What I was. Good everybody, this is Neo and you were checking out
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and love. Okay, welcome to it. It is the Cruise Show.
Jeff Garcia is here with the boxing legend and announcer that deserves so many accolades.
I don't think we could cover them all in this interview, but Jim
Lampley, thank you for joining us. I truly appreciate it is an honor,
like it really is an honor. Thank you very much. It's my
privilege to be here with you, you know, with a voice like yours.
When you were younger and you finally hit puberty and that voice kicked in,
did you know that announcing was your calling? This is the last thing
in the world, I thought, and seriously, and I think this probably
happens to all of us. The first time I heard my voice recorded or
you know, in some form of broadcast communications, my first thought was,
wait a minute, you know, is that actually what I sound like?
Because that's so much less and so much much more unimpressive than I thought would
be these Literally, I was driving a car right here in Chapel North,
Chapel Hill North Carolina. It was shortly after I had first begun doing things
for WCHL Radio thirteen sixty am, the central station the University of North Carolina
Football and Basketball radio Networks. I had done the postgame interview with Bill Dooley
the first football game of the season. I heard a playback on the radio
while I was driving the car, and my first instinct was, who's that?
Because I knew that the content was mine, but I was so certain
that that voice could not have been mine at all. So the answers no.
I was shocked ultimately to be successful, and I hope that that establishes
that clarity and diction and being able to say the words in the right way
actually does have some meaning and impact on our business. It does, and
you're the best at it. And that's a great story, because I think
all of us. I've been doing radio for almost thirty years already, and
I think it took me five or six seven years to get used to hearing
myself too. You kind of it's that shock at first, and you're,
you know, you try to get used to it, and then you develop
yourself as a broadcaster. But man, you're just the best at it.
We're here to talk about the Rumbland read though, we got to make sure
we talk about that. Anthony, Joshua Francis and Ganu two beasts, two
knockout artists from different sports. How do you as a broadcaster prepare for that?
Will you? Have you seen Francis's fights before in the UFC? I
know you've seen Anthony joshuas but how do you kind of prepare for this?
Well? I saw the Fury fight. Yeah, so that's my basic introduction.
I had relatively lengthy interviews with both of them within the past few days,
and that's meaningful in terms of preparation. Obviously, you get as much
reading material as you can get and refresh your memory about all the things I've
learned with regard to Joshua in the past and in Ganu's amazing narrative, which
is ultimately going to be a narrative movie project. There's no way that it
isn't. Of course sand minds. Who ever heard of sand minds? So
at the end of the day, you take advantage of the opportunities that exist
for me because PPV dot com is now an established entity with business relationships.
I after thirty one years of calling fights on HBO am still at least moderately
recognizable to the boxing establishment. So I get the access to do the interviews,
and that's really the central focus of my research. You can read and
read and read all you want, but unless you speak to the two fighters
face to face, you don't have the real depth of knowledge and awareness that
you need to go into this. For instance, I asked Joshua, is
it a fight which doesn't seem to operate in his favor or is it a
boxing match which would seem to operate in his favor? And he said,
there's no way that I can make sure it's a boxing match all the way
against this kind of guy. He's just too big, too physical, too
strong. I know he wants to close the gap and fight. At some
point, it's going to be a fight, and I wish I could prevent
that, but there's no way that I can possibly do that. I'm going
to have to be ready to fight, and I think that's the right insight
for him to have and sets up an interesting confrontation in the ring. Once
again. Rumbell and read on PPV dot com Anthony, Joshua Francis and Ganu.
