Howard Cosell`s Exit from Boxing....Your opinion?

I didn't care for him either way. I thought Howard got a bit bored with boxing after Ali retired and wanted an excuse not to cover it anymore, so he used Holmes vs Cobb as his reason. Holmes didn't like him and I think the feeling was mutual.

 

actually, Howard didnt seem to like any of the fighters outside Ali and Leonard which is why I didnt like Howard

all he did was ride the coat tails of Ali and Ali even told him so during interviews. later, he did the same with Leonard but he had no real interest with the sport itself and he had no skill or knowledge. Referee Arthur Mercante even said that he'd comment on a fight and Howard would then take the comment and then repeat it over the air

I didnt like the dribble from his mouth and his exit from the sport was a disgrace

 

you can say that again

Actually, for me it started from October 30 when Hagler decapitated Obel and ran into the Frank Fletcher James Green fight to the Qawi- Eddie Davis, Hamsho - Czyz fights to Pryor Arguello, Gomez Pintor, Limon - Chacon fights

 

lampley? he's just a well educated USC graduate

 

Hell yes! I was at the Fletcher fight. But really it started Dec 19., 1981 Braxton(not to be confused with qawi) beat Saad. Then Navarratte/Choi and 1982 was on. I have been trying to get back to that year tyhe rest of my life

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=A...oECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=pepe cordero wba&f=false

There's some good stuff in the above link describing his reasoning.

I guess he just became repulsed by the rampant corruption and had enough.

 

Didn’t he also once tell Ali in an interview that Muhammad was being truculent? And Ali answered with no hesitation, “I don’t know what that means, but if it’s good I’m that.”

Haha.

For those saying Cosell was red-hot on Monday Night Football so he walked away from boxing, it’s true that he was hot (and controversial — America loved to hate Howard and his dog-and-pony show with Dandy Don was some of the most entertaining television of that time) ... but he debuted (with Don and Frank Gifford) on MNF in 1970 and Holmes-Cobb was in late 1982, so that had nothing to do with the timing.

Here’s the difference between the circumstance of Holmes-Cobb and some comments made on this thread saying Cosell was aware of other fighters taking beatings: Holmes-Cobb was a mismatch and it was a mismatch that ONLY took place because his network, ABC, put up the money to make it ... no market for that fight otherwise.

Howard wasn’t so much criticizing boxing — he certainly had gained distaste for it by watching Ali, his longtime friend/associate/nemesis, begin to show real signs of the damage done by the sport, so that was part of it — by talking about the brutality of the fight but he openly criticized his own bosses for making a fight that was akin to sending a lamb to slaughter. And because Cobb had the chin of a bronze statue, Cosell was able/forced to repeat this point ad nauseum for 15 consecutive rounds (if it was a mismatch like Holmes-Marvis Frazier that ended in the first round he would have called it a mismatch and it would have been over and he would have said, ‘See, I told you so’ and been done with it.)

So Howard was basically taken off boxing by his own network after that fight, and/or chose his own exit from boxing because he knew he had crossed a line and would never be able to walk those words back no matter what. Like Cosell would have told you, “I’m just telling it like it is.” Which was part of what made him great — he could be bombastic and overbearing, but he never pulled a punch or kowtowed to even those who paid him.

There was a time, for more than a decade easily, where any sporting event was bigger just by virtue of having Howard there. It told the audience that this was a big deal — even if it was a lousy Monday Night Football matchup, it was still MNF and it must be important because Howard was there.

I do think his act had started to grow old. The 1970s had given way to the 1980s and the land of hype and glory. He was a creature of his time.

I met Randall “Tex” Cobb in the late 1980s when he was living in Nashville. I was a boxing fan (obviously) and we talked about fighting and his fights and he told me stories and it was great. I remember that I told him his greatest contribution to the sport was that he ran Howard Cosell out of it, and he just did that huge laugh of his “BAW HAW HAW HAW HAW” and said “You’re right brother. I never won the championship but I did do that.” So in that way, Howard even made Cobb more famous, haha.

 

I had always felt that boxing had lost its appeal to him post Ali.....it did feel like the sport had withdrawals especially in the heavyweight division after Ali retired.....I jut feel that he lost interest in the sport to some extent and retired on the Holmes-Cobb note as a combination of a mismatch of a fight and the post Ali blues just being enough for him to walk away.

 

Hobo works whenever he can get it throughout the country.
Tramp just travels the country but no working.
BUM DOESN'T TRAVEL DOESN'T WORK. LAZY SLOB.
POINT-hobos are not bums. Any self-respecting hobo would set you right. Go to Britt Iowa for the convention. Good times.

 

I would be remiss if I allowed the definition of BUM go by without def. 2b-to whit, Gerald Calamity Cooney

 

Kind of harsh, and inaccurate.

 

Cosell was often blind drunk on vodka in his later broadcasts.

 

Cosell thought himself too good for the boxing fraternity.