I take it you've seen Norton vs Holmes? I can't fathom how you could retain that opinion after watching that fight. Adam Smith is the worst, Macklin is almost as bad.
Good call, the first one I thought of; Pacheco had JUST said, "The mark of a shot fighter ..." and BOOM! Perfect short right hand, and that was it. The last thing to go on a puncher is their punch; Tyson was moving in slow motion, but the power was still there. Fate created a perfect moment ...
Not a commentators curse, but more of an example of my jinxing abilities, literally seconds before Rahman ko'd Lewis I said to the guys I was watching with "Well, it looks like Rahman can't hurt him"
I remember one call of the rumble in the jungle where the announcer said around the 7th round that George could end this fight at any time with one punch,,Joe Frazier was there and said uh, I don 't George is gonna make it.
Howard Cosell was the King. Today, they have a half-dozen guys commenting during a fight. He usually called fights alone. It was very difficult to day play-by-play, provide color, bring up facts he gathered during prefight interviews, interview trainers between rounds, have the producer yelling your headphones during the fight, hop in the ring after the fight to do interviews ... One time Larry Merchant had to do the blow-by-blow call when Lampley was out, but they still gave him a sidekick to talk to. Merchant was lost. As Cosell got older, he got a little worse. But he was one of my all-time favorites.
The late great Reg Gutteridge once had a classic in the Andries/Hearns fight that was live prime time Saturday night in the UK. To paraphrase: As we thought Jim (Watt; colour commentator), Dennis made a slow start, but things are picking up and I think he won the fifth. Then... 15:18 (The American commentary made a similar mistake!) This content is protected
"This is probably the tamest round of the entire fight" - Said during round 12 of Emile Griffith vs Benny Paret III
Dave Brenner: "But Jackson has so little in comparison to Graham tonight." Jim McDonnell: "But Jackson, to his credit, sticking to his task, as desperate as it is." DB: "But falling ever further behind on OH, NO!"
Dan Dierdorf: "And it's almost exclusively a left-handed fight now by Aaron Davis. I don't know that he's thrown a good right hand this round, Alex." Alex Wallau: "You wonder what his depth perception is out of the right eye, Dan." DD: "Oh! And there's the right hand! And Mark Breland is down!"
I think it was Leonard Duran III. Gil Clancy and Marv Hagler commentating . Clancy, assuming the role of wisened, all knowing trainer, seemed fixated on trying to refute or contradict everything Hagler said. I thought Hagler was pretty good in his observations and he was certainly the first to pick up in real time that Duran had badly split Ray’s eye with right hand, not a butt as Clancy was trying to suggest. Clancy only acknowledging same when he saw the slo mo replay.
