Dr Ferdie Pacheco

Yes at the Somerville nj shop rite, not sure if that's still the case

I did see him in north jersey at a bar I frequent, looked good not sure how he's doing financially.

 

Flash Gordon really hated Pacheco. On one hand he lauded him for operating a free clinic in Miami, until it was vandalized and Ferdie closed up shop. But as an announcer Flash found him hypocritical with his new stance on ring safety, but Flash remembering that he was culpable for bringing every stiff out of Havana to Chris Dundee for his Miami shows. According to Flash he was driving the meat wagon.

I don't know who coined the term, 'The Fright Doctor', it could have been Flash himself, who was noted for adorning one with nicknames (remember Dung King). But it caught on when audience members would start yelling, "Stop the fight!" when they would see Pacheco.

 

Many years back, Sheridan came to Australia to be the announcer for a football cross codes celebrity boxing card for charity.

He did a great job and made sure he knew a thing or two about both codes and the participants.

Like you said, he came across as a regular, friendly guy but still a real pro with great knowledge at hand.

If you know Rugby League, you’ll know Mal Meninga - Bob was particularly complimentary re the power Mal exhibited in his particular match -

 

Name me another big time talent who could call a barnburner of a fight in one language, go in the ring and do two interviews in another, providing his own translations of his questions and both fighters' responses. Respect.

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I liked him as a commentator. Seemed like a pretty genuine guy.

 

Never liked him. Know it all pompous a$$. Wasn't knowledgeable at all IMO. Rude and ignorant too boot. Not for me

 

I was going post something about this as well. Not to mention McCellan was pushing his mouthpiece out as if he couldn't breath as the fight got deeper.
I would of thought he might have caught that.

 

Ferdie did have his Babe Ruth moment when he called the knockout by Azumah against Fenech in the rematch. He calls the knockout about 5 seconds before it happened and told us which hand would do it.

 

He was the voice of showtime in the 90s, the single best decade I've ever seen in boxing alongside Steve Albert and Bobby Czyz. He was great imo.

 

One of the worst commentators ever. His call on the Chacon VS Edward's rematch was atrocious

 

Ferdie did an outstanding job there.

 

As noted in this thread, I am nota fan. But I will give credit where it’s due.

While ABC was all in on boxing and CBS was also showing a lot of good/big fights on its weekend anthology series, NBC got into that game a bit late and with a smaller budget.

I learned more recently that Pacheco, in addition to doing commentary, was the ‘buyer’ for NBC as in he was the one who worked within that budget to find fights/fighters to air and, from what I understand, negotiated what NBC would pay.

Found some real bargains like James Scott fighting in Rahway and Jorge Paez. As a commentator, I found him to be an annoying, blithering idiot, but he wasn’t a bad matchmaker considering the budget constraints.

 

I don't remember him saying Frazier was dumb. In his book he wrote he said to Muhammad you're a man, he's a man, why do you talk to him like that. Ali said it was to build the gate. I'm sure Ali would have liked to have taken a lot of that stuff back and even tried when he was alive.

 

Pacheco was extremely disrespectful regarding Frazier in the HBO documentary about the Manila fight. He always came across to me as bitter and didn't know much about actual boxing. He should have had to give a percentage of his pay to Ali as that was the only reason he was relevant.