Re: Boxing has changed. Whether we like the changes or not is something else.
I have one memory that I can say gave me great joy and that was at the age of 12 on a cloudy and chilly January afternoon in 1976 I believe at about 4:00 p.m. New York time... I was about three or four houses up the street in front of my friend's house and we were cold and I told my friend I was going to go home to watch Wide World of Sports on channel 7 WABC like I did every Saturday afternoon. I remember turning on our black and white TV and putting on channel 7 and laying down on the floor and watching it and suddenly Howard cosell came on and said here we are for a great heavyweight non-title fight between George Foreman and Ron Lyle. I knew George Foreman only from his blowout of Frazier and his loss in the rumble in the jungle, and I didn't have a clue who Ron Lyle was but he sure looked mean and scary and so I thought this would be a good fight.
I had probably only watched about 10 or 20 boxing matches on Free TV and most were probably on Saturday afternoons on Wide World of Sports.
Even at the age of 12 I knew something was very extraordinary about this boxing match by about the second round and I couldn't tell if it was the fighters or if it was Howard cosell screaming at every blow with that nasal and dramatic voice he had which really impressed me. By the fourth round even as a 12 year old I knew something was really out of the ordinary and it was something amazing. There were these spectacular knockdowns and the fighters looked to be in real agony as they rolled around on the canvas and I could see blood stains where their faces rolled. I saw these huge clubbing combinations and really wide hooks and a really powerful uppercuts landing flush on both fighters as they rocked around trying to keep their balance and gritting their teeth trying to absorb the blows. By the end of the fight a couple rounds later I was seriously in shock about what I had just seen and I told myself that that was the most I ever saw two people punching each other as hard as they could for that long and I couldn't believe anybody could take those kinds of punches directly in the skull. I can just never forget that I saw this fight live on TV in black and white as it unfolded for free. When Ron Lyle finally crumpled to the ground and they raised Foreman's hand in victory I knew I had just witnessed something that I probably would never witness again.
for years I tried to ask people if they had any of this fight on VHS tapes and nobody ever seemed to even remember the fight and by the 1990s I gave up asking around
...when YouTube came out in about 2005 I suddenly got the bright idea to search for that fight and I finally found it maybe around 2010 because I guess no one had uploaded it to YouTube for about 5 years and I relived every blow as it happened for the first time in 40 years and it was just as exciting as it was when I was 12 years old.
This is what I will always remember about boxing. And this is the way I would like to keep it in my mind just like I'm a 12 year old boy running home to watch George Foreman and Ron Lyle pound the living SHIT out of each other and Howard cosell screaming at the top of his lungs while I lay on the floor and watch it for free.
Thank you, boxing.
That is all.
Re: Boxing has changed. Whether we like the changes or not is something else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
NoSavingByTheBell
I have one memory that I can say gave me great joy and that was at the age of 12 on a cloudy and chilly January afternoon in 1976 I believe at about 4:00 p.m. New York time... I was about three or four houses up the street in front of my friend's house and we were cold and I told my friend I was going to go home to watch Wide World of Sports on channel 7 WABC like I did every Saturday afternoon. I remember turning on our black and white TV and putting on channel 7 and laying down on the floor and watching it and suddenly Howard cosell came on and said here we are for a great heavyweight non-title fight between George Foreman and Ron Lyle. I knew George Foreman only from his blowout of Frazier and his loss in the rumble in the jungle, and I didn't have a clue who Ron Lyle was but he sure looked mean and scary and so I thought this would be a good fight.
I had probably only watched about 10 or 20 boxing matches on Free TV and most were probably on Saturday afternoons on Wide World of Sports.
Even at the age of 12 I knew something was very extraordinary about this boxing match by about the second round and I couldn't tell if it was the fighters or if it was Howard cosell screaming at every blow with that nasal and dramatic voice he had which really impressed me. By the fourth round even as a 12 year old I knew something was really out of the ordinary and it was something amazing. There were these spectacular knockdowns and the fighters looked to be in real agony as they rolled around on the canvas and I could see blood stains where their faces rolled. I saw these huge clubbing combinations and really wide hooks and a really powerful uppercuts landing flush on both fighters as they rocked around trying to keep their balance and gritting their teeth trying to absorb the blows. By the end of the fight a couple rounds later I was seriously in shock about what I had just seen and I told myself that that was the most I ever saw two people punching each other as hard as they could for that long and I couldn't believe anybody could take those kinds of punches directly in the skull. I can just never forget that I saw this fight live on TV in black and white as it unfolded for free. When Ron Lyle finally crumpled to the ground and they raised Foreman's hand in victory I knew I had just witnessed something that I probably would never witness again.
for years I tried to ask people if they had any of this fight on VHS tapes and nobody ever seemed to even remember the fight and by the 1990s I gave up asking around
...when YouTube came out in about 2005 I suddenly got the bright idea to search for that fight and I finally found it maybe around 2010 because I guess no one had uploaded it to YouTube for about 5 years and I relived every blow as it happened for the first time in 40 years and it was just as exciting as it was when I was 12 years old.
This is what I will always remember about boxing. And this is the way I would like to keep it in my mind just like I'm a 12 year old boy running home to watch George Foreman and Ron Lyle pound the living SHIT out of each other and Howard cosell screaming at the top of his lungs while I lay on the floor and watch it for free.
Thank you, boxing.
That is all.
ron lyle fought jimmy young, muhammad ali, ernie shavers & george foreman consecutively, all in eleven months
