire round?
The only round in CompuBox history where someone never got hit.
And he did it at both the amateur and pro level, too.
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And he was always fantastic, too, as a commentator because he would give insight that you're really not going to get from someone that's not like with these fighters day in, day out through an entire camp.
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Yeah, well, he was just so far above so many of the guys that he fought.
They just had no business being in there.
He had to play with his food.
Yeah, no, he was spectacular.
You know, he was one of those guys that's a unique once-in-a-lifetime talent that, unfortunately, though, his mistake was going up to heavyweight and then trying to go down to 175, which is...
unbelievably grueling because he was when he was 200 pounds at heavyweight he was 200 lean muscular fast pounds that was not like fat to lose and so to starve himself to get down to 175 like he was diminished and you saw that in the Tarver fight
25 pounds is so much weight to lose.
Not only that, it diminishes his endurance.
It diminishes durability.
He gets compromised because he can't take a punch as well because he's cut so much weight.
He really understood things.
When you go into the fight fatigued, you're feeling fatigued.
And then you've got a guy like Tarver who's infinitely talented and has legitimate knockout power.
And he's talking shit to you right before the fight.
Got any excuses tonight, Roy?
And then he knocks him out like, holy shit.
And he's another guy that with his boxing skill went all the way up to heavyweight because he was just so much better than everybody else.
Who won the championship.
Another light heavyweight.
You told me it was going to happen, and it happened.
Well, do you remember when George came back and he was 300 pounds and everybody was laughing at him?
And he was in his late 30s, I believe.
When he made his comeback, he hadn't fought in 10 years.
Everyone dismissed him like, what is he doing?
And no one believed in him.
I remember me as a boxing fan watching that comeback being sad.
Like, oh, George Foreman's coming back and he's all fat now.
Crazy that he predicted it that way because that's exactly how it played out.
If you haven't seen it, it's uncanny.
I was a giant Michael Moore fan when he was a light heavyweight.
I think a lot of people forgot how dangerous he was at light heavyweight.
He was one of the great light heavyweights.
Yeah, the southpaw thing was always so confusing to people because if you ever boxed before, you're so accustomed to that left hand being forward.
Then all of a sudden everything's reversed and now you're thinking.
And if you don't have a lot of southpaws that you train with on a regular basis, things aren't automatic anymore.
I was very pleased to hear you back on the microphone for that Times Square event.
And I think the greatest at angles of all time is Lomachenko.
Yeah, what a genius move to take him out of boxing for two years to study Ukrainian dance.
Because it had been so long.
And Usyk, who is basically like moves like a giant Lomachenko, just not quite as effective.
You can't quite move that well when you're 220 pounds.
You're just dealing with gravity and mass.
God, I was like, that's crazy.
It didn't make any sense.
Lomachenko in his prime was just a magical thing to watch.
It was like you were just watching poetry.
You were the best in the business.
It was amazing watching him just do something where you'd seen so many different versions of boxers.
And you watch him do it, and you're like, oh, my God, he put a new thing on this.
HBO was the best in the business.
And when they stepped away from boxing, I was really heartbroken.
I think the Kambosos fight was, I think he was just a little overconfident and he got caught.
And then that really rocked him.
That really shocked him.
He got dropped early in the fight.
Yeah, any combat sport, when you don't appreciate the potential that your opponent has to do damage.
Like the perfect examples, Juan Manuel Marquez versus Pacquiao.
They have three insane fights that are very close.
Marquez lands one bomb and starches Pacquiao.
He got a little overconfident, a little too aggressive.
Marcus was a gifted fighter.
But just like that one moment, like if that had happened in the first fight, we would look at the whole thing very differently.
This is like the margins, as you were saying, are so small for victory that when you see like a spectacular result, you do automatically assume, oh, that person is just that much better.
But sometimes it's just one error.
And then, you know, it's also how do you bounce back from that?
Like some people, the one moment, even if just a knockdown, they don't have the capacity to correct and stay safe and then regroup like they get shook.
And then now they're fighting from this position, this defensive position where they're a little bit gun shy.
Mayweather just did such a smart thing, but also a devious thing.
Waiting until Pacquiao was older, waiting until he slowed down.
Devious is not illegal in boxing.
That's how you retire with a 50-year record?
Yeah, he was great at talking shit.
He got everybody upset at him so badly that they wanted to see him lose.
