Jim Lampley apologizes to this Men’s Journal writer shortly after hopping on a Zoom call to discuss his new memoir, IT HAPPENED! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television, and his upcoming blow-by-blow gig for Ring Magazine’s outdoor triple-header in Times Square. That Friday assignment will mark his first since signing off on Dec. 8, 2018, when HBO abruptly exited the boxing business.
Lampley is preemptively apologizing while being informed that this writer had a chance encounter with him nearly a decade ago in the bowels of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Lampley, 76, can’t recall if he was friendly (he most certainly was), but if he was unfriendly (he wasn’t) it was because of his own near chance encounter with his now-former pal, President Donald J. Trump.
The exact details of that evening are fuzzy, but rest assure his mind remains exquisitely sharp outside of that night. He’s agile and eloquently descriptive as ever. That much is evident while discussing his storied broadcasting career and, of course, the Sweet Science.
Now, boxing fans can rejoice after the April 15 release of a memoir recounting his “uniquely lucky life” in sports; from experiencing his first core boxing memory in 1955 when his mom, Peggy, sat him down in front of a dinner tray and turned on the Sugar Ray Robinson-Bobo Olson fight for the middleweight championship; to calling the age-defying, 45-year-old George Foreman’s improbable win over unbeaten 26-year-old Michael Moorer in 1994 to capture yet another heavyweight title.
Lampley also holds the distinction of having covered 14 Olympic Games, a record for an American broadcaster. He was there for the “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid, and he had a front-row seat to “The Dream Team” in Barcelona.
But the highest of highs also gave way to the lowest of lows on several occasions. Like when he got demoted two weeks after helming coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics for “damaging quotes” he made to USA Today after the Olympic Park bombing, in which he suggested that his co-host, Hannah Storm, deferred to him as NBC’s “lead dog” for its news coverage of the bombing. The misstep proved painful. Like a shot to the liver, the demotion landed him in Daytona Beach, Fla., to call — of all things — the U.S. Cheerleading Championships.
He thought his career was over.
He thought there was no way to recover.
He fell into an abyss so deep only one dear friend was capable of pulling him out unscathed thanks to his sage advice: Jack Nicholson.
Lampley is the first one to tell you that luck, as much as preparation, is the driving force behind his broadcasting career. By sheer luck, Lampley found himself calling boxing on ABC Sports when then-president Dennis Swanson sought to drive him away from his lucrative deal and make him quit by assigning him to a sport that would make him look “like a fish out of water.”
Unbeknownst to Swanson, Lampley had been a lifelong boxing fan. He would eventually replace his good friend and blow-by-blow legend, Barry Tompkins as the face and voice of HBO Championship Boxing for 30 years, from 1988 to 2018, a byproduct of an unparalleled work ethic Lampley exuded in his early days of calling boxing at ABC Sports. That relentless drive to excel caught the eye of one Ross Greenburg, a production assistant at ABC Sports who would later rise to become executive producer of countless boxing telecasts and president of HBO Sports.
The best blow-by-blow announcers are succinct, yet descriptive. They’re studious and knowledgable, but not condescending. They’re prolific storytellers, never attention seekers. And Lampley personifies each of those qualities.
