Latest news with #BoxingHallofFame
Daily Record
2 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Record
Josh Taylor backed for boxing Hall of Fame as Carl Frampton demands more recognition for 'unbelievable' era
Frampton ranks Taylor alongside Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko after the Tartan Tornado announced his retirement Carl Frampton insists Josh Taylor deserves to be inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame for his "unbelievable" run as undisputed world champion. The Tartan Tornado announced his retirement from boxing this week on medical grounds following a persistent eye injury. Taylor won silver and gold medals for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games before going on to become the first and only British male fighter to win all four titles in the same weight division. Now former Cyclone stablemate Frampton - himself a two-weight world champ - has called for Taylor to receive more recognition for what he achieved in the ring, ranking him alongside current undisputed world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk and and former three-weight world champ and fellow Ukrainian Vasily Lomachenko. "Josh should be proud of everything he's done in his career, especially becoming an undisputed champion," said The Jackal. "We see how much of a big deal it is that people make of the undisputed heavyweight champion when Oleksandr Usyk beat Daniel Dubois at the weekend. Josh Taylor was undisputed in 18 fights - that's unbelievable. Hard to fathom, really. "So I think that's what people should remember Josh for. It literally doesn't happen unless you're someone like a Vasiliy Lomachenko or a Usyk or someone like that. That's the calibre of fighter that achieves this . "Josh Taylor becoming undisputed champion in 18 fights in a marquee division, not down at light-flyweight where nobody fights or anything like that, a marquee division, should be recognised as one of the great British sporting feats ever. "Undisputed light-welterweight champion in 18 fights is Hall of Fame behaviour, I think." Frampton says he still gets on well with Taylor, despite going their separate ways when Framptin left Cyclone amid a bitter legal battle with promoter and manager Barry McGuigan. "I was there the whole way, pretty much," Frampton told BBC Scotland. "Josh is a great friend of mine and he's a good person as well. And he does a lot of good things behind the scenes, which people don't see. Josh is just a good fella. "I'm very, very proud that I was able to witness some of his greatness up close and personal."
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'My Butt Got Huge.' Sydney Sweeney Had Major Gains To Play '90s Fighter Christy Martin, And It Sounds Like She Loved It
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. While Sydney Sweeney has taken over recent headlines (and presumably NSFW daydream scenarios) in connection with selling her bathwater in a soap, I'm personally more invested in seeing the actress mop the floor with opposing boxers in the upcoming 2025 movie about boxing icon Christy Martin. It's arguably the most athletic role yet for the busy actress, and she opened up about the big gains she experienced between first signing on for the role in early 2024 through to production wrapping in November. Speaking with W about the huge moves her career has taken in the three years since her HBO breakout series last aired — Euphoria Season 3 is on the way, but not until 2026 — Sweeney talked about going into a specific training mode in the timeframe before filming started, and how much she enjoyed that tempo change. In her words: I loved it. I came onboard to play Christy, and I had about three and a half months of training. I started eating. I weight-trained in the morning for an hour, kickboxed midday for about two hours, and then weight-trained again at night for an hour. I think most fans would agree that Sydney Sweeney's body frame in projects like The White Lotus and Immaculate isn't the most intimidating, at least not in a way that trained fighters would fear. But it sounds like she enjoyed bulking up during the training process, during which she gained around 30 pounds, even if it made her more buxom and booty-ful along the way. As she put it: My body was completely different. I didn't fit in any of my clothes. I'm usually a size 23 in jeans, and I was wearing a size 27. My boobs got bigger. And my butt got huge. It was crazy! I was like, Oh my god. But it was amazing: I was so strong, like crazy strong. No trailers have been released yet for the boxing biopic, which still doesn't have an official name locked in, and all we've seen is the first look showing off Sweeney's big arms. So it's unknown exactly when audiences will first get to see her going toe to toe with other boxers on Martin's awe-inspiring journey to becoming the most prolific and prominent female boxer to date, as well as the first of that distinction honored in the Boxing Hall of Fame. Just don't pay too much attention to Sweeney's boobs or butt in the trailer, or she'll put you down for the count. Director David Michôd, perhaps best known for 2010's Animal Kingdom and 2014's The Rover, talked about Christy Martin's impressive career and spoke