amanamagus
06-29-2007, 05:22 PM
Those Merchant Moments
Everybody has their own favorite
"Larry Merchant Moment," even his critics.
Can you guess what his own one is?
Bet the answer will surprise you.
By Nat Gottlieb/Courtesy of HBO.com
Over the course of 29 years as a boxing commentator for HBO, Larry Merchant has established himself as one of the great wordsmith's in sports broadcasting. So it was somewhat surprising that when Merchant was asked to recall his most dramatic moment as a commentator, he singled out one interview that was filled with nothing but the sounds of silence --twenty-five seconds of air time in the ring without a word being said. Here's the story.
The year was 1990. The fight was Mike Tyson versus James "Buster" Douglas at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. HBO and a just handful of American boxing writers had bothered to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun because this was a Tyson fight that everybody figured would have an early, blood-red sunset.
Tyson was 37-0, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and baddest man on the planet. Douglas was a talented but erratic fighter with an undistinguished 29-4-1 record. The odds on Douglas winning were 40-1. It didn't promise to be an event with much drama, but then these were the heady Tyson days when you could put him in the ring with six-foot phone book and still draw a crowd.
Merchant was there with his partners, Jim Lampley and Sugar Ray Leonard, and they had already made early dinner plans.
"We were not expecting a long fight," Merchant recalled.
Although Douglas would ruin their dinner plans and catch Tyson by surprise, Merchant, Lampley and Leonard sniffed out a possible upset from the first round on.
"We were on top of it from the get go," Merchant said. "I remember remarking before the fight began that Buster didn't walk to the ring, he broke into a trot and ran to it. I said on air, 'Most people expect Douglas to be another bug on Tyson's windshield. But this bug looked eager to get there, unlike the other bugs.'"
In round two, Merchant saw something unusual unfolding. "I said that Tyson was getting hit with punches he had never gotten hit with before. One thing I have always believed in was trust your eyes. No matter what you think you know, no matter how much homework you have done, trust what you see in the ring."
It soon became apparent to Merchant that what his eyes were telling him was not at all what he had expected to see.
"After a few rounds it was evident something was happening," Merchant said. "I remember saying on air there has always been a theoretical blueprint to beat Mike Tyson, but nobody had executed it. This guy was executing it, keeping the fight on the outside and using his reach advantage (12 inches)."
Almost as stunning as what was happening in the ring was the effect it had on the crowd.
"I made the point that the fight was being fought in relative silence. The Japanese did not come to see a fight. They had come to see Godzilla, and the wrong guy was becoming Godzilla," Merchant said.
Though surprised, Merchant was not as shocked as others. He knew Douglas had some upset history in his family, and also that Tyson's corner was a mess.
"I had seen Buster's father Billy Douglas fight. The Garden had a budding star who needed a confidence boost, and they brought in Billy Douglas from Columbus (OH) to get the kid a victory."
Billy Douglas was a journeyman light heavyweight with a 40-16 record. It was 1976. Like Buster in Tokyo, nobody in New York gave him a chance.
"Billy was a very serious, determined fighter," Merchant said. "And he beat the guy. Buster had superior ability to his father, but he hadn't until that night shown the same need or will his father had."
Buster's mother had died three months before the Tyson fight, however, and Merchant speculated that her death might galvanize Douglas and make him focus.
From his homework, Merchant also knew that Tyson's corner was an accident waiting to happen.
"Tyson had fired his trainer Kevin Rooney, and had guys there who had never dealt with a crisis like this. They didn't even have an Endswell to treat his (swollen) eye. I remember making a reference on air to Secretariat. Something like, 'You don't put some 14-year-old jock on Secretariat just because he is Secretariat. He needs a veteran rider. And so did Tyson.'"
When the 10th round started, the fight was very much up for grabs on the scorecards. One judge had it 88-82 for Douglas, another 87-86 for Tyson, and the third scored it even, 86-86.
Douglas, with a stunned America watching on HBO, didn't let it go to the scorecards. He knocked out Tyson in the tenth, the first time Tyson had ever even been down. It was the biggest upset in modern heavyweight championship history.
After the decision was announced, Merchant jumped into the ring with one question he wanted very much to ask. He knew, however, he had to approach it delicately. "I wanted to bring up his mother, but felt I would wait until later in the interview," Merchant said.
Merchant asked a first question. He has no recollection to this day of what it was. What he does remember and says he will never forget, is what happened after he asked the question.
"Buster desperately wanted to do the interview, but he was so choked up, he literally could not talk," Merchant said.
In the space of three months James "Buster" Douglas had lost his mother and upset the heavyweight champion of the world. He was paralyzed with emotion. Merchant waited for an answer. Seconds went by. Ten. Then fifteen. Still Douglas could not speak. Twenty seconds, then twenty-five, nothing.