And that would sell tons of pay-per-views.
Yeah, when he shifted from Pretty Boy Floyd to Money Mayweather, changed the whole thing.
And it would have been an interesting fight had he fought Pacquiao when he was younger in his prime.
It would have been a very different fight.
Yeah, it would have been much more interesting when they were younger.
Also the fact that Pacquiao fought him with a bum shoulder.
I mean, look, I guess he was faced with this thing, legacy, or, I mean, it was the biggest pay-per-view of all time in boxing, correct?
And I think it was like 4 million buys or something crazy like that?
Yeah, just lured Pacquiao into it.
Yeah, give them a cortisone shot, throw them out there.
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Unfortunately for us, I remember there was like a class action lawsuit.
A lot of people were upset that Pacquiao fought injured.
That happens a lot in the UFC.
There's a lot of fighters that fight injured.
That's such a crazy statement.
Yeah, I'd like to believe that that's true.
I'd like to believe it's true, too.
Let's make a pact to believe it's true.
The thing about Pacquiao that's so extraordinary is that he kept his power through eight weight classes.
What other fighter can you name that went through eight different weight classes as a world champion?
No, you were excellent at that.
It just didn't make any sense to me that, you know, and Kellerman, he's also excellent.
But there are physical gifts that you are just, they're just God-given gifts of power.
There's just certain guys, though, that just have extraordinary power.
Like, you remember Julian Jackson in his prime.
Yeah, it was just disturbing how hard he hit.
It was just different than everybody else, and it looked like he was doing the same thing, but the results were so much different.
How about Deontay Wilder?
A 209-pound heavyweight that's flattening people.
That's another guy we should bring up.
209 pounds when he fights Tyson Fury the first time.
But there's physical gifts that you are just God-given, and some people have them.
And Andre Ward is another excellent guy.
And these are the extraordinary outliers, the Deontay Wilders, the Julian Jacksons, the John Mugabes.
Ooh, I re-watched that Mugabe-Hagler fight the other day in the gym.
Hagler was my hero when I was a kid.
And he was one of the first guys.
The good thing about boxing was that HBO was completely independent from these promoters.
Yeah, no, he gamed the system a little bit.
He figured out how to flurry at the end of the rounds and make a big impression in the judges' eyes.
That was a very close fight, but that fight always bothered me.
And one of the things that bothered me is I felt like there were moments where Hagler could have turned it up and didn't.
And then when he retired after that fight and went to Italy and became a giant movie star in Italy, the conspiratorial part of my brain was always like, was that like one of those deals where...
where everybody assumed that Hagler was going to win.
Hagler had knocked out Tommy Hearns.
Hagler had beaten everybody in the division, knocked out Mugabe.
He was the man, you know?
Well, you know, he had accomplished so much and also his...
training camps were the stuff of legend.
I mean, he would spar a hundred rounds a week sometimes, which is just insane.
I mean, his conditioning and his drive and his will and his discipline, he was a monster.
He would scare the shit out of everybody just from his work ethic.
I remember I told the story there was a news piece when he was training on the Cape and it was in the middle of the winter and he was fighting Mustafa Hampshire and he was running down the sand dunes screaming war.
With combat boots on in the winter.
And I remember thinking, war, war.
Yeah, there's a difference.
Because you think you're disciplined.
You think you're driven.
You think you're special.
And then you see a guy like that.
He's what my friend David Goggins calls uncommon amongst uncommon men.
Yeah, there's a giant difference in the undercard pay.
One of the greatest of all time.
One of the greatest fights of all time.
Because Hagler just threw caution to the wind.
Remember after he broke his hand, he tried just throwing the jab out there.
You could tell early on in the first round when he broke his hand.
Because from then on, he's moving.
But he's already endured so much damage.
I mean, they have just thrown each other into the wood chipper.
Both guys were just blasting away.
I remember being in my living room when Hearns went down and just going, wow.
And this was after Hearns had knocked out Duran.
Well, the UFC treats the entire card as an enormous event.
And I thought nobody could knock out Duran.
When Hearns flatlined Duran, I was like, good lord.
To see Duran face down on the canvas was like...
Yeah, you have to check your eyes.
He has one knockdown attributed to him in his career, and it's bullshit.
So they have elite fighters fight in the entire card.
Well, even against a guy like Bivol, who's huge.