highly of Sydney Sweeney's unending positivity throughout the production, despite any and all challenges that were presented. As he put it: Martin put female boxing on the map in the mid-'90s. She was the first woman fighter on the cover of Sports Illustrated and fought on the Mike Tyson undercard. Her husband was also her trainer, and then, after her success, he tried to murder her. Our film is a wild mix of inspiring underdog sports-world story and personal saga. Sydney trained her butt off to play the part. The beauty of Sydney is that she turned up to work every day with her tail wagging, ready to go. No matter how tough it was, she was like a ray of sunshine. As impressive as it is that Sweeney made all those gains to play Christy Martin, it's just as impressive that she necessarily shed the extra weight in the seven weeks between the biopic's end date and the start of her next project. I'd have to chop off an entire limb, I think. David Michôd said he was shocked to speak with Sweeney via FaceTime in the more recent past, saying she was in the makeup truck for Euphoria and was "stunned" that she'd gone from her Martin look to something "so glamorous" for the HBO series. Fans won't be missing Sydney Sweeney on the big or small screen for long in the future. She has Apple TV+'s dramatic thriller Echo Valley coming out on June 13, while Paul Feig's adaptation of The Housemaid is set for a Christmas Day release. Beyond that, there's the aforementioned third season of HBO's Euphoria, Sweeney's planned portrayal of Kim Novak in Scandalous!, her Barbarella movie, the upcoming video game adaptation for Split Fiction and even more.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'The Coal Miner's Daughter' Christy Martin, talks upcoming biopic starring Sydney Sweeney
(WSYR-TV) — Boxing Hall of Fame weekend is officially upon us, which will bring an array of A-list athletes to Central New York, including 'The Coal Miner's Daughter' Christy Martin, who stopped by Bridge Street to discuss he event along with her upcoming biopic. Although the movie does not yet have a title, it is set to release this November, and superstar Sydney Sweeney will be portraying the world-renowned boxer. Martin gained fame for her impressive record in the ring, along with breaking gender barriers within boxing to help establish female boxing as it is today. Martin discussed her life in the ring, along with the disparities she faced as a young gay woman from a small town in West Virginia. The biopic will focus on Martin's upbringing in a relatively conservative family, which ultimately caused her to hide who she was, turning to boxing as an outlet. The film will dive into he hardships she had to overcome, including her nightmarish marriage, and getting back on her feet. Martin expressed her excitement for Sweeney and believes that she will do her character justice while remaining true to her story. As for the Boxing Hall of Fame Ceremony, the festivities will kick off this Thursday, June 5, with the parade of champions (with Sydney Sweeney as the Grand Marshall) and the hall of fame induction ceremony happening on Sunday, June 8. To view the full schedule and learn more about the event, click here. Be sure to check out Christy's biopic in theaters in November! Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jim Lampley wasn't supposed to fall in love with boxing. Instead, he became its voice
Jim Lampley poses next to his photo at the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., in June 2015. The longtime boxing broadcaster says his life story "reads like a fictional narrative." (Alex Menendez / Getty Images) Jim Lampley has been the voice of boxing for a generation of Americans, which is remarkable because the assignment was only supposed to last one fight. In the winter of 1986, Lampley had a new contract and a new boss who wanted him out. So Dennis Swanson, the head of the ABC's sports division, ordered Lampley to cover Mike Tyson's first fight on network TV in the hopes, Lampley said, he would embarrass himself and slink away. Advertisement Instead, Lampley nailed the assignment and a year later began what would be an unparalleled three-decade career calling fights for HBO. 'I knew from the moment I called that first fight I was home,' said Lampley, 76, whose work earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. 'I understood that was where I was supposed to be.' Read more: George Foreman, boxing legend who fought Muhammad Ali in the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' dies So 18 months later, on his agent's advice, Lampley walked into Swanson's office, signed the papers that separated him from ABC Sports, and never looked back. That's one of several stories Lampley tells in 'It Happened: A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television,' an autobiography of an admittedly charmed 50-year career in broadcasting. Advertisement 'My life story reads like a fictional narrative. That's the reason for the title,' Lampley said. 'It's the only way you can respond to something as totally counterintuitive, unexpected and filled with blessings as my career is to say, 'it happened.' 