There seems to be this asinine argument, in basketball, about who is the face of the league?
Is it LeBron, Luka, Nikola, SGA or … who cares?
That battle has no ending because the face changes every couple of years, if not every year.
In boxing, the face of the sport is usually the pound-for-pound best, but what of the voice of the sport?
In the 1950’s and ’60s, the voice of boxing belonged to the elegance of Don Dunphy.
Then came the ’70s and ’80s with, love him or hate him, the staccato stylings of Howard Cosell.
Jim Lampley held on tight to that title from the ’90s all the way until December 2018 when HBO got out of the boxing business.
Friday night, from an outdoor arena in Times Square, Lampley returned from retirement to ringside.
“I can’t honestly say I have practiced doing any blow-by-blow,” said Lampley, 76, from the home in Chapel Hill, N.C., he shares with his wife Debra. His voice was raw after watching Duke beat his alma mater North Carolina in the ACC’s final regular season game before conference tournament play.
He called the Times Square fight card for DAZN on pay-per-view.
“It’s been six years. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get some reps here and there and hope that it’s like riding a bike and that I’ll be able to get back on and be reasonably comfortable.”
The three Times Square 12-rounders consisted of: Ryan Garcia vs. Rolando Romero in the junior welterweight main event; former undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney vs. former undisputed junior welterweight champ Jose Ramirez in the co-main; and WBO junior welterweight champ Teofimo Lopez Jr. defending his title vs. Arnold Barboza Jr. in the opener.
Lopez retained his title with a unanimous decision over Barboza Jr.
Haney posted a unanimous decision over Ramirez.
In a major upset, Garcia, dropped in the second round by a Romero left hook, lost a unanimous decision to ruin plans for the rematch with Haney this fall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Garcia dropped Haney three times, winning a majority decision in April 2024 before the bout was ruled a no contest due to Garcia using the performance-enhancing banned substance Ostarine. He was suspended by the New York State Athletic Commission for one year.
For Lampley, he kept himself close to the sport by doing live chats since September 2023 on PPV.com for major fights like March’s Gervonta “Tank” Davis-Lamont Roach lightweight title battle from Barclays Center in Brooklyn which ended in a majority draw.
Lampley returned to a boxing landscape that has changed with both Showtime and HBO out of boxing and ESPN’s boxing contract with Top Rank ending in August.
The newest deep pocketed player in boxing is Riyadh Season out of Saudi Arabia led by Turki Alalshikh who could be the godfather of the sport that lacks direction with too many champions and too many organizations.
“The state of boxing right now is in a state of transition,” said Lampley, who has won three Sports Emmys, covered 14 Olympics and worked for ABC, NBC and CBS along with HBO. He was also the first host on WFAN Radio on July 1, 1987. “Questionably the new circumstances, new players, new money, new ways of doing business, I see a lot of things which are influx right now and it’s not clear yet how all of this is going to shake out over time.”
But he’s noticed where this sport could be heading.
“The only thing I know for sure is that the single most powerful matchmaking and business stimulative pressure in the business right now comes from Turki Alalshikh,” declared Lampley. “Therefore, he’s the right person to work for and work with.”
He met with Alalshikh and came away impressed.
“I walked into a room, and I had a terrific meeting with him and his people. It was very personal, very warm,” said Lampley, who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015.
Besides returning to ringside, Lampley has his memoir coming out April 15 entitled “It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television” (Matt Holt Books). This week he starts a nationwide tour out west after doing a book signing in Ridgewood, N.J. Saturday.
The book reveals some interesting nuggets. Who would have thought as a kid Lampley would attend the heavyweight championship between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay in Miami Beach in 1964. He went to the fight by saving money from lawn mowing and car washing jobs.
Lampley’s television career basically started as college football’s first sideline reporter which is commonplace today.
“It Happened!” covers the topics you’d expect like the Olympics of 1972 (Munich) and 1996 (Atlanta). Lampley’s covered 14 Olympics overall but those two brought out his news reporter chops dealing with the massacre of Israeli athletes and the Atlanta bombing incident, respectively.
He touches on his television brethren like Jim McKay, Keith Jackson, Frank Gifford and Cosell.
There’s also stories of working with broadcast icons like Roone Arledge and Dick Ebersol.
He even touched on his dark side when he shamed a colleague at the 1996 Games flippantly talking about her to a reporter.
“I stupidly dishonored Hannah Storm.”
The book also explains the background of the phrase and book’s title, “It Happened!”
When George Foreman was challenging Michael Moorer in 1994 for the heavyweight championship, Lampley wanted to know what his former broadcast partner’s plan was.
“I pulled him aside in an idle moment and asked the frank question: ‘George, how exactly do you plan to beat Moorer? I mean, he’s a southpaw. He’s a mover. Holyfield had trouble finding him and Evander has quicker feet than you do. So, what’s the plan?’ I asked him at least twice, maybe more.
The answer was simple and adamant. ‘Jim, you watch. There will come a time late in the fight where he will come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out. … You heard me. Just watch. When it happens, remember what I told you.’”
And after referee Joe Cortez counted Moorer out in the 10th round making Foreman, at 45, the oldest heavyweight champ, Lampley bellowed out his famous, “It Happened! It Happened!”
Foreman’s death in May had a profound effect on Lampley who worked with him at HBO from 1992-2004.
“I’m flooded with tears,” he said in a statement the day after Foreman died. “My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and his congregation. He was a great fighter and a far, far greater human being.”
When Lampley worked the Davis-Roach bout in March, he got to see the surrealism of boxing once again. It never goes away.
In the ninth round, Davis got hit, took a knee, then stuck his head out of the ropes so his corner could wipe some hair grease from his eyes.
Taking a knee should have counted as a knockdown and sticking your head out of the ring should have led to a disqualification, but referee Steve Wilkes did nothing and the New York State Athletic Commission did nothing.
“That’s organizational incompetence and it is not the first time that we’ve seen that in the state of New York,” said Lampley, “and it won’t be the last.”
In his journey through the sport of boxing, Lampley’s start was home grown. It began with his mother, Peggy Lampley.
“It can never be forgotten that the first person to give me boxing was my mother when she sat me down to watch Sugar Ray Robinson versus Bobo Olson in 1955,” said Lampley about the bout called by Dunphy. And it just wasn’t his mother. His grandmother, Mildred Askew Lampley (Grandma Mid), was just as important. Their voices, their stories were the foundation of what Jim Lampley would become.
“This book is dedicated to my mother and my grandmother. [They] competed for my attention for more than 30 years by telling these stories. They taught me storytelling,” said the father of four and three stepchildren. He and Debra have a combined 12 grandchildren.
“By telling me stories all my life, they were using that storytelling vehicle to compete for my attention.
“One of the greatest things you can do in your life is to earn a living telling stories. That’s what I did.”