Like one of the problems with boxing is you would just say, when's the main event?
A huge light heavyweight.
I think that would be a nightmare matchup.
Even though he's almost 40 now, right?
One of the scariest of all time at 175.
He's another one of those guys.
But with him, it's volume.
It's not one shot, but it's this thudding volume that never ends, this constant attack.
And you didn't, the other stuff is just nonsense.
Well, he made brilliant adjustments in the second fight.
Whereas the UFC, you look at it like, oh, look who's fighting first fight of pay-per-view.
I think Riyadh Season was trying to put that together.
I think they're trying to put together a third fight, and I really hope they do make that fight.
Yeah, you kind of have to do it now before Beterbiev is just—he's probably past his prime already.
Power right okay, and but in skill the skill thing like here's the best example that Bernard Hopkins who?
Has maintained their skill deep into their 40s in fact at a world-class level at 49 years old beating like top contenders at 49 years old and
There's five fights on pay-per-view.
First fight of pay-per-view is a banger.
And everybody's – the seats are packed and everybody's excited to see it.
Yes, that's the big one.
Whereas everybody starts shuffling in about 20 minutes before Canelo fights in one of these big boxing events.
I remember when he was middleweight champion and he wasn't getting the credit that he felt like he deserved and he was squabbling with promoters and they kept him on the shelf.
I'm like, my God, he's like wasting away in the prime of his life.
And I felt like we were going to miss out on the prime of his life.
And then here he gets into the Felix Trinidad fight.
And I was like, this guy is crazy watching this guy completely outclass Tito Trinidad.
That, I think, is kind of unfortunate.
Well, those are the stories that are so inspiring about boxing, right?
The people that have used boxing as a vehicle to get out of their circumstances.
And a little bit short-sighted.
Yeah, that was a great show, man.
That was another bummer when HBO stopped doing boxing.
Well, look- But it had to be successful for them.
In public perception or profitability?
One of my favorite TV fights was him versus Marvis Frazier because it was such a terrifying execution.
We knew coming into that fight.
It was a perfect fight for Mike to showcase because Marvis had the giant name because he was Joe Frazier's son.
And Joe Frazier had been trash-talking Mike.
It helped to create what ultimately became the myth of Mike Tyson.
But Buster Douglas had underperformed most of his career and had not been motivated.
Lit him up and never again.
Constant turmoil and partying and feeling invincible.
She's the wrong woman, period.
There's certain women out there like that.
They can tank your life.
Yeah, and unfortunately.
I mean, HBO at that time was the premier network for combat sports.
That was one of the best things about you and Merchant and just the entire commentary team at HBO was that you had these intelligent, articulate people involved in what many people think of as the most barbaric of all sports.
So it defined it in a very different way.
The work that you guys had done in boxing was the top of the food chain.
It certainly was elevated.
But it has to be with the commentators.
The same exact event with crude commentators is not the same experience because you don't get that intelligent, articulate analysis.
And a guy like Larry Merchant, who had been around boxing for his entire life and had a deep understanding of it, and you, and then it's even the funny back-and-forth banter between Larry and George Foreman when they would disagree on things.
Yeah, having a great team like that.
And it was also, there was the flow where you guys had worked together so often.
It was just so well honed.
It was just a well-polished machine.
It's just so hard to believe that you could achieve the highest level of combat sports, the heavyweight champion of the world, and yet have this really rank amateur corner.
One of the issues is they wanted to replace the commentators.
And it comes with success, all the trappings.
I mean, he was just constantly, you know.
Have you had him in here?
So if we came over there, I wouldn't go over there as well.
The first time I met him, it's hard to believe he's really in the room.
You're like, I can't believe he's real.
Me as a child, I remember when I was a kid, I guess I wasn't a child, I'm only a year younger than him, but when he lost to Buster Douglas, I didn't watch it until after the fight.
I watched a replay of it, and I still expected him to win.
You know how crazy that is?
That's the kind of aura that Mike Tyson had.
I remember I heard about it in a gas station.
Someone told me in a gas station.
I was getting gas, and I heard, did you hear Mike Tyson got knocked out?
And I remember pumping gas, and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Like, Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson?
The problem with that is in mixed martial arts, there's a very small pool of people who have a deep understanding of the entire history of the sport.
And you can't just hire a regular sports guy to take that part.
Now that you said it, I remember that.
