Fights that had the most obnoxious and biased commentary ?

As some have said on here, Ferdie Pacheco was the worst. A few of his fights.....

Harry Arroyo v Choo-Choo Brown - unashamedly for Harry throughout
Michael Nunn v Steve Little - unashamedly for Nunn throughout
Dwight Qawi v Ossie Ocasio - went on throughout the fight that Qawi was the only one doing anything and that he had it 10-0 at the final bell. The fight was given to Ocasio and I agree that it was a bad decision, but I had it 6-3-1 for Qawi.

Also...

A lot must've rubbed off of him as his sometime announcing partners, Steve Albert and Bobby Czyz would also get behind one fighter. If anyone is watching the Jesse James Leija v Juan Lazcano fight or the second fight between Paulie Ayala v Johnny Tapia, they get behind Jesse and Johnny respectively and become their personal cheerleaders.

 

Tyson vs Tubbs, Larry Merchant was talking about whale hunting when Tyson knocked him out!

 

Cory Spinks vs. Jermain Taylor

 

Burt Lancaster as a color analyst for the FOTC---literally 15 rounds of CRINGE!! (Don Dunphy absolutely saved the day with a call about as great as the fight itself!!)

 

He had a good voice.

Thats all good I have to say lol

I was annoyed about Max Kellerman being a Pernell Whitaker fan boy but other than that I dont see anyone i'd really complain about.

 

Different world. Most people were viewing in an arena with a big screen or maybe a movie house. There would have been a lot of hubbub and no more able to hear the commentary than you would watching a fight (or MMA PPV) in a bar.

All Lancaster lent to it was a Hollywood name to further underscore this was a big-time event. Nobody expected analysis or expertise from him.

I’m not a Dunphy guy. He called fights like he was doing it for radio (which is what he cut his broadcasting teeth on). I never heard any insight from him that I thought was keen — he just told you what he saw, like ‘a left and a right and a left’ kinda stuff. A creature of his time, hadn’t quite figured out that with TV/video images that people could see that for themselves.

 

Ferdie was a terrible color analyst.

He was also, from what we can glean, a lousy doctor. The ‘Fright Doctor’ as he was dubbed had the all-time worst call ever (considering he got his position from his supposed medical expertise) where he was basically calling Gerald McClellan a dog and a guy with no heart in his ill-fated fight vs Nigel Benn where Ferdie also kept questioning why McClellan was blinking — apparently missing the day in medical school where they taught that excessive, repeated blinking is a sign of BRAIN TRAUMA.

He retroactively said he noticed signs of Parkinson’s/brain issues with Muhammad Ali, but that’s complete bull****. He said Ali should quit because of kidney problems and when the Mayo Clinic said after a complete checkout head to toe that Ali had no kidney problems and no other reason for which he should be denied a license to box, Ferdie very publicly told the Washington Post that he wished Ali would retire but it was not a medical decision if he had been checked out.

I will say this for Ferdie, however: He wasn’t just the broadcaster for NBC, apparently he was the guy who made/bought most of their fights, and he had a good eye for attractive matchups that fit NBC’s much lower budget (as compared to ABC and CBS) and found some gems — James Scott’s quest to climb the light heavyweight ladder while in prison, several Jorge Paez fights, picking out action guys like James Green and I think Curtis Parker to fill our weekend afternoons. For this, I give him credit. ABC got bigger names but often not very good fights, and CBS was probably the best at showing us a smorgasbord of boxing from lighter weights to heavy and often finding either intriguing guys or intriguing matchups.

 

The nut hugging for Taylor by Lampley in Chavez vs Taylor 1 was embarrassing.

 

Foreman's commentary during the Hopkins vs Trinidad fight was really bad. Sometimes fighters and analysts see a fight under the lens of what they expect to happen or what they can conceive as happening. Fair enough. Trained fighters can see openings and flows within a fight that most boxing fans can't and often times they're proven correct. But you shouldn't get so caught up in what could happen that you completely neglect to mention what is actually happening in front of your face.

 

Almost ALL commentators in boxing have been ridiculously biased. The only ones I ever liked that were pretty level were:

Gil Clancy
Barry Tompkins
Sean O'Grady
George Foreman
Don Dunphy


The worst to me were/are:

Al Bernstein (he hated Roberto Duran and it showed)
Al Albert (Sean O'Grady usually had to correct him)
Jim Lampley (always just a shill for whoever the network was pushing)
Tim Bradley (biased towards black fighters)
Andre Ward (biased towards himself)
Angelo Dundee (hated anyone HE DIDN'T WORK WITH)
Howard Cosell (totally sucked)
Ferdie Pacheco (dumb as a rock)

 

The one that sticks in my mind is the version of Barrera-McKinney I had on VHS. It was a British commentator and he seemed unreasonably down on Barrera. He kept talking about how he thought Naseem Hamed would knock Barrera ‘spark out’ and saying ignorant **** like ‘why has Barrera got the name Tapia on his trunks? He’s not related to Johnny Tapia!’

What a dick.

Also, another vote against Pacheco’s commentary on Chacon-Boza 2. Plus his moral grandstanding with his in-ring post-fight interview with Nigel Benn after the Gerald McClellan fight. I’m sure Benn regrets some of the things he said in the heat of the aftermath but Pacheco’s ‘a man’s dying in there!’ reaction was pretty unprofessional and borderline hysterical.

 

Where's Emanuel Stewart?

 

Cobb Holmes
Leonard Hagler
Witherspoon Holmes (Dundee was insufferable imo)

 

Cosell during Duran Leonard 1 .