HBO

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

HBO says no more boxing

by Don Stradley

When I heard HBO was pulling the plug on boxing coverage, I didn't think of Mike Tyson or Larry Merchant, or the night when George Foreman, age 45 and shaped like a giant mound of pudding, landed a lightning bolt of a right hand to KO a much younger Michael Moorer for the heavyweight championship.

I thought of the Silhouette Lounge in Allston, Massachusetts.

It was a dive bar on the outskirts of Boston. It was a place for married guys from the suburbs who came into the city to cheat on their wives; for drunk BC students to play bumper pool;  for tired bus drivers to sit and have a cold one; and for the occasional prostitute from Brockton who came in to fleece the BC kids, bus drivers, and cheating husbands.

There were ferns in the window, and a James Brown cover band, and cheap wood paneling. 

Of more importance was a sign at the entrance that said WE HAVE HBO.

I saw a lot of fights there. I usually had to convince the bartender that a contest for the heavyweight championship was more important than a college basketball game, and since the clientele was usually oblivious to what was happening, I always got my way.

12/13/86 - Tyrell Biggs is fighting Renaldo Snipes. It's dull. Out of nowhere, Biggs lands a  right hand and drops him. The guy on the stool next me, drunk out of his mind, falls off his stool and crashes to the barroom floor. I yelled, "What a punch! Double knockdown!" I got a few laughs. Biggs got the decision.

I didn't have the Blue Horizon, or the Forum or the Olympic. I had a grimy bar with HBO. That was good enough.

One night the bartender said their cable service was fried. I had to run all over the city to find a place with HBO. No luck. I missed out on Tyson-Bruno.

No big deal. I'd also missed Dempsey-Tunney. But I  realized that I couldn't always rely on the Silhouette Lounge. It was time to get my own HBO hookup. And so it was that my badly heated studio apartment was soon fitted with HBO, just as a great era was  beginning. Within a five week period in 1990, HBO brought us  Tyson - Douglas and Chavez - Taylor, two of the most memorable bouts of the decade.

The good times continued. The Holyfield-Bowe fights were tremendous, with Foreman screaming, "They're gonna take Holyfield out of here in a pine box!" I remember Andrew Golota hitting Bowe in the nuts. Jim Lampley erupts: "It's as if a switch was turned on in his head and he's transported back the mean streets of Krakow!"

It was an era of heavyweight nutcases and brawling Mexican featherweights. I remember the chill on my neck as Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward stood face to face listening to the referee's pre-fight instructions.  I remember the rise of Manny Pacquiao, the endless ups and downs of Oscar de la Hoya, and of course, John Ruiz, the best clincher since Sammy "The Clutch" Angott.

And I remember the way Lampley and his colleagues remained absolutely silent during the opening minute of Lewis-Tyson, just letting the action speak for itself. I don't know if Lampley was the best to ever do it, but his odd mix of poise and emotion was damned good.

Gradually, HBO lost the magic. It went cookie-cutter. Every fight looked and sounded the same. There was a bad stretch where every fight seemed more about somebody's sick mother, or ailing girlfriend. HBO's new message was clear: boxing wasn't entertaining on its own, so broadcasts had to be padded with angles lifted from daytime dramas.

HBO was no longer in the boxing business. It was in the reality TV business. Guys who wouldn't know Muhammad Ali from Terrence Alli  were in in the production trucks, whispering in Emanuel Steward's ear, telling him what to talk about. Like a slow disease that overtakes the body, the demise of HBO boxing was gradual and then all of a sudden. I wasn't surprised when HBO recently announced it was done with boxing. HBO hadn't loved boxing in a long time.

Now and then, though, they still did wonderful things.

March, 2011.  Showtime announcer Nick Charles is brought in to do some commentary on an HBO Boxing After Dark show. He's ill with cancer and would be dead in 12 weeks. Lampley steps aside to let Charles take a mic. Nick Charles had always been an elegant and underappreciated boxing voice, and on this night he still had the chops. He called the fight, occasionally passing off to Max Kellerman, with the grace and ease of the professional he'd always been.

Listening to Nick always put me in mind of a quarterback who may not have been flashy, but always got the ball into the right guy's hands. I can't  recall who was fighting, but I remember Nick's voice, and how happy and grateful he was to be once again at ringside. It was a good moment. And HBO was nothing if not a provider of good moments. There may not have been a greater moment than the night HBO let us hear Nick Charles one last time.

I loved boxing on HBO. I loved it at the Silhouette Lounge. I loved it at The Dockside bar, where I once sat in a roomful of people who were convinced Vinny Paz had a chance to beat Roy Jones. I loved it at the Suffolk Downs horse track in Revere, where fights were shown in the clubhouse. And I loved it in my shabby little apartment, when I didn't have enough money for a light bulb but I was willing to splurge on cable. And I've loved it in the various places I've lived since those days.

But I never loved it more than the night Nick Charles made his last stand. We saw a man doing what he loved, and doing it brilliantly, even as he approached death's door. How often are we privy to such things?

We saw it, though. We saw it on HBO.