They're not going to be able to get it.
It was energetic but matter-of-fact.
It was a little bit higher.
I just remember Buster Douglas winning that fight thinking, man, what happens to him now?
I thought it was a right hand.
Yeah, Jamie will find it.
But, yeah, he just never reached those heights again.
Yeah, I mean, also like the.
It's cemented in my mind because I remember, what year was that?
And so this is probably 91 then?
Yeah, I just remember, you know, when someone does something extraordinary and rise to the occasion, I always root on them.
Like, wow, he's going to turn his life around.
Well, and also I was a giant Holyfield fan, too.
So it was one of those conflicted fights.
And Holyfield, to me, was extraordinary because what he did with Mackie Shillstone in his training.
It was one of those things where Holyfield was one of the first guys that really embraced weightlifting.
And I remember as a young fighter, I was always told, if you lift weights, it'll slow you down.
Weights will make you stiff.
Weights will slow you down.
You should never lift weights.
And so I listened to that, and I never lifted weights.
And then I remember watching Holyfield train for his –
heavyweight debut thinking, God, I remember his fight with Dwight Muhammad Kawi.
When he was a cruiserweight, I was thinking, how is this guy going to go up to heavyweight?
How is this going to work?
But also, one of the first applications of real modern science in regards to strength and conditioning.
What Mackie Shillstone was doing was like very revolutionary.
And to see him do all these crazy strength and cardio routines and putting all that mass on and seeing all the doubters and naysayers.
He worked with quite a few fighters, didn't he, Mackie?
I believe Mackie worked with quite a few fighters.
Everybody saw that the results were there.
Everybody kind of changed their opinion on that kind of stuff.
I mean, MMA guys are led.
I mean, with MMA, you have the grappling aspect of it.
Without strength and conditioning, you really can't compete.
It's not really possible at this day and age.
Everyone uses strength and conditioning.
There's very few fighters that just train using skill, just train skills.
Pierre did that for a certain period of his career.
And the worst case, I mean, they definitely did calisthenics, but that was it.
It was just body weight exercises, you know, which brings us to Crawford, which I think is really interesting.
The Crawford Canelo fight.
How does Crawford compete with that size?
And, you know, we have to recognize, okay, well, when Canelo fought Floyd, it was 152 pounds, right?
So he had dropped down, which was a struggle for him, which is why Floyd was so brilliant in getting him to go down to 152 because he knew he would be drained.
Well, all I was doing was just following my interests.
Well, the weight class, I believe, was 54, but I believe the clause in the contract for that fight was that he get down to 52.
Let's see if that's true.
I'm pretty sure that that's true, that they had a fight at one point.
I love fact-checking on the fly.
Now Canelo goes all the way up to 68 and then even to 75 and now back down to 68, whereas Crawford is leapfrogging.
And I've always been a huge boxing fan from the time I was a child.
He's going, he goes to super middleweight.
He's going 47 to 54 and now to 68.
And the Madrival fight in 54 is a difficult fight.
Yeah, well, I have a goofy memory.
It works a lot of the time, but sometimes not.
Sometimes it's like super accurate.
Sometimes it's super accurate, and sometimes it's just terrible.
But certain things I do remember.
And I do remember because of the weight cutting thing.
Because I remember thinking, like, what a brilliant move to get him to do that.
The same thing that Javante Davis did with Ryan Garcia.
Like, you can't rehydrate.
Which is like... No rehydration.
Can you remember what your first fight was?
That's such a sucker bet.
But it's like the same thing with Pacquiao taking the fight when it's a bum shoulder.
Yeah, you're fucking with him.
The first fight I watched, my parents watched it, which was crazy because my parents were hippies.
And boy, the Lamont Roach fight.
Well, that was a knockdown.
Ooh, 100% was a knockdown.
Without that, you have a decision victory for Roach, and he's a superstar.
Now you have this fucking draw that they have to fight again.
But now Gervonta knows what's coming.
They had fought in the amateurs, correct?
Tank is another guy that has experienced all the trappings of fame, all the success and the money and all the jewelry and all the craziness and the ladies.
And Roach is a hungry motherfucker who can really fight.
And they were really interested in Ali's rematch with Leon Spinks.
And he should have got his flowers after that fight.
And a lot of the boxing people recognize that was a knockdown.
Forever in history books.
