Once upon a time, I want to tell you, there was a place in the Caribbean where you could watch all the major boxing fights for free! The nation is a tiny island named Puerto Rico, and come fight time, the entire island was captive. There were 5 major stations covering the action: Telemundo, WAPA-TV, Teleluz, Tele-Once and Channel 18 which was an MSG channel so fights from the MSG were broadcast there. But one particular network, WAPA-TV, had the best shows with the best sportscasters. their shows were usually sponsored by Bacardi, Banco Popular, Eastern Airlines, Burger King, Medalla (a local beer), Palo Viejo (a local rum) and Western Auto. Their sportscasters were Luis Rigual and the man considered the best ever in Puerto Rico, Rafael Bracero. With my dad and grandpa, I saw on WAPA-TV: 1981 Sanchez-Gomez Leonard-Hearns I 1982: Benitez-Duran Gomez-Lopez Holmes-Cooney Sanchez-Nelson Laporte-Miranda Holmes-Cobb Gomez-Pintor Benitez-Hearns Weaver-Dokes I Ocasio-Taylor 1983: Serrano-Mayweather Duran-Cuevas Hagler-Sibson Laporte-Castillo Arguello-Fernandez 2 Rosario-Ramirez I Benitez-Cerda Haley-Curry I Hagler-Scypion Escalera-Hatcher 2 Moore-Duran Laporte-De La Rosa Limon-Camacho Holmes-Frank Escalera-Brown Mancini-Romero Curry-Haley 2 Roldan-Fletcher Hagler-Duran Camacho-Solis Mancini-Torres Holmes-Frazier 1984: Curry-Costello Benitez-McSwain Hearns-Minchillo McCrory-Guest Rosario-Elizondo Hagler-Roldan Garza-Orozco Davila-Enrique Sanchez Mancini-Btamble I Bumphus-Hatcher Hearns-Duran Sandoval-Roman Curry-La Roca Mc-Callum-Mannion Hagler-Hamsho 2 Rosario-Ramirez 2 Holmes-Smith I Hatcher-Sacco I 1985 Curry-Jones Arroyo-Alli Meza-Ayala -Chavez-Castillo Hagler-Hearns Spinks-McDonell Thomas-Weaver De Leon-Ratlliff Ramirez-Hermandez Witherspoon-Smith I Berbick-Green Ramirez-Camacho Chavez-Pratchett Holmes-Spinks I Nelson-Cowdell Witherspoon-Scaff McGuigan-Taylor 1986 Tubbs-Witherspoon McGuigan-Cabrera Benton-De Leon Tyson-Ferguson Thomas-Berbick Chavez=Collins Lindo Spinks-Holmes 2 Tyson-Tillis Tyson-Green Tyson-Gross Chavez-Rojas Camacho-Rosario Lora-Sanchez McCallum-Jackson Nelson-Cabrera Bramble-Rosario Camacho-Boza Edwards Alli-Santana Curry-Honeyghan Hearns-De Witt Berbick-Tyson Paul-Haugen Mugabi-Thomas Chavez-Laporte Witherspoon-Smith 2 1987 Tyson-Smith Tyson-Tucker Tyson-Biggs Hearns-Roldan Rosario-Chavez 1988 Tyson-Holmes Tyson-Tubbs Hol6field-De Leon Tyson-Spinks Chavaez-Ramirez Hearns-Kinchen La Londe-Leonard 1989 Barkley-Duran Tyson-Bruno I Mayweather-Chavez 2 Leonard-Hearns 2 Tyson-Williams 1990 Chavez-Taylor 1 Then, I left to the USA, Imagine seeing all those fights FREE, no cable. no going to bars, no PPV...free like if they were live on CBS, NBC or ABC! Hope you enjoyed this "Caribbean nation tale!"
My pleasure! And, I'm sure I forgot a couple of broadcasts... Leo cruz-Benito Badilla and Cruz versus a Korean whose name I don't recall come to mind in that respect and also, the Callejas-Stecca 2 fight.
That’s awesome. Glad you got to be around for such a good time to catch it all. That somehow reminds me that for a short period of time there was a cable channel in America called Financial News Network that was mostly just running stock reports and the like … but for some odd reason it also carried a fair amount of boxing from around the world at odd hours — fights from Europe, South Africa and elsewhere that normally wouldn’t have been seen in the U.S. (this is if not pre-internet, before YouTube and things like it began having fights posted from hither and yon so you could find them, much less any live streaming). I don’t think any of those fights, or at least not many, were shown live but they would slot them in here and there. And on the Fourth of July holiday they would run marathons (the stock markets were closed for the holiday) and just show fights all day and all night. My brother and I, when we caught onto the holiday programming, would just set up VCRs and record everything as they showed fight after fight. Not to the scale you’re talking about, but it was a nice treat. I think FNN got sold and morphed/merged into some cable news outfit or something like that and the fights when bye-bye.
I have to add that WAPA's main rival, Telemundo, held their own for the first part of the 80s too.Among the many bouts they showed were Pryor-Arguello I and II, Holmes-Witherspoon, Gomez-Laporte, Nelson-Gomez, Pedroza-Lujan, Gomez-Lockridge, McGuigan-Pedroza and Leonard-Duran III. Tele-Once then started outbidding Telemundo and became a major player in the mid to late 80s. All for free to us, of course!
I was in the Cayman Islands for a couple weeks in the mid-1980s when in college. No boxing tales but me and some friends got invited to some kind of country club type place where they had the NBA finals (Lakers vs. Celtics) on Armed Forces Network out of the U.S., haha.