We had Francis on the show, and his hands, Jim, are
so huge, Like you know, have you ever shaken somebody's hand and it
just they swallow your hand, Like I've had that experience. And I did
not shake his hand, but I certainly had the sense that he was that
kind of big and he also seems like a big person. In our interview,
he was generous, and he was warm and outgoing, and you know,
he said the kind of thing to me that broadcasters like you frequently say
to me, complimentary, laudatory, et cetera, et cetera, And of
course that made me feel good about him and made me want him to do
well, both in the interview and in the event. Yeah, yeah,
great guy, gentle giant for sure. You know, these crossover fights,
we're seeing him more and more and more often. Do you enjoy seeing them
just as a fan of sport in general and boxing and fight, well,
I enjoy seeing them just because at this point they are helping to sustain and
continue broadening the audience for boxing, and and that's a challenge given that boxing
long ago, within the economics surrounding the sport, made the choice that a
smaller, more discerning audience, which will pay a fee to see the fight
is a better way to sustain the business over the long haul than to continue
the broad audience approach of day to day network television. For my youth,
when I was growing up, I watched Jillette Friday night fights standard commercial television
broadcast, seeking to get the largest possible audience for the event. And then
within my lifetime, within my youth, really we began to go in the
opposite direction. And I remember sort of being discomfited by Ali Fraser one by
the recognition that now this is going to be a different economic model going forward
and it's not about the biggest audience possible. What will that ultimately do to
the sport? Well, as Larry Merchant said, boxing can't fix it,
can't kill it. The sport is still around. I still have to talk
about. But you know, will we see Ali Fraser one again with the
global audience that deeply engaged? No? Probably not. The closest we get
to that is things like this where the MNA audience gets to marry with the
boxing audience to get together in a larger audience for one big event. No,
that's so true, and we're seeing it as well with the announcement this
morning of Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. You know, that's the social media
world with the boxing legend and all of a sudden, you know that audience
can tap, you know, can be as big as some of those fights
that you mentioned earlier worldwide. Your thoughts on that real quick. I know,
I know we're talking about Rumblin reed, but I have to ask you
about your thoughts. You know, it's showbiz, and and the key word
in showbiz is biz. And you know, Mike is fifty years old.
I imagine that he can still get himself into serviceable shape. I don't imagine
that there's any particular danger in it for him. Maybe there's more danger for
Jake, given how hard Mike can hit and how limited Jake's range of experience
is. But at the end of the day, it's not a real competitive
sports event in my view. It showbiz and again, money talks, that's
the way they yeah, for sure, Rumboland read Anthony, Joshua Francis and
Ganu payperview dot com, PPV dot com. It is tomorrow our time,
ten am here on the West Coast, so it's a perfect opportunity. You
know, sit back, on Friday, maybe take the day off, enjoy
a few beverages and watch a great, great, great fight. Jim,
as a boxing fan, is there a fight you'd love to see made?
A fight I would love to see made in in the boxing world? Well,
yeah, I think I think there are several of them, and generally
speaking, they involve skilled fighters in the middle level wake classes. But obviously
I think it would be best for the global boxing audience and the heavyweight audience
if Joshua can make some kind of effective statement against Dinganu helped to put the
specter of his two losses to Usik out of people's minds. Fury gets past
Usik and re establishes his brand to the degree that it's been in any way
Diminister tarnished by his experience against Dinganu, and we finally see Anthony Joshua versus
Tice and Fury. I'm not British, but my heritage is British, and
I understand why that fight has for a long time been a holy grail and
great Britain Britain, and they are two very meaningful heavyweight champion identity fighters.
So I'm hoping that I'm going to see Joshua Fury sometime in the next few
years before they're both old news because they're getting there. Yeah, that's true.
You know one thing I really when I was preparing for the interview,
I love that you went back to UNC and you know, taught broadcasting and
communications. Why was that important to you? Well, because my whole career
is an accident. Everything about my career is accidental in nature. My career
began when I was a graduate school student here in nineteen seventy four finishing a
master's degree program in radio, television and Motion pictures, and I was chosen
out of a four hundred and thirty two person field in a talent hunt to
become one of the first two people ever to stand on the sidelines of college
football with a camera and a microphone. You know, that was like it
was like having lightning strike you, and I realized eventually, this is the
beginning of something that could really become a legitimate, long term sports broadcasting career.
