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00:00I've always been envious of the brilliance of Jim Lampley.
00:04You've seen him on the show several times through the years, usually when I'm in Vegas.
00:08One of my favorite all-time broadcasters, sportscasters, boxing broadcaster extraordinaire.
00:15Of course, he returns this Saturday on ppv.com's exclusive viewer chat in real time throughout
00:21the ppv.com HD livestream of the Benavidez Morel Light Heavy at a Buck 75 World Championship
00:29in Sin City.
00:30Of course, ppv.com does not require a subscription, so check it out, 8 East, 5 Pacific.
00:39First I want to talk about, before we get into the fight, Jim, I want to talk about
00:43your memoir, It Happened, Unlikely Lucky Life in Sports Television, which is coming out
00:50April 15th, available pre-order.
00:52You can do it at major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble in the U.S., amazon.co.uk
00:58and the United Kingdom.
00:59Can't wait to read this.
01:01I've always been thrilled with your stories.
01:04I've always been thrilled when you're on, telling them on my show.
01:09I love your boxing analysis.
01:11I'm jealous of your 14 Olympics.
01:14I did four Olympics and thought I was cool, and you've always ended up on top of me in
01:20terms of everything in sports, and all I have to do is just be honored that you come on
01:24the show still.
01:25Thank God for that.
01:28For all, I love you.
01:31I would love to confirm that the entire goal for all 44 years of network television and
01:39other forms of broadcasting was to make you jealous, but that wasn't actually what I was
01:45all about.
01:46But it does thrill me to hear you introduce me that way, and naturally enough, I'm jealous
01:51that you still have this great platform that you have every day, but I get to come in and
01:56be a guest every once in a while.
01:57So here we are.
01:58Hey, so let's talk a little bit about the Davids here.
02:03We got two of them.
02:05One of them in particular that I don't know enough about, the Southpaw, the Cuban, who
02:11I think is very dangerous.
02:13I've seen him a couple times fight, and you have said that he poses a problem here for
02:20the Phoenix legend in Benavides, the monster, he's got so many nicknames, I can't keep up
02:26with him.
02:27But I saw his last fight, the Bodzig fight.
02:31I was there, and I wasn't impressed at all with him, but you had said something about,
02:38I think at the time, what Larry Merchant had said, just win and go on to the next one and
02:43be better in the next one, something to that effect.
02:47Well, that's not only true of Morel, that's true also of the opponent, David Benavides.
02:52In both instances, their last fights were against slightly taller, elongated, Eastern
02:58European light heavyweights.
03:00They were going up to 175, where now they're going to fight each other, but they were both
03:07moving up from 168 to 175 to fight against the opponents with whom they were in.
03:13At the end of the day, they both had to accept that rather than to score the spectacular
03:18knockout, which had somewhat marked their careers, they were going to have to go forward
03:23and try to get a decision.
03:25If you look at the six judges' scores for Morel versus Kalabchik and Benavides versus
03:32Bodzig, they are remarkably similar.
03:35It was a similar experience for both fighters, but they did what they had to do.
03:40They got the unanimous decision wins that keep them going forward toward bigger matchups
03:46in the sport.
03:47Now, here they are together in a fight which excites the passion of boxing fans, because
03:52anytime you have two guys in against each other, both of whom have reputations as punchers,
03:58both of whom are seen to be at a high technical skill level, you've got the makings of a great
04:03fight, and this could be a great fight.
04:06Well, Monstro, you know, he had sparred a lot with that Bodzig before that fight.
04:14Yes, they had sparred a lot with each other, and in boxing sometimes familiarity leads
04:19to equality.
04:21When they know each other very well, then they know how to diffuse what the other guy
04:25wants to do, and that definitely happened in my view in Bodzig versus Benavides.
04:31But these two haven't sparred.
04:35No, they don't know each other on that level, and, you know, they know who each other are,
04:39but no, they have not been in the ring together.
04:42How have you enjoyed doing the PPV.com, you know, in real time and doing the fights and
04:50talking to fans as the fight occurs?
04:53Because for decades you called the fights brilliantly, and now you're in this new era,
05:00this new technology, this new way of doing a fight.
05:04Have you enjoyed it?
05:07No makeup, no tuxedo, nothing wrong with any of that.
05:11So, you know, I get to sit down and deliver my opinions or observations in written form
05:18via text.
05:19A long time ago when calling fights on HBO, I got it into my head, you know, at some point
05:28I will age out of this blow-by-blow thing, and I can just walk around Roy's back or
05:35Emanuel's back, whoever the expert commentator is, and take the seat that Larry occupied.
05:40Max, in particular, once he became the Larry Merchant person, then my view was he should
05:45come be the blow-by-blow guy.
05:47I had envisioned that as a natural evolutionary step in our HBO boxing team.
05:53And so doing this is to some degree a replication of what I had in mind, because these comments
06:00that I type into the chat, they're not blow-by-blow comments.
06:04They are analysis.
06:06They are, you know, the kind of evaluative thought process that Larry and Max brought
06:11to our HBO team.
06:13So it gives me a chance to flex my thought muscles in a slightly different way, and I've
06:20been very grateful for the opportunity.
06:22Respectfully, I have about 50 seconds.
06:26Tell me about the work you've done on the memoir and what it was like for you to, you
06:30know, do the piece and work on the book and how it all came together.
06:36I can't believe I wrote a book.
06:38I did it all from memory.
06:39I didn't outline things.
06:41I didn't take notes and, you know, prepare every day for a systematic way of going about it.
06:47I would lie awake at night with my head on the pillow thinking of how far I had gotten
06:51in the narrative and what I ought to do next.
06:53I would memorize some phrases and touchstones that I wanted to use the next day, and then
06:58I'd get up and go to the laptop and write.
07:01And at the end of the day, I reached a point where I said, oh my gosh, I've written a book.
07:06And now it's going to be published April 15th, and I'll be very interested to see the response.
07:11I can't wait to read it.
07:12You tell Sternberg to send me a copy or we're going to have business together.
07:16Good to see you, Jim.