Back in the States, HBO Sports president at the time, Seth Abraham, was watching the moment unfold on TV with rapt attention. Merchant recalls what Abraham told him what he got back to the States. "Seth told me he kept yelling at the screen, 'Let it play! Let it play! Don't lose him!' I wasn't about to lose him."
Douglas' handlers came over and tried to pull their speechless champion away. "But he wouldn't let them," Merchant said. "He wanted to speak, and finally he was able to. That is as dramatic a moment for me that I can ever remember as a broadcaster."
It was also a moment that would color the rest of Merchant's career.
"It made me fully realize that in this medium you should show, not tell. One picture is worth a thousand words. That's when I understood the fighter was the story. Nothing I could say was as important."
Over the course of his career, there would be many worthy runner-ups for Merchant's favorite moment. Among them:
"I was covering a fight in Boston. Wayne McCullough was fighting [Daniel Zaragoza] and Wayne lost the decision. So this Irish fan who had too much to drink charged into the ring and I used some of my old football training (at Oklahoma University) and gave him a forearm shiver that knocked him down," Merchant said.
McCullough's wife and manager, Cheryl remembers it well.
"Wayne had just lost a controversial split decision. If you have the fight on tape, you can see the guy attacking Larry while he's interviewing Wayne. I think the guy just wanted his 15 minutes," McCullough said.
Then there were the on-going tug of wars with promoters who wanted to have their say in the ring.
"I've had a few run-ins with promoters on air," said Merchant, putting it lightly. "After awhile, somewhere along the way I had this idea that I did not want to interview promoters in the ring. They are spin doctors and trying to sell themselves and their fighters. The public wants to hear from the fighters."
Most promoters understood and didn't make a fuss, except for Don King. But then Don King is not like any other promoter.
"Don took it personally. He thought it was a plot against him. I said to King, 'You need to be interviewed like some people need air to breathe.' And he said, 'You're damn right!' I didn't toss him any softball questions, I can tell you that."
Merchant interviewing Oscar De La HoyaThen there were the fighters themselves. Merchant has always felt he had a free hand with the "stars," thanks to current HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg, who made Merchant his first hire when he came to the network in 1978 as vice president and executive producer.
"With Ross, I did not have to sugar coat things or promote the fighters," Merchant said. The commentator would make ample use of that laissez-faire license over the years.
"I've had some low points with fighters. It has been said by others that the only guy Tyson feared in the ring was Larry Merchant, particularly after he lost to Douglas that night. He wouldn't be interviewed by me. We had to get Jim to do the interview. There were other instances, not many, where they would only talk to Jim. Larry Holmes was one, although later he wrote me an apology and said he was angry people weren't giving him credit for what he had done.
"I've had to run and track down fighters in their locker rooms, most recently Winky Wright after he fought to a draw with Jermain Taylor. When I tracked down Holmes after one fight, his only comment was, 'They (fans) can kiss me where the sun don't shine.' And there was this memorable moment with Big George:
After Foreman lost a highly questionable decision to Shannon Briggs in Atlantic City (1997), in what would be George's final fight, Merchant went to interview the former champion in the ring.
When Merchant asked Foreman for his reaction to the decision, George talked about one of his commercial ventures instead. Stunned, Merchant stared incredulously at Foreman and remarked: "What does that and the price of rice in China have to do with tonight's prizefight?"
Foreman remembered the moment well when I contacted him via email. He wrote in part:
"It was the George Foreman Grill. I started talking about how good the Grill is, and how it helps to keep the weight off. Larry looked at me and said, what does that have to do with the boxing match...Larry was a great man for boxing; you always have to have one way, and the other; he was the other.
I loved picking a fight with Larry on air, because he was like me; when the matchers were over; it did not mean anything."
And of course there was Bernard Hopkins, a great champion who fights as tough with his mouth as he does his fists. Merchant and Hopkins seemed to have had their own long-running reality TV series. At the end of one particular hostile interview with Hopkins, Bernard being Bernard put the surprising exclamation point on the exchange.
"Bernard broke into a smile and said, 'You and me ought to take this show on the road.'"
Merchant never takes a pre-determined mindset in the ring, and as a result, by living in the moment, he has ad-lipped some memorable comments.
After Vernon Forrest beat Ike Quartey in a close unanimous decision last August which was loudly booed by a Quartey crowd in New York, Merchant patiently waited out a long string of "thank yous" from the winner before zinging this one home: "Do you want to thank the judges?"
There are many more "Merchant Moments" worth recounting, but I'll end with one which happened while I was talking to him about the circus world that boxing sometimes becomes.
"Boxing," he said, "is the one sport where if you can't find something to comment on or write about, then you don't have a pulse."
