The first thing I know without a doubt about pro boxing is that it has the best commentators of all sports you will ever think of.
The first thing I know without a doubt about pro boxing is that it has the best commentators of all sports you will ever think of.
But let’s get to the subject of commentators a little later, for even before we get there, this beautiful warriors’ sport also prides itself in another side beauty; the ring announcers.
Ring announcers are those suave and debonair and well-spoken and well-groomed and equally well-suited, usually white gentlemen that officially take the veil off those boxing matches by throwing a couple of well-scripted and well-rehearsed lines regarding the particular fight, the words landing in gentle cascades on your ears as you follow the action on your TV screen.
Ring announcers used to be the definition of ‘unsung heroes’ in the realm of professional boxing, until, that is, a one Micheal Buffer Junior’s stellar performance on the job during the famed 1974 fight –the Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, capital city of the then Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
This is the man, the face and the voice behind the immortal and iconic line; "Let’s get ready to rumble-oooooo …!!!!”, so why not go and Google the dude for more info? Do you know how rich he is?
Back to boxing commentators and I can assure you that these guys are the best that money could ever buy, so forget about football and basketball and all those other forms of sports, whose commentators can’t deny that they generously pick ideas from the world of boxing commentary.
I know that the moral police and the holier-than-thou types are already getting started, now that I smuggled in the unlikely subject of boxing in today’s Loose Talk.
But don’t go over yourself. Jack Johnson, the first ever black heavyweight boxing champion in the history of this sport said famously that "the possession of muscular strength and the courage to use it in contests with other men for physical supremacy does not necessarily imply a lack of appreciation for the finer and better things of life.”
So don’t judge, dude.
Instead, chant the names of boxing greats that have mesmerized us in the ring over the years, and you will soon realize that some of the names sound just as sweet as what the owners do for a living;
Names like Mike Tyson (of course). Names like Riddick Bowe. Joe ‘Smokin’ Frazier. Jack Dempsey. Sonny Liston. Lorenzo Boyd. Oscar De La Hoya. Sugar Ray Robinson.
As for the young and hip generation of today that likes to partake of the glamorous side of the sport, I know the names you’ve been waiting for.
Floyd ‘mafranga’ Mayweather, and Roy Jones Jr, all from the US, and maybe also Lennox Lewis, although Lewi’s only problem is that age is catching up with him and he no longer basks in that glorious and glamorous Fubu look. If anything, Fubu is such old swag!