'I can't talk about anything that ever happened to me with anything less than astonishment.' The title of the book, written with journalist Art Chansky, is also a paean to Lampley's most famous call — the narration of George Foreman's stunning knockout of Michael Moorer, which allowed Foreman to become, at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion in history. 'Down goes Moorer on a right hand!. An unbelievably close-in right-hand shot! 'It happened! It happened!' George Foreman, left, punches Michael Moorer during their heavyweight championship fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November 1994. Jim Lampley's call of the fight helped cement his place in boxing history. (Lennox McLendon / Associated Press) In the book, Lampley takes readers inside locker rooms in every league and into the conference rooms of every network. He shares family stories of growing up in the South at the start of the civil rights movement and dishes celebrity gossip about some of the biggest names in sports and broadcasting. Advertisement But if the career he describes was marked by good fortune — he got his first break at 24 when, still in graduate school, he was chosen from a field of 432 candidates to serve as the first network sideline reporter on ABC's college football broadcasts — he was also very good at what he did. Over his dozen years at ABC he called two Indy 500s, broadcast Major League Baseball, traveled the world reporting for 'Wide World of Sports,' interviewed President Ronald Reagan at Daytona, presided over the trophy presentation after Super Bowl XIX and covered the first of 14 Olympics. He interviewed Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig after the U.S. hockey team's Miracle on Ice, worked with Billie Jean King at Wimbledon, saw Richard Petty's final NASCAR victory and was close enough to smell the sweat at every significant title fight between 1988 and 2018. 'Given his long career across several networks, he probably has some juicy stories to tell,' said Daniel Durbin, a professor at the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society. Yet it was a career that proved memorable as much for Lampley's timing as for his talent. Advertisement 'Jim was one of a group of 1970s college students who grew into sportscasters, that included Jim Nantz, Al Michaels, and Bob Costas,' Durbin continued. 'They pursued careers in a sort of golden age of sportscasting when 'Monday Night Football' had shown the tremendous potential of prime-time sports and ESPN and, later, Fox Sports were just on the horizon. 'He was a consistently strong sportscaster. A very good, workmanlike boxing broadcaster; well-prepared, clear and effective in his calls.' And every time his career seemed to reach a fork in the road, he inevitably chose the right path — one that has him returning to do blow by blow, this time on DAZN PPV, for a May 2 world championship card featuring Ryan Garcia, Teófimo López and Devin Haney, in separate bouts, live from Times Square. It will be his first fight call since HBO ended its boxing programming in 2018. Jim Lampley waves to the crowd during his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in June 2015. (Heather Ainsworth / Associated Press) In between his start at ABC and his return to his ring-side seat this week, Lampley was the first program host listeners heard on WFAN, helping it grow into the biggest sports-talk station in the country; anchored coverage of the Olympics and the NFL on NBC; appeared regularly on 'The CBS Morning Show' and had his own syndicated interview program, 'One on One With Jim Lampley.' Advertisement 'I was working all the time,' he said. 'I was making piles of money, one paycheck on top of another.' But he's also remembered in Los Angeles for a life-changing five-year stint as co-anchor of the nightly news on Channel 2. 'When I was forced out of ABC Sports, my next gig, my landing spot, was at KCBS-TV,' Lampley said on an hourlong Zoom call from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he sat before a wall covered with dozens of the media credentials he has gathered over the decades. 'The first thing I said to my agent was 'that's a local station. That's not a network gig'.' It came with a big contract though. And when the station brought in Bree Walker to join him behind the anchor desk, Lampley's personal life, as well as his career, took a turn. Advertisement 'There was a giant promotional campaign and a lot of hoopla,' Lampley remembered in an interview long on detail and short on regret. 'Yes, it probably boosted my image. [But] I found myself in a situation where I felt ill-equipped to compete with her particular studio skills on air. 'I decided that my best defense would be to get her to fall in love with me.' Read more: The rise and fall of Ryan Garcia: Embattled boxer wants to be the relatable anti-hero And she did, marrying Lampley and having a son with him before the couple divorced after nine years. It was 'Anchorman' 14 years before the Will Ferrell movie made Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone household names. Advertisement Months after moving to Los Angeles, Lampley also signed his first contract to call boxing on HBO, the job that would come to define his career. It was a job he was always meant to have since one of his earliest memories was of his widowed mother sitting him down in front of a television set perched on a TV dinner tray and putting on a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. He was 6. Eight years later he was in the Miami Beach Convention Hall to watch his boyhood idol Cassius Clay knock out Sonny Liston, and more than a quarter-century after that, Lampley was ringside in Tokyo for HBO when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, making him the only broadcaster to be present for the two greatest upsets in heavyweight boxing history. So it has been a uniquely lucky life. And, as the title of the book says, it happened. 