Fox To Bring Own Heavyweight Crew
James Brown is into the martial arts. Howie Long boxed in college, and Jimmy Johnson and John Madden are huge fight fans. Meet at least a few of the folks from Fox who will be bringing you Mike Tyson vs. Buster Mathis Jr. on Nov. 4 from Las Vegas.
They’ll all have some role in Fox’s 3-hour broadcast, but the main man, of course, will be Pat Summerall.
“When Pat was with CBS, he was the announcer on some of Buster Mathis Sr.’s fights,” said Brown, also a CBS alum.
Even Terry Bradshaw wants a piece this one, Fox’s first fight night and what is sure to be a huge ratings boon.
“Terry is very busy with his speaking engagements, but he does want to be a part of it,” Brown said.
Brown was in New York on Wednesday for a news conference to officially announce this fight, as well as an undercard of four world title fights to go along with it and plans by Fox and promoter Don King to team up on a monthly boxing show in 1996.
Fights involving WBC super welterweight champion Terry Norris and WBA junior welterweight champion Frankie Randall probably will be seen live before the Tyson fight, with the others used as videotaped fillers.
With such a huge night of boxing offered free to TV viewers, Time Warner’s pay-per-view fight between Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield the same night could go virtually unnoticed. And if the Fox show goes late, Bowe-Holyfield could be the first pay-per-view event actually bought by more homes than watched it.
This puts Brown in a rather delicate position. Brown usually is host of Time Warner’s TVKO and HBO boxing events but, as a full time employee of Fox, he’ll be doing Tyson-Mathis instead.
“It is strange in that Ross Greenburg of HBO gave me my first opportunity to do boxing nationally,” Brown said. “So, yes, when this happened, I felt a certain sense of loyalty, but Fox is my No. 1 employer. I know Ross understands.”
Out takes
Tyson missed his own news conference Thursday supposedly because he was so busy training in Cleveland he missed his flight to New York. Anyway, Fox was forced to cancel plans to hold the news conference at its New York affiliate, WYNY, where it planned to put Tyson on a satellite uplink to the rest of America. But satellite time is expensive, and it wasn’t worth it just for Buster Mathis Jr.’s squeaky little voice. Fox wanted Tyson’s squeaky little voice, too.
Welcome to the fight game, Fox. And by the way, don’t forget to remind Tyson when it’s Nov. 4… .
While virtually the entire cast from Fox’s NFL pregame show will have some announcing role at the Tyson fight, there still are some spots to fill. For example, Fox Sports president David Hill must come up with one or two analysts to flank Summerall.
A pair of likely candidates are Bobby Czyz, a former lightweight champion who does commentary for Showtime, and Sean O’Grady, another former boxer. Czyz is one of the best young fight analysts out there but doesn’t get a lot of exposure. This would be perfect for him.
Although originally considered a ring-side candidate, Madden now probably will be limited to doing pretaped features. Since he travels only by bus, he couldn’t do the fight one night and a football game the next day.
The only other opening Fox might have to fill is alongside Brown in the host’s box. Long could keep him company, but that still leaves room for a boxing expert.
Sugar Ray Leonard is a possibility, but King apparently doesn’t like that choice. Ferdie Pacheco would be another possibility, but nobody apparently likes that choice.