At 76, let it be said Larry Merchant's pulse is still beating strong.
Everybody has their own favorite
"Larry Merchant Moment," even his critics.
Can you guess what his own one is?
Bet the answer will surprise you.
By Nat Gottlieb/Courtesy of HBO.com
Over the course of 29 years as a boxing commentator for HBO, Larry Merchant has established himself as one of the great wordsmith's in sports broadcasting. So it was somewhat surprising that when Merchant was asked to recall his most dramatic moment as a commentator, he singled out one interview that was filled with nothing but the sounds of silence --twenty-five seconds of air time in the ring without a word being said. Here's the story.
The year was 1990. The fight was Mike Tyson versus James "Buster" Douglas at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. HBO and a just handful of American boxing writers had bothered to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun because this was a Tyson fight that everybody figured would have an early, blood-red sunset.
Tyson was 37-0, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and baddest man on the planet. Douglas was a talented but erratic fighter with an undistinguished 29-4-1 record. The odds on Douglas winning were 40-1. It didn't promise to be an event with much drama, but then these were the heady Tyson days when you could put him in the ring with six-foot phone book and still draw a crowd.
Merchant was there with his partners, Jim Lampley and Sugar Ray Leonard, and they had already made early dinner plans.
"We were not expecting a long fight," Merchant recalled.
Although Douglas would ruin their dinner plans and catch Tyson by surprise, Merchant, Lampley and Leonard sniffed out a possible upset from the first round on.
"We were on top of it from the get go," Merchant said. "I remember remarking before the fight began that Buster didn't walk to the ring, he broke into a trot and ran to it. I said on air, 'Most people expect Douglas to be another bug on Tyson's windshield. But this bug looked eager to get there, unlike the other bugs.'"
In round two, Merchant saw something unusual unfolding. "I said that Tyson was getting hit with punches he had never gotten hit with before. One thing I have always believed in was trust your eyes. No matter what you think you know, no matter how much homework you have done, trust what you see in the ring."
It soon became apparent to Merchant that what his eyes were telling him was not at all what he had expected to see.
"After a few rounds it was evident something was happening," Merchant said. "I remember saying on air there has always been a theoretical blueprint to beat Mike Tyson, but nobody had executed it. This guy was executing it, keeping the fight on the outside and using his reach advantage (12 inches)."
Almost as stunning as what was happening in the ring was the effect it had on the crowd.
"I made the point that the fight was being fought in relative silence. The Japanese did not come to see a fight. They had come to see Godzilla, and the wrong guy was becoming Godzilla," Merchant said.
Though surprised, Merchant was not as shocked as others. He knew Douglas had some upset history in his family, and also that Tyson's corner was a mess.
"I had seen Buster's father Billy Douglas fight. The Garden had a budding star who needed a confidence boost, and they brought in Billy Douglas from Columbus (OH) to get the kid a victory."
Billy Douglas was a journeyman light heavyweight with a 40-16 record. It was 1976. Like Buster in Tokyo, nobody in New York gave him a chance.
"Billy was a very serious, determined fighter," Merchant said. "And he beat the guy. Buster had superior ability to his father, but he hadn't until that night shown the same need or will his father had."
Buster's mother had died three months before the Tyson fight, however, and Merchant speculated that her death might galvanize Douglas and make him focus.
From his homework, Merchant also knew that Tyson's corner was an accident waiting to happen.
"Tyson had fired his trainer Kevin Rooney, and had guys there who had never dealt with a crisis like this. They didn't even have an Endswell to treat his (swollen) eye. I remember making a reference on air to Secretariat. Something like, 'You don't put some 14-year-old jock on Secretariat just because he is Secretariat. He needs a veteran rider. And so did Tyson.'"
When the 10th round started, the fight was very much up for grabs on the scorecards. One judge had it 88-82 for Douglas, another 87-86 for Tyson, and the third scored it even, 86-86.
Douglas, with a stunned America watching on HBO, didn't let it go to the scorecards. He knocked out Tyson in the tenth, the first time Tyson had ever even been down. It was the biggest upset in modern heavyweight championship history.
After the decision was announced, Merchant jumped into the ring with one question he wanted very much to ask. He knew, however, he had to approach it delicately. "I wanted to bring up his mother, but felt I would wait until later in the interview," Merchant said.
Merchant asked a first question. He has no recollection to this day of what it was. What he does remember and says he will never forget, is what happened after he asked the question.
"Buster desperately wanted to do the interview, but he was so choked up, he literally could not talk," Merchant said.
In the space of three months James "Buster" Douglas had lost his mother and upset the heavyweight champion of the world. He was paralyzed with emotion. Merchant waited for an answer. Seconds went by. Ten. Then fifteen. Still Douglas could not speak. Twenty seconds, then twenty-five, nothing.