'This was the way it was supposed to go,' Lampley said with a smile. 'It was preordained.' Advertisement Lampley will be in Los Angeles for a pair of book signings, on May 8 at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove and on May 10 at 2 p.m. at the Wild Card Boxing Club. The event at the Grove will feature a Q and A session moderated by KCBS-TV sports director Jim Hill. Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Daily Mail
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE George Clooney's baseball career, Bob Dylan's greed and sports' darkest day: Inside my dinner with iconic TV star Jim Lampley
George Clooney tried out for his hometown Cincinnati Reds, Mike Tyson 's lingering childhood trauma prompted his return to the ring at 58, and as for Bob Dylan, well, his famed abhorrence of money is really more of a guideline than a strict rule. Such are the random, insightful nuggets I learned while dining with Jim Lampley, the broadcasting legend, raconteur and author of the new memoir, It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television. Now 76, with a full head of graying hair and his unmistakable smile intact, Lampley has been promoting the fascinating work across the US. But rather than a formal interview with the Daily Mail, Lampley's publicist and fellow Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Fred Sternberg arranged an intimate dinner at a busy Manhattan steakhouse that became the stage for a sequence of tales, all equally engaging and eclectic. Lampley once filmed a cameo for the 2001 Ocean's Eleven remake, where he said Clooney confessed to his humiliating Reds tryout. '[Clooney] toppled backwards trying to escape a curveball that dropped in for a strike on the outside part of the plate,' he recalled. A few years later, Lampley started his own production company, bought the rights to Dylan's 2004 book, Chronicles, and took several meetings with the folk singer in hopes of producing an adaption for HBO. 'The only question I can ever remember Bob asking about the project, two or three times, was, "How much money am I going to make?"' George Clooney tried, and failed, to get a contract offer from his hometown Cincinnati Reds, while Bob Dylan was singularly focused on how much money he could earn with Jim Lampley Ultimately the project didn't go anywhere. 'I asked HBO to gently and lovingly kick me in the teeth,' Lampley said. 'Which they did.' And therein lies the charm of his stories, which are humorous and self-deprecating, even as he drops one headline name after another. Of course, Lampley's proximity to some of the most interesting people and events of the last 50 years is no surprise. Few play-by-play announcers can approach his distinguished resume or breadth of experience across the greatest sporting events of the 20th and early 21st centuries. As a teenager in Miami, his mother - and inspiration for his book - Peggy Lampley, drove him to watch an underdog Cassius Clay stun heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964. A decade later, Lampley began his career as a college football sideline reporter when he won a nationwide ABC talent search. Since then, he's covered everything from the World Series to the Super Bowl and Wimbledon to the Indianapolis 500 - not to mention his 30-year reign as HBO's undisputed voice of boxing. And it was in the latter role that Lampley befriended a fading Tyson, who at 58 years old remains one of the most complicated figures in sports after his controversial decision to fight Jake Paul for a reported $20 million. 'For Mike, any legitimate, heartfelt deprivation puts him back in the tenement apartment in Brooklyn waiting for his mother to come home from the corner bar,' Lampley said, pointing to Tyson's traumatic childhood in Brownsville. 'So the notion that somebody cooks up a scheme by which Mike is going to make another eight-figure sum of money, there's no way he's going to say no.' Though, it hasn't been all checkered flags and Champagne rooms for Lampley, who was forced into far less glamorous assignments with ABC's Wide World of Sports. He's also been tasked with covering wrist wrestling championships, lumberjack events and, worst of all, he says, a cheerleading competition in Daytona Beach. There have also been tragedies along the way. Lampley was at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, where eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September killed 11 Israeli Olympians. At the time, millions of Americans were riveted by Jim McKay's 14-hour broadcast on ABC Sports, culminating with his solemn words: 'Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.' The broadcast remains an essential moment in sports history due, in part, to ABC producer Roone Arledge, whose off-screen maneuvering was witnessed, studied and committed to memory by then 26-year-old Lampley. '[Chris] Schenkel was the primetime host,' Lampley said in his inescapable anchor-toned delivery. 