George Foreman's Commentary In Hopkins/Trinadad

What are you ranting about? It's a compilation of his quotes, which includes his arguing with Merchant.

Foreman called out Merchant and Lampley on that during the Jones-Ruiz fight. He basically said "you helped HBO promote this as a HW title fight and now you're tearing down the achievement". Naturally, Lampley and Merchant didn't really have much to say in response.

 

I think I confused your posting with the General commentary about Foreman being a BS talker. My apologies. Lampley and Merchant strive to impose their viewpoints on the fans in a way that is extremely annoying. Fans were cheering and they claimed the fans were bored. It was as if they had a mission.

 

Foreman during the DelaHoya vs Quartey:
Saying DelaHoya is a real intimidator because of his big wide shoulders...
Also, something about Oscar having a baby face or something and Foreman comes back with "That baby can scratch"...

Entertaining, but not insightful at all.

 

Yeah his commentary in that fight was ridiculously biased too.

 

Hagler during SRL - Hearns II is still hard to beat - "c'mon Tommy" lmao

 

At least Hagler had a reason LOL.

 

LOL

Gerry Cooney was doing commentary during Tex Cobb-Earnie Shavers. He said something like that, "let's go" or "come on".

Someone else said "Mr. Cooney, if you're going to be at the commenters table, you cannot be partial to a fighter and say that"

 

I actually enjoyed listening to George. You can't take what he says too serious though.He was always biased against Hopkins, there must have been some personal history between the two

 

George talked like a smoked up person does at times. Lots of general weirdness, seemingly zero short term memory, lots of brain farts, odd comparisons and analogies.

 

Yeah he definitely carried that for a long time lol

 

Wow that's a stretch. I don't see how Larry Merchant's idiosyncrasies support your generalizations about "80s/90s boxiana."

 

The top TV commentators of the day were having unrealistic expectations for the fighters. That stuff permeates throughout the sport.
Or, they were simply reflecting the sentiments present of the day.

The casting crew didn't live in their own bubble, quite the opposite.

 

I disagree. Most commentators of the day seemed like fans and hype men. Larry Merchant was Larry Merchant. He stood out for being more negative and critical than his colleagues and counterparts. Merchant liked action and from time to time would complain when he felt that a fighter wasn't doing enough. This is about one man's (widely shared) stylistic preferences, not a generation of boxing commentators having unrealistic expectations.

 

I like how Roy got into with Lampley during the Whitaker vs. Hoya match... Lampley was drooling over everything Oscar did (mostly punches not landing) and Roy was saying... WTF are you watching, Pea is winning this fight.

 

It starts at the top.
If the guy calling the fights on live television is being unreasonably critical, it's going to impact fans perceptions.

This stuff still happens today, but the biases are usually more subtle.