It's not a knockdown when you take a punch to the face and then you take a knee That is a fucking knockdown period end of story.
There's definitely something to that.
So Lamont will have a lot of fans on his side going into that second fight.
Yeah, when Leon had beat Muhammad Ali.
Scheduled for August 16th in Las Vegas.
Because Muhammad Ali was a cultural icon as much as he was a sports figure.
Boy, I might go to that.
Let me check real quick.
I'll call you later that night and let you know.
I'll have it on my phone.
I'll set my phone up and have it there while the fight's going on.
So who do you like in Canelo versus Crawford?
Well, I'm a giant Crawford fan because I think he's the best switch hitter since Marvin Agler.
I also think he's one of those guys that if you tell him he can't do something, he wants to show you and shock the world.
I also think Canelo is slowing down, and Canelo is more of a one-punch fighter now than the combination fighter he was when he was younger.
But I think there's a...
In boxing and certainly in MMA, there's a certain amount of years where a fighter can keep the RPMs up when they're in the red line.
Some people subscribe to the idea of nine years.
Nine years is the most that an elite fighter in MMA has performed at their prime.
I think that's a bullshit number because I think it's entirely dependent upon lifestyle, nutrition, discipline, physical attributes.
There's a lot of factors.
So 10 complete years off.
And his opposition to the Vietnam War made him a hero to many Americans.
So you have to like factor in.
And George is biologically very unusual.
He had canned hams for fists.
They were gigantic fists.
And boy, one of my favorite all-time heavyweight wars was him and Ron Lyle.
God, that fight was crazy.
That was an insane fight.
Both guys rocked and hurt.
And Ron Lyle's another one of those guys who's just kind of lost in the history books.
People sort of forgot, except for that fight.
There's a few of those guys that people just kind of have forgotten.
Cleveland Williams is a murderer.
But Ali just boxed his face off and put him away.
The first Liston fight was crazy.
And also the crazy thing was there was something probably on Liston's gloves, right?
What a dirty business to put something on your gloves to get in someone's eyes when you punch them.
put holes in the gloves, removed some of the stuffing, and watered it down.
And then he also did something to his hand wraps as well, right?
He was hitting Cotto with bricks.
Yeah, that was a hand-wrapped thing.
I'm conflating these two stories in my mind with Louis Resto and Billy Collins.
So, Louis Resto was with Panama Lewis.
Panama Lewis, who famously gave that drink to Aaron Pryor.
Get me the one that I fixed.
And then Aaron Pryor goes out and knocks out Alexis Arguello, which is alleged to have been cocaine.
A lot of people think it was cocaine, because Aaron then went to famously have a cocaine problem.
Yeah, if you're exhausted and all of a sudden you get a bump and you fire it up and you go out there and fuck him up, you could help you.
Certainly if you're tired.
Yeah, 100% it would help.
I've never done cocaine, but I'm just guessing.
But in that moment, I guess, you know, in that moment, especially if you're a person who imbibes and, you know, you've had a history of cocaine.
And then, you know, what does it do?
It boosts up confidence and it's a stimulant.
I would imagine that Alexis Arguello fight.
He was a politician in Nicaragua, right?
So I was conflating those.
So with Margarito, I think it was just the raps where they had put Plaster Paris in his raps.
and Louis Resto was a fight where Billy Collins was this up and coming fighter and he fought Louis Resto and Louis Resto was like breaking his face open with every punch.
And so Resto, then when the fight was over, Billy Collins' dad grabs Resto's gloves and realizes there's no padding in the gloves.
And then Billy Collins' career is over and he winds up drinking himself to death.
He actually drove into a tree.
You know, the guys, he couldn't see after that fight.
I mean, his vision was fucked for the rest of his life for as long as he lived after that.
And everyone was so confused because they couldn't believe that this guy, Louis Resto, was not known as being this big puncher, was just busting him up with every shot he landed.
It's a dirty business, man.
And Panama Lewis was – he did some corner work with Mike Tyson as well.
Like later in Mike's career when everything was kind of chaotic and he had all those wackadoos in his corner?
Panama Lewis was like on the sidelines there but wasn't able to be officially a part of it because he was still banned.
Well, you've got to think, this is also 12 years after the Buster Douglas loss.
Which is a long time in boxing.
I didn't know this happened.
They break their hands all the time.
And back then, they probably had terrible...
