British and Irish Memories of Boxing on Free To Air TV

The Tyson fights live in the middle of the night were big, but I liked the old Sportsnight set-up on Wednesday evenings: a good game of physical football between teams with English players, followed by a good fight, such as Sibson-Lucas or Kaylor-Watts.

 

errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Amir Khan.

That is it in my life that I remember. Froch-Pascal too.

 

Audley Harrison

 

I don't even remember that really. Obviously a 9 year old me had more sense than the rest of the country and realised Audley was ****.

 

Only that gay fencing with gloves on - that is currently known as amateur boxing.

 

Audley-Williams, Williams-Skelton and the ever so faint sounds of TVs being turned off around the country.

More positively my eyes catching Benn-Logan in a Currys/Dixons window on Grandstand in Bexleyheath. Stood along with 5/6 others open-mounted as Benn pulled out the ko. Made me love boxing.

Slightly off topic, the sky ringside show helped a great deal as well. Gary Norman was the best host sky ever had on boxing and watching it made me care about fights like Andy Till-Wally Swift. I'm not sure I'd even tune in for the equivalent these days. Was a superb scrap.

 

I loved those heady days of ITV's Big Fight Live in the early 90s with Eubank, Benn & Watson. Great great nights, special atmospheres and the Benn-McClennan war is typifies that era. But the "Best of Enemies" show aired just before Eubank-Benn II was the stuff of legend. Saturday night prime time viewing with Linda Lusardi etc in the crowd asking questions to both boxers and then the fight straight after. **** you 24/7, this was much better.

Also, for Welsh reasons, I loved watching Steve Robinson (also on ITV) on his quest to move from complete obscurity to cinderella superstar at the Ice rink.... great great nights. I still have some of these fights on VHS where I had taken the little bit of plastic out so that you couldn't record over it! (unless you knew that a bit of sellotape worked just as well!)

Makes me think about Reg Gutteridge, god rest his soul.

 

Not too many... RTE mostly lately
Dunne Vs Pickering, Walstad & Cordoba

 

Also I remember watching Sportsnight late one evening when the BBC covered the ABA finals and this kid one the fight and got his third straight title at a different weight. I wasn't paying much attention until Jim Neeley said that the kid was from Newbridge and I couldn't believe it. Some amateur boxing star was from my home town. I followed his career from that moment on. He turned out to be a fairly decent pro too.

 

who was that? loving the avatar by the way!!

 

His boxer ID is number 005364:

http://www.boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=005364

 

Watching the repeats of Barry McGuigan fights on BBC the following morning.

Sitting up in the early hours of the morning to watch Tyson on ITV....

Big Fight Live - ITV - many Benn, Eubank fights.....

Dave Boy McAuley, Sam Storey, Duke McKensie, Frank Bruno, Gary Mason, Honeygan...

Commentators of the day that I enjoyed: Harry Carpenter, Reg Gutterige, Jim Nealy, Jim Rosental.....