I recently watched the Tyson-Lewis fight from when I recorded it live on PPV. Jim Lampley and Bobby Czyz were on commentary. However, I also have the Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson fight collections. On those versions, commentary is done by Larry Merchant, Jim Lampley and George Foreman. How is that possible? Did they go back and re-do the commentary?
Maybe for the rebroadcast they cutout the showtime crew. I think HBO held the rights to the rebroadcast after the PPV.
It was an HBO/Showtime joint venture for the PPV broadcast. So that's why Lampley and Czyz formed their odd teaming for the fight. Lewis as the HBO fighter and when he won they had the rebroadcast rights, and they dumped Czyz and had their telecast for the rebroadcast. I obviously can't say for certain, but I think the HBO rebroadcast was Fran Charles, Foreman and Merchant. They just did their own telecast at the time to be presented later. If you have a copy with Lampley, Foreman and Merchant they must have re-dubbed that at some point later.
So we have three domestic US commentaries for this fight. Did Bob Sheridan get to do an international broadcast? Anyway, the best commentary team ever for this fight (or any fight) would be Don Dumphy and Ken Norton. They could have done a live show and I'd pay for it.
