Joe Rogan Experience #2346 - Jim Lampley

Jim Lampley joins Joe Rogan for a roughly two-hour deep dive into boxing history and the craft of calling fights. They walk through legendary fighters and bouts — Ali, Foreman, Roy Jones, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Canelo, Crawford — dissecting what made each great and how fine the margins of victory really are. Lampley shares insider stories from his HBO career, the trio of himself, Larry Merchant, and George Foreman, and how AT&T's purchase killed HBO boxing. He recounts the origin of his famous calls, the bizarre luck that launched his career, and the dark side of the sport including loaded gloves and referees who later took their own lives.

• Lampley reveals George Foreman repeatedly predicted, word-for-word, that Michael Moorer would 'come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out' — which is exactly what happened, birthing the 'It happened' call and book title.
  00:21:18
• Lampley says HBO Boxing died the moment AT&T (a 'bunch of cell phone salesmen from Dallas') bought Time Warner, recounting a party where he told his boss 'I think boxing is dead.'
  00:56:33
• Recounts a young Mike Tyson telling Alex Wallau that Cus D'Amato taught him the uppercut's purpose was to 'drive the opponent's nose bone into his brain.'
  01:00:42
• Tells how Jack Nicholson's acting mantra 'don't overact' shaped his understated 'Mike Tyson has been knocked out' call in Tokyo.
  01:13:58
• Floats his original theory that Canelo Alvarez is impossible to knock down because of hunter-jumper horseback riding building his lower-body base, not because of his chin.
  01:43:37
• Reveals for the first time publicly that he grew up around the corner from ABC president Roone Arledge's parents and caddied for them — a fact Arledge ordered him to never reveal.
  02:01:18
• The career-launching audition: ABC sent him to interview quarterback George Mira, unaware Mira was Lampley's childhood hero whom he knew better than Mira's own family.
  02:04:29
• Recalls the Antonio Margarito loaded-gloves scandal against Miguel Cotto, only uncovered later before the Shane Mosley fight.
  01:30:40

• Lampley's first live fight was Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston on Feb 25, 1964 in Miami Beach — he saved lawn-mowing money for months to buy a ticket at age 14.
  00:08:50
• Lomachenko's father pulled him out of boxing for two years to study Ukrainian dance, which Lampley calls a genius move behind his footwork.
  00:27:29
• Manny Pacquiao won world titles across eight different weight classes, something no other fighter has done.
  00:41:28
• Bernard Hopkins beat top contenders at 49 years old; he calls completing nine years of probation 'walking off nine.'
  00:53:26
• Buster Douglas was a 42-to-1 underdog against Tyson in Tokyo; his mother had just died, which lit him up.
  01:18:12
• Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis trained together for a week as 14-year-olds in the Catskills, decades before their 2002 Memphis fight.
  01:36:23
• Gloves were adopted in boxing largely because John L. Sullivan got tired of breaking his hands — then he lost the first gloved title fight to Corbett.
  01:37:25
• Sugar Ray Robinson won 120 fights before his first loss.
  01:38:27
• Canelo did two and a half hours of hunter-jumper horseback riding every morning before three and a half hours of boxing training.
  01:44:40
• Lampley was the first of two reporters ever put on a college football sideline with a camera and mic, an innovation born from ABC's coverage of the 1972 Munich massacre.
  02:05:01

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