And it happened. To use my call of George Forman over my Horror,
which is the title of my autobiography now being written for or a New
York publisher, it happened, and because it happened, and because it would
never have happened if I had not had the experiences I had here as both
an undergraduate and a graduate school teacher or a student, I wanted to come
back and teach. And the chancellor was born on my birthday. The chancellor
and I are born on April eight. He invited me to come back,
and he said, you know, Jim, if you want to come stand
in a classroom and talk about your amazing life and your experiences, we'll call
that a course. And I said, no, not good enough. Want
I want to create and invent something that will stay in the academic catalog and
somebody else will teach it after I'm finished. So that happened too. I
created a course called Evolution of Storytelling and American Electronic News Media. I was
qualified to do that because for several years in Los Angeles, I was a
nightly news anchor and I had news contracts with both of the major television networks
I mostly worked for, so I had the credentials to talk about how evolution
changes in electronics, business personnel, et cetera. Have altered the way news
stories are told. And I had seniors and graduate students in my class,
and I taught it for five semesters and it was an amazing but frustrating experience,
and eventually I stopped doing that to go back to the well taking care
of other businesses, such as writing the autobiography. So that was what brought
me back to Chapel Hill. Tickets to the basketball games will keep me here
for quite a long time. And I think everybody you know who's ever been
to college at any level understands the thrill of coming back to be a teacher
in the same place absolutely, and giving back is very admirable. When is
the book going to be out? Well, the deadline that the publisher has
established for me to complete the writing is September twenty four, So if I
get the book done on time by September twenty four, in theory, it
would enter the marketplace sometime in April of twenty five. So by sometime by
the middle of next year you will probably have the chance to walk into a
bookstore somewhere and by it happened the story of Jim Lamplck. I love the
title Rumboland Read Anthony, Joshua Francis and gano PPV dot Com tomorrow ten am.
Right here on the West Coast. Safe to say that college basketball's your
favorite support outside of boxing. It's my pastime outside of boxing. Yes,
and I the Dean Smith radio Show was one of the first things I ever
did, beginning back in nineteen seventy two and seventy three, So that was
the beginning platform when ABC Sports went out to look for somebody to stand on
the sidelines of college football with the camera and a microphone. They told the
public that they would find somebody who had zero broadcasting experience. It was a
totally fresh face who was the face and voice of the American college student.
At the end of the day, they lie and they wound up. They
wound up choosing me, partially because I had been in front of a microphone
and a camera before, and they understood that they weren't just taking a complete
blind chance on somebody who hadn't done it. So yes, I'm full circle,
totally full circle. I don't do anything in broadcasting relative to the basketball
team, but I'm a guest on some of the shows. You know,
people are still interested in my opinion. And tomorrow is beat Duke Day again
for the medium sign. Yes, yes, a big day for you guys.
Man, Anthony Joshua, Francisin ghanu PPV dot com, March eighth,
ten am here on the West Coast, rumble and read Jim, let's make
clear to the audience, won't hear my voice? I participate along with Kevin
i Oli in live chat, which means that we are delivering our views of
the fight via text into the computer, into your computer, and you can
kick back at us. The audience gets to participate in the chat stream.
So this is just as I taught about in my graduate school course, a
new form of communication, a new medium which is emerging in the boxing world,
and it's a I mean, as a boxing fan, the treat to
be able to chat with you is amazing. I think that's, you know,
to pick your brain on the fight as you kind of comment. That's
you're right. I mean, that's the greatest thing. I mean people can
sider to see it at all sports. I mean, what the Manning brothers
do is a version of exactly what I'll be doing during boxing match tomorrow.
And a lot of people frown on that. Oh, I like the old
way. I like this that. But technology is creating so many new opportunities
to interact directly with people that we admired, people we've watched our whole lives,
like you're good, You're bad. It's a blessing, you know good
and for bad. Am I a supporter of social media, it doesn't matter.
They're here and they're going to stay around regardless of whether I like the
effect. So I have to learn how to live in that world. All
right, I'm gonna leave with this. Leave you with this your goat unc
tar heel basketball player of all time, the greatest of all time to you
your personal opinion. So Michael Jordan clearly ultimately became the greatest Carolina player ever
and did stay for three years and had a huge impact on the program.
My personal favorite who gave me the most thrills and kickback because of his presence
as a person and his modesty and his accomplishments. That would be James Worthy.
James Worthy is a great lifelong friend. I will always appreciate his modest
demeanor and the friendly way he has always interacted with fans and media. And
no slap against Michael. His greatness is incomparable. But if you're asking me,
Jim Lampley, who was my personal favorite, my friendship with James prompts
me to have to say him great answer. He's my favorite as well as
a Laker fan out here in La as well. Rumbell, Henriad, Anthony,
Joshua Francis Ganu again tomorrow March eighth, ten am, right here on
the West COASTPPV dot com. Jim, truly an honored Thank you so much,
and I really just appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.
I appreciate you're a CRUSO on Real ninety two to three h