'Schenkel had been the primetime host in Mexico City [in 1968]. He was still the primetime host in Munich.' 'When they learn what's going on in the Olympic Village, Arledge calls in a subordinate named Jeff Mason, coordinating Olympics producer,' Lampley continued. 'He says, "Jeff, I have a complicated assignment for you. I need you to go out and undertake a diligent search for Chris… and I need you not to find him. And then I need you to find out where McKay is and put him in the chair."' And with that, the affable Schenkel - ABC's top anchor - was replaced with McKay's dignified gravitas. 'That succession took place at that moment because Roone knew that Chris's personality was utterly and completely wrong for that and that McKay was fundamentally a newsman,' Lampley said. '"Put McKay in the chair." That's Arledge's genius.' Even when he wasn't working, Lampley still had a knack for gaining entry to the biggest sporting events, due in no small part to his celebrity status. As his wife, Debra, said, Lampley is 'the right level of famous' - which is to say he receives some perks without any major drawbacks. Take Oct. 18, 1977, when he witnessed Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson's historic three-homer performance in Game 6 of the World Series. As Lampley explains in 'It Happened!', those tickets were provided by none other than Mr. October himself. But for all of his good fortune, Lampley considers himself most lucky to have learned under Arledge, the canonized creator of Monday Night Football, not to mention McKay and fellow ABC Sports legend Howard Cosell, both of whom regarded the younger announcer as a threat. 'It was unique for me to work in that environment, with all of those people already with their personas, already who they were, and managing to perform well enough to survive that culture and to not be demolished,' Lampley said. 'This is despite the fact that Cosell hated me and McKay hated me.' Lampley immediately picked up on our surprise, not at the famously competitive Cosell disliking a younger announcer, but at the venerable McKay feeling that way as well. 'You would have thought that McKay would be big enough,' Lampley said. 'You know, elevated enough... No way.' He also worked at ABC and NBC with O.J. Simpson, whom he befriended until 1994, when Lampley became convinced the Buffalo Bills legend was guilty of murdering ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Larry Holmes (left) lands a jab against challenger and former champ Muhammad Ali in 1980 But for as much time as Lampley has spent ringside, courtside and in the booth, he's had nearly as much firsthand experience with the biggest names in music, film, business and politics. Lampley was golfing buddies with Hollywood hero Jack Nicholson, befriended Simpson's co-creator James L. Brooks and even spent some time with then New York real estate developer Donald Trump, although he can't say they were ever real acquaintances. And as is so often the case in these elite circles, Lampley's A-list friends would often introduce him to an even higher echelon of socialites, like the time Arledge invited him and Mick Jagger to watch Muhammad Ali's 1980 loss to Larry Holmes on closed-circuit television. 'Closing stage of his career, Ali is fighting the necessary passion play against Larry Holmes,' Lampley said ahead of dessert. 'And Holmes, [Ali's] former sparring partner, is now going to wipe the canvas with him and become the heavyweight champion, and the fight is not mercifully brief.' The viewing took place on the 16th floor at ABC, where guests slowly began imploring referee Richard Green to stop the fight all the way in Las Vegas. Ali's corner would throw in the towel after 10 rounds, but not before Jagger offered a perfect synopsis of what the crowd of 30-somethings were witnessing. 'I feel this little poke at the bottom of my rib cage,' Lampley said. 'I look down and it's Mick. And Mick says, "Do you know what we're watching, Lamps?" 'I said, "No, Mick, what are we watching?" '"It's the end of our youth,"' Lampley said, quoting Jagger. 'That's the greatest line of commentary: "It's the end of our youth." Because so many from the Baby Boomer generation had dated themselves by [Ali].' Yes, Lampley is, himself, a Baby Boomer. But like his recently deceased friend George Foreman, whose 1994 upset of Michael Moorer is referenced by the title of It Happened!, Lampley has remained relevant for decades. Announcers don't have expiration dates, and as long as they know how to tell the right story in the most interesting way possible, there will always be an audience willing to listen. And for that, Lampley remains eternally grateful. As he wrote about his memoir in the book's prologue, 'It's the story of how my life constantly and repeatedly rescued itself from self-destruction and left me with identities and encounters that are in some ways unique for an American sportscaster.'
