Jim Lampley Ranks His Top 7 Boxing Fights

He's called fights in four decades. He's an International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee. And he was the blow-by-blow voice of HBO's coverage of the sport, typically considered the gold standard in broadcasting, for 30 years.

But it's been a long time since Jim Lampley sat ringside with a mic and headphones.

Six years and almost five months will have passed by the time Friday night arrives and the 76-year-old reassumes his position atop DAZN's pay-per-view coverage of the tripleheader featuring Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez.

"At the end of the day, it is absolutely endemic to my nature to be in some position where I can tell stories, and the place where I most succeeded in that regard, I believe, was as a ringside blow-by-blow commentator in all those years that I worked for HBO," Lampley told Bleacher Report.

"So to have a chance to go back to doing that at what amounts to the upper tier of the sport is a tremendous blessing to me."

The B/R combat team celebrated Lampley's return by chatting with him about some of his most memorable bouts, spanning his days calling Mike Tyson's formative fights for ABC in the mid-1980s through his final HBO sendoff in 2018.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.

It was the lowest moment of Mike Tyson's career.

And probably the most remembered, too.

The previously unbeaten heavyweight champ was driven to the canvas by a right hand from Buster Douglas and dizzily tried to grab his mouthpiece before rising and collapsing into the arms of referee Octavio Meyran.

But it wasn't the product of a shocking one-punch KO.

Rather, it was the crescendo of a nine-plus-round masterpiece in front of an eerily quiet crowd at the Tokyo Dome in February 1990 that led to Lampley's low-key "Mike Tyson has been knocked out" call that he said was the residue of a friendship with Oscar winner Jack Nicholson.

"No more than a few weeks before on a golf course," he said, "I had asked him, 'Jack, when you're getting ready to deliver the fulcrum line in the movie, when you're getting ready to say the most important thing, when you're getting ready to say you can't handle the truth, what is it that you keep in your mind as a mantra? What do you do to govern yourself in a situation like that?'

"And Jack said, 'Lamp, same thing I've been thinking ever since I first went to acting class. Don't overact.' So Tyson's lying on the canvas in Tokyo, referee's counting toward 10, and in the back of my mind I hear a voice say, 'Don't overact.' And that is how we got 'Mike Tyson has been knocked out' in as close to a completely prosaic tone of voice as I could possibly manage at that moment."

The fight was billed as "Bad Blood," and it seemed legit.

So, as Oscar De La Hoya closed in on and ultimately secured an 11th-round TKO victory over rival Fernando Vargas, it was easy to get caught up in the emotion, which Lampley did as he shrieked "Oscar De La Hoya has the most satisfying, the richest, the biggest, the most emotional win of his whole career."

The fight was a classic. And the call, Lampley said, is among those people most often mention when they stop him in restaurants or airports.

But, the veteran mic man concedes it's not one of his favorites.

"When I listen to it," he said, "I talk too much. I wish that I had used fewer words rather than that little torrent of words to do what I did. I think it's a meaningful call. I think the content is right, but I don't really love the way that I did it.

"And you know we're all entitled to be our own severest critic if we think that that helps us again over the long haul. The calls that I like best were the ones that I understated, that I managed to deliver with word economy."

History shows they actually fought three times.

But the third fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin came four years later and in a weight class eight pounds heavier than the first two, contested at 160 pounds across 365 days at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The first fight, on September 16, 2017, was a spirited 12-rounder that ended in a split-decision draw that many, including HBO' judge's Harold Lederman, felt Golovkin deserved. The rematch, on September 15, 2018, saw the fighters throw 1,501 punches before Alvarez emerged with a majority decision and Golovkin's title belts.

Lampley believes several factors made the bouts memorable.

"The skill levels, the quality and intensity of the combat," he said, "the correct defining outcome. (Golovkin's) legacy is defined by his Canelo fights. The knockout streak was epic, historic, but he didn't KO Canelo. And while much of the world thinks he won twice, the record says 0-1-1."

Evander Holyfield was the heavyweight champion, but much of the boxing world was suspect of his smallish size. Meanwhile, Riddick Bowe was big, strong, talented and unbeaten, but there were questions about how he'd fare in the deepest waters.

So, when they met for the first time in November 1992, expectations were mixed.

Going in, Lampley figured Bowe's size would ultimately prove decisive.

"I thought that Bowe-Holyfield I would be a good fight," he said, "but I was skeptical about Evander's size disadvantage, length disadvantage. Bowe was much younger and fresher and closer to the peak of his career."

What resulted was 12 compelling rounds in which Holyfield was drawn into a close-quarters firefight and recovered from the brink in a dramatic 10th round that was later deemed the year's best by Ring Magazine.

Bowe won a decision to become champion and Holyfield earned scores of new admirers because of his courage and resilience, which triggered awestruck looks between Lampley and NBA great Magic Johnson from across the ring.

"I could never have envisioned that Evander would go in and battle Riddick Bowe inside of Bowe's arms in a chin-to-chin kind of fight the way he did," Lampley said, "and I marvel at it every time I see it to this day, so that one was certainly an unexpected delight."

Sometimes, the fights are so good you simply can't choose.

Which is why the trilogy between Mexico-born champions Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales, contested across three weight classes from 2000 to 2004, is included here as a composite.

Morales won the first fight, at 122 pounds, by split decision. But Barrera took Nos. 2 and 3, at 126 and 130 pounds, respectively, by a pair of decisions in which he was ahead on points on five total scorecards while the sixth was even.

The two men were particularly bitter rivals during their primes but are more cordial now they're retired and both International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees.

"At the peak of his career, Morales had a competitive arrogance that was in itself intimidating," Lampley said. "He and Barrera are warmly friendly now."

Suggest it's the best trilogy ever and you'll get little pushback.

Contend the first fight is the best of the 21st century and there'll be even less.

Such was the level of competitive violence between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward in May 2002, in a fight that most insiders assumed would be very good but one where no one expected the level to which the two men, later best friends, rose across 10 rounds before the latter won a majority decision.

The impact wasn't lost on those at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Montville, Connecticut.

"It took a while to come down," Lampley said. "We all lingered, vibrating, at the announce position. Five or 10 minutes. When I exited into the hallway, I instantly encountered Pat Lynch, Gatti's manager. He was distraught. Almost in tears. I asked why. 'I just can't believe we lost,' he said.

"To which I replied, 'Lost? Pat, if we gathered the entire crowd together a year from now, spontaneously, and polled them, how many do you think would remember clearly who won? You didn't lose, Pat. It's indelible history now.'

"I was right."

It may be his best single fight call.

In fact, it might be the best fight call ever.

Clearly it meant something to Lampley, who turned his iconic "It happened!" line into the title of his autobiography, released earlier this month.

But if you think it was the product of pre-planning, think again.

"I'm watching Joe Cortez count, and he's getting to 6, 7, and I'm thinking, 'Oh, my God! Why didn't I stay up in my room last night and dream up a caption for this? Why do I not have something at hand which will make people remember it?'" he said.

"And what I remembered was George having told me two or three times, 'You watch. He'll come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out.' And that is where 'It happened' came from because I was really speaking to George at that moment. It happened. It happened just the way he told me it would happen."