I was watching a piece yesterday about it was a YouTube video on Sugar Ray Robinson and his training and the type of training that Sugar Ray would do and how phenomenal his dedication was.
And if you think about a guy that like when he had his first loss, how many fights had he won?
You know how crazy that is?
Stop and think about how insane that is.
Is it still there or is it gone?
I'd love to go sometime.
Sugar Ray Robinson was one of the first guys also that showed how effective being a great dancer.
The thing about his training, this video that I was watching, was so interesting to watch someone who's really just ahead of the curve, above everybody.
No one really understood how to move like that.
And then, of course, Cassius Clay, his favorite fighter, Sugar Ray Robinson.
And also the ability to objectively analyze your skills and recognize where you need to advance and what you need to do differently.
And you can have an idea of what's effective, but until you see someone come along and do something totally different, that's where the innovators come in, where the real groundbreakers come in.
I bet before Sugar Ray Robinson, you had Willie Pepp.
He recreated our approach to the sport.
Well, you see a lot of that now in MMA.
You see a lot of footwork and movement and switching stances.
It's like a fighter that can't switch stances in MMA.
It's kind of archaic because you— I think we'll reach that point in boxing, too.
Well, Hagler was an example of one of the first guys to be a switch hitter that people sort of dismissed.
Yeah, I think he can win.
I don't know if he's going to win, but I think he can win.
So he's going to have to box a brilliant fight.
Yeah, what a classic, Jim.
Canelo has such unique skills.
And one of the weird things that he does that very few people since Rocky Marciano does is he punches your arms.
He brutalizes your arms.
Why the fuck would you do that when you're training for a fight?
What if the horse falls?
I wasn't even aware of that until you brought that up.
There he is with his horses.
That completely makes sense if you think about it.
Squeezing with the lower legs.
The core strength that you have to have.
And he was one of the first guys to realize, like, if you crank the heat up, it actually gives guys better conditioning.
I went home and thought about it, and I thought, he's right.
But wouldn't positive, constructive advice being, if you enjoy this, there's some other stuff that you need to do.
That makes so much sense.
Also, he's got a square head.
I mean, just the evolution in the three fights with Triple G. Triple G was one of my all-time favorites.
And he would do weird stuff, like throw a left hook over the top and hit the top of your head.
He would throw a left hook like that, like a looping overhand left.
Yeah, but the way Triple G would do it, it would be going down on you.
And he would hit you in the forehead, or the temple, which is where a lot of people lose their equilibrium.
Well, whatever they do in Kazakhstan, it might be different from what they do in the United States.
Another guy, we've got to talk about Julio Cesar Chavez, who's also one of my all-time favorites.
Julio Cesar Chavez in his prime, he would just systematically break people down.
And the volume, the constant attack and volume.
It wasn't a one-punch guy.
What is it, two seconds before the final bell that the fight gets stopped?
Larry Hazard stops it and everybody wants to kill him?
That's right, Richard Steele.
Okay, so you corrected me on one earlier and now I got you.
Would you be okay with it?
No, it's interesting, right, the subjective calls of stoppages by referees.
It's one of the toughest things.
Imagine what that did to his psyche.
Like every time you go out there, you have the whole crowd.
I think he wound up committing suicide.
That's what I was going to say.
Did Richard Steele commit suicide?
And you've got to imagine the kind of depression that would come just knowing that you altered the course of boxing history.
There's one where he won, but he shouldn't have won.
One of the greatest defensive boxers of all time.
Certainly in the top five.
And I remember that decision being called and I was like...
Didn't Chavez have a decision win over Pernell Whitaker as well?
So is that one similar as well?
I don't really recall that one as much.
Well, Whitaker was like underappreciated because it was so defensively brilliant.
He knocked a lot of guys out as well.
When you look back at your career and all the fights that you called and think about the beginnings and think about when they were trying to just get you out of the business and by giving you boxing, it's almost like
It's very much a storybook tale.
And they took three years of his prime.
I always point to the Cleveland Big Cat Williams fight.
But he didn't train for three years.
That's part of the problem.
And, you know, at 30 years old in that day and age, it was just a different world.
You don't train for three years.
Yeah, it's just they just robbed him.
They robbed us, too, because he came back and he's a different fighter than he was much more easy to hit.
And, you know, he became, you know, he relied on his chin more.
And, you know, he didn't have the fleet of foot movement that he had before then.
