Least favorite commentator.

[J_Undisputed]

Everyone seems to hate on Lampley and yeah... he can't call a fight worth a damn. But you gotta give him credit for trying to keep boxing relevant to the fan masses. His program The Fight Game is fairly popular, and has covered many a topic in an interesting way. What I didn't like about Merchant was that he was a self-serving, conceited, pompous drunk.... who loved to make pauses for effect, as if we were dying to hear his next words. He also reached very far for words that would make him seem intellectual, like when he tried to quote Shakespeare or some other asinine thing like that. He looked less like a boxing commentator, and more like a drunken pervert, who would hit on any woman who came within striking distance.

Agreed. I am forced to cut Lamps some slack. He's got a job to do and that's to sell the fight so he has to inflate the action to do so. Some fights i'm sure are a pleasure for him to call. A provodnikov/Matthysse fight kind of writes itself and you can just do the play by play and it sounds like you're doing an amazing job. The other times "Kovalev pounds ward with a sledge hammer to the body and take the opportunity to get in some stiff body work as they jockey for position and each man delivering vicious body shots trying to take the wind out of their opponents sails" (however unrealistic) still sounds better than, "Kovalev lands a jab, ward turtles away from the right, and hugs... Kovalev clinches back... theyre still hugging.. some wrestling.. and the ref breaks it up again... ward slips and clinches again.... kovalev clinches back... here comes the ref..." Unfortunately for Lampley, the onus is on him to make you feel like you're getting your moneys worth from HBOs promise.

With Merchant, I think many people took exception that he was trying to correct people that actually fought professionally before. His armchair fighting pedigree just wasn't going to trump Roy's or George's insight. I'd let him correct Deontay Wilder or someone like that probably because i don't consider what wilder does as boxing anyway. The tangents he'd run off on were awful as he would be grasping at straws at the end to bring it full circle and make it pertain to his original point. "When we talk about a fighter, we wonder what goes on in the mind of a fighter... yanno i knew this dusky gal once out of Pasadena.. she used to serve drinks in a roadside whorehouse... sometimes the glasses were dirty... blah blah blah... so tonight we saw that you never know whats going on in a fighters mind.. it can be a dirty glass that you can never quite see the bottom of... Jim?" * Merchant's self appreciating grin*

Ranallo is like listening to someone cut styrofoam with a plastic knife ...

[imp]

I "like" Duke McKenzie, Paulie and Glenn McCrory...Barry McGuigan is also top class.