I have a vivid recollection of watching the Ali-Folley fight on home TV with my dad. In 7th grade at the time, I also remember talking about the fight that night with buddies. I also remember the commercials between rounds starting a split second before the ends of rounds a couple times which is why I believe I wasn't watching a taped version. Recently, watching some old Wide World of Sports tapes rebroadcast by ESPN (on YouTube), I hear the announcer say that the Ali-Wepner fight in March 1975 was the 1st home telecast of a heavyweight championship fight since Ali-Mildenberger in Sept. 1966. But I still have this recollection of watching Ali-Folley on home TV. Difficult to look up, I have seen in print that RKO General and Madison Square Garden controlled the telecast that was sent to 150 PPV venues across the country and that it was blacked out in NYC. Does anyone remember seeing that fight live on home TV over 50 years ago? I'm certain I didn't see a rebroadcast on Wide World of Sports the following Saturday which was frequently the custom with Ali title fights in the '60's. I saw that fight at night in primetime. It sure looked like a live broadcast. Anybody remember 3-22-67?
Ali-Folley was on network TV. Ali-Wepner was closed circuit only; the prelim was Norton, fighting a last minute substitute "shell" Jerry Quarry.
I remember it very well...I saw all the televised fights back then...what a great, golden era it was!
I think it was Ali-Lyle that was the first live network tv broadcast of a heavyweight championship in several years, not Ali-Wepner.
Red Cobra: was anything better than watching the Gillette Friday Night Fights EVERY Friday night ? I was a young kid And watched them all with my dad, Friday nights was fight night. Golden era is correct.
I think I missed out on them...what years were they on tv? My first tv boxing match was Patterson-Chuvalo I think, but I can say that I truly envy you. By the time I started watching the fights on tv, my dad was pretty much burned out on boxing....he and my uncle, aunt and grandmother used to watch the Friday night fights throughout the 50's. my grandmother used to tell me about the 2nd Marciano-Walcott bout where she missed the whole thing by going to the kitchen for a beer. Her favorite fighter was Joey Giardello...he was her heart throb...."that handsome guy with all that black hair"...lol. I've pretty much watched the fights alone...I was so absorbed by them that it didn't matter much to me, but occasionally I had my dad, or my uncle or my brother in law join me. Those were truly great times.
It wasn't too long a drought...just a few years prior, in '72 Frazier's defenses vs Daniels and Stander were televised live.
Could you be mistaking live network television? MSG broadcast its own fights live via RKO (meaning you could watch it at home live) or closed circuit but that wasnt network television. The fights were often shown on network tv tape delay via wide world of sports a week or so later (which had a much greater distribution). So its entirely possible that it wasnt until much later that a championship was broadcast live via NETWORK tv. Its semantics to someone sitting at home but to someone in the business this would make sense and be a big deal.
I think you are correct. I remember watching fights from MSG live in the mid 70s. But it was after we got cable TV (I lived in the Midwest). But MSG broadcasts were available to viewers on the east coast before that. If ABC had televised it live, Howard Cosell would've done the call. As it was, Don Dunphy was the blow-by-blow guy. And the fight was held in MSG. So there's a good bet it was shown live to parts of the country. Just not live to everywhere in the U.S.
100% correct. Dunphy was the blow by blow man for the MSG live shows and occasional simulcasts (he handed radio only broadcasts off to someone else in the late 60s or early 70s and after that you had a revolving door of MSG radio announcers most prominently Tim Ryan).