Well, the championship mind was always there.
What are the odds that they pick that player?
But as a fan of boxing, it drives me crazy.
Well, I think you're the best ever.
That's how it had to play out.
That's how it had to play out.
And that's how it played out.
The Richard Steele thing?
Somebody else committed suicide.
Did Larry Hazard commit suicide?
Because you imagine what we could have seen in those three years if Ali had never been robbed, never took his title away, and allowed him to fight all those guys like Joe Frazier, George Foreman, all those guys with keeping the same skills that he had when he was younger.
Yeah, Larry Hazard is athletic commissioner right now.
Oh, Mitch Halpern committed suicide.
There was a very controversial fight, right?
A similar type situation.
My apologies to Richard Steele.
What was the big controversial fight?
And also Richard Green committed suicide after the Mancini-Kim fight.
Similar situation with Ducku Kim when he dies, famously on national television, Ray Boom Boom Mancini, and then that referee winds up committing suicide as well.
And there's been so many instances over time.
Of guys recovering and coming back to win the fights.
So many fights that could have been stopped.
And if they were, who knows what we've gotten.
I was just thinking of the Diego Corrales fight Diego Corrales who with that crazy fight where he's knocked down multiple times then comes back to win by knockout and
That might have been it.
And Corrales comes back and wins.
And I believe he died in a motorcycle accident.
Listen, I'm glad we had a chance to talk.
And your book is available.
Did you do the voiceover?
Can you imagine if somebody else, if they forced somebody else to record your audio book?
Do you know the boxing writer Tom Hauser?
Well, I'm going to listen to your book because that's how I absorb most of my books.
Well, I've given away a lot of it to you.
No, I don't give a fuck.
I'm listening to the whole damn thing.
And I really hope that Netflix chooses you for the Canelo fight, the Canelo Crawford fight.
That would be fantastic.
Like I said, it made me so happy to hear you on the Time Square card.
Too bad the fights weren't.
But what do you think that is about?
Because there's a lot of people that have said that Turkey is spending so much money that he's spoiling these guys and they're afraid to lose and that they're fighting safe.
Oh for sure Yeah, and then also the tragic ending, you know, the the staying in too long and too many beatings, you know the the Just the seeing him at the end of his life was just so horrible, you know And we all know that that was trauma induced We all know that and it's just it was just sad to see we haven't seen that yet in MMA, right?
He also landed that left hook of his own and rocked him and dropped him, and I think that changed the entire— Absolutely.
What did you think about Devin Haney's performance?
Because I felt like that was an example of a guy coming off of the Ryan Garcia fight where he got dropped multiple times.
He needed to put on a show and he didn't.
He just looked different.
If you go back to him versus Lomachenko.
Well, you definitely can draw a line between a guy getting rocked and dropped on multiple occasions from a person that he was supposed to beat easily.
If you look at his boxing skill, you look at what he had done to Kambosis.
I mean, he just boxed his face off.
He looked fantastic in that fight.
If you can convince yourself of that.
The problem is once you start saying that, people start saying, fuck you, and then the boos get louder.
I'm talking about saying it to yourself.
No one says anything to themselves anymore.
If you say something publicly, the whole world responds now.
It's not like a guy living in 1976.
This is the different world we're living in.
Just don't read the comments.
Jim Lampley, I appreciate you very much, and I'm a giant fan, and I'm really glad you're back in boxing.
And your book, It Happened, A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television, is available now.
He's a good friend of mine.
So we have a mutual friend.
No, not quite, but you're seeing some damage.
You're seeing some guys that are really struggling.
They're not as public, so you're not seeing it from a George St.
Pierre or someone like that.
George is one of the very unique former champions who has all of his wits, his faculties, retired as champion.
Roy Jones is a good example.
And Roy, you know, Roy famously after Gerald McClellan was hurt when the Nigel Benn fight, he was really concerned because Gerald McClellan was the guy that a lot of people thought was a giant threat to Roy.
I know that that loss that McClellan had and the subsequent medical issues, the stroke and the aneurysm, all that stuff really disturbed Roy and made him think about getting out early.
Who else in recent memory led with left hooks?
But his talent was insane.
But it was also like he was just showing people he was kind of playing with his food He's like I gonna play a basketball game and then go and easily win a fight same night It's interesting to use the phrase playing with his food.