Back in the States, HBO Sports president at the time, Seth Abraham, was watching the moment unfold on TV with rapt attention. Merchant recalls what Abraham told him what he got back to the States. "Seth told me he kept yelling at the screen, 'Let it play! Let it play! Don't lose him!' I wasn't about to lose him."
Douglas' handlers came over and tried to pull their speechless champion away. "But he wouldn't let them," Merchant said. "He wanted to speak, and finally he was able to. That is as dramatic a moment for me that I can ever remember as a broadcaster."
It was also a moment that would color the rest of Merchant's career.
"It made me fully realize that in this medium you should show, not tell. One picture is worth a thousand words. That's when I understood the fighter was the story. Nothing I could say was as important."
Over the course of his career, there would be many worthy runner-ups for Merchant's favorite moment. Among them:
"I was covering a fight in Boston. Wayne McCullough was fighting [Daniel Zaragoza] and Wayne lost the decision. So this Irish fan who had too much to drink charged into the ring and I used some of my old football training (at Oklahoma University) and gave him a forearm shiver that knocked him down," Merchant said.
McCullough's wife and manager, Cheryl remembers it well.
"Wayne had just lost a controversial split decision. If you have the fight on tape, you can see the guy attacking Larry while he's interviewing Wayne. I think the guy just wanted his 15 minutes," McCullough said.
Then there were the on-going tug of wars with promoters who wanted to have their say in the ring.
"I've had a few run-ins with promoters on air," said Merchant, putting it lightly. "After awhile, somewhere along the way I had this idea that I did not want to interview promoters in the ring. They are spin doctors and trying to sell themselves and their fighters. The public wants to hear from the fighters."
Most promoters understood and didn't make a fuss, except for Don King. But then Don King is not like any other promoter.
"Don took it personally. He thought it was a plot against him. I said to King, 'You need to be interviewed like some people need air to breathe.' And he said, 'You're damn right!' I didn't toss him any softball questions, I can tell you that."
Merchant interviewing Oscar De La HoyaThen there were the fighters themselves. Merchant has always felt he had a free hand with the "stars," thanks to current HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg, who made Merchant his first hire when he came to the network in 1978 as vice president and executive producer.
"With Ross, I did not have to sugar coat things or promote the fighters," Merchant said. The commentator would make ample use of that laissez-faire license over the years.
"I've had some low points with fighters. It has been said by others that the only guy Tyson feared in the ring was Larry Merchant, particularly after he lost to Douglas that night. He wouldn't be interviewed by me. We had to get Jim to do the interview. There were other instances, not many, where they would only talk to Jim. Larry Holmes was one, although later he wrote me an apology and said he was angry people weren't giving him credit for what he had done.
"I've had to run and track down fighters in their locker rooms, most recently Winky Wright after he fought to a draw with Jermain Taylor. When I tracked down Holmes after one fight, his only comment was, 'They (fans) can kiss me where the sun don't shine.' And there was this memorable moment with Big George:
After Foreman lost a highly questionable decision to Shannon Briggs in Atlantic City (1997), in what would be George's final fight, Merchant went to interview the former champion in the ring.
When Merchant asked Foreman for his reaction to the decision, George talked about one of his commercial ventures instead. Stunned, Merchant stared incredulously at Foreman and remarked: "What does that and the price of rice in China have to do with tonight's prizefight?"
Foreman remembered the moment well when I contacted him via email. He wrote in part:
"It was the George Foreman Grill. I started talking about how good the Grill is, and how it helps to keep the weight off. Larry looked at me and said, what does that have to do with the boxing match...Larry was a great man for boxing; you always have to have one way, and the other; he was the other.
I loved picking a fight with Larry on air, because he was like me; when the matchers were over; it did not mean anything."
And of course there was Bernard Hopkins, a great champion who fights as tough with his mouth as he does his fists. Merchant and Hopkins seemed to have had their own long-running reality TV series. At the end of one particular hostile interview with Hopkins, Bernard being Bernard put the surprising exclamation point on the exchange.
"Bernard broke into a smile and said, 'You and me ought to take this show on the road.'"
Merchant never takes a pre-determined mindset in the ring, and as a result, by living in the moment, he has ad-lipped some memorable comments.
After Vernon Forrest beat Ike Quartey in a close unanimous decision last August which was loudly booed by a Quartey crowd in New York, Merchant patiently waited out a long string of "thank yous" from the winner before zinging this one home: "Do you want to thank the judges?"
There are many more "Merchant Moments" worth recounting, but I'll end with one which happened while I was talking to him about the circus world that boxing sometimes becomes.
"Boxing," he said, "is the one sport where if you can't find something to comment on or write about, then you don't have a pulse."
At 76, let it be said Larry Merchant's pulse is still beating strong.