Cosell was sincere....in a very short period of time he saw: The death of cleveland denny on the srl1- duran undercard The death of duk koo kim The crashed airplane which cost an entire generation of young boxers as,well as cosells close friend tom johnsons life He knew Ali who seemed so invincible was rapidly deteriorating. He was seeing a guy like shavers suffer a,detached retine and srl was now leaving the scene the same way. I think these thibgs genuinely hurt him...but he also saw boxing in his head declining his,own star rising with the football...nd he loved to be the headline too....so he grandstanded. Great man may he r.i.p
My feeling is he knew he was on the way out as a big time boxing commentator and he wanted some good way to get out of it and look good. So what better way than to say it was because of this. He had many chances to see what he thought he saw with Tex Cobb and Holmes, but he didn't. Why this fight? It could have been what he said, but I don't think so. HBO was coming on and different fighters and era, and Ali was on the way out which was whom he was connected to.
I saw the Sugar Ray Leonard vs Daniel Gonzalez bout live on March 24 1979, Leonard stopped Gonzalez in round 1. I remembered that fight because I would later encounter the great Carlos Monzon on my way to buy a beer. Amilcar Brusa trained Daniel. But what was intriguing was that following the fight, disgruntled fans were walking past the table where Howard Cosell was sitting, they even attempted to pull off his wig, one person spilled beer on him on purpose. Howard ended up waiting in a nearby alley, waiting to be taken to the airport. He said that the people at the fight were a bunch of savages. He stated that he was not going to return there. I never minded watching a fight where Howard was the commentator, he was very knowledgeable.
This post absolutely nails it! Much as I loved Cosell his departure from boxing was an opportunity for him to grandstand and show the world just how "righteous" he was! To put it in modern terms it was a textbook example of "virtue signaling."
my favorite part of the Cosell quit was Tex cobb saying something like "unless I develop a cure for cancer my greatest contribution for the betterment of humankind was getting Howard Cosell out of boxing (hilarious) and this was the very first I ever learned of the death in the first Duran/Leanard fight and I follow boxing Avidly(for decades)
I was always more of a Don Dunphy guy, but I admit Cosell could add a bit of drama to a dull fight. I'm trying to think of a reason why the man would have faked something like that. It doesn't seem like the best career move. Why potentially alienate a big chunk of your listeners who are Die Hard fight fans? As was mentioned earlier, Cosell was on the inside with Ali and perhaps concern over Muhammad's condition played a part in his outrage.