Boxing Broadcasts in The Modern Age: Pt. 2 - The Broadcasts

After tanking my chances of getting hired by the biggest boxing broadcasters in Part 1, it's time to take a closer look at the various aspects that comprise a fight night, how they serve the audience, and what could change in the future.

List of contents

1. Camerawork
2. Highlights
3. Ring announcers
4. Commentary
5. On-screen graphics
6. Music selection
7. National anthems
8. Run-time
9. Broadcast innovation
10. Anything else?

"Through the lights, cameras, and action, glamor, glitters, and gold"

There are specific courses you can study where you're taught how to direct live sports broadcasts. Sports broadcasts have a visual language just like cinema, there's an art to cutting to a close-up or away to reaction shot. It's to be expected that these courses are designed for, and delivered by, people who work with sports that are more popular than boxing.

I don't want to get too bogged down in the minutiae of terminology and I'll stick to only a couple of examples. The reason why we have more film of boxing from the Gilded/Victorian Age & early 20th century than other sports is because boxing was an easy sport to film. You only needed one vantage point, one camera, and you knew precisely how long each round would last so you knew exactly how much film stock to cost for. Other sports take place in larger spaces and were more unpredictable, nobody knows if there will be overtime/extra-time/extra-innings or when you'll see a touchdown, goal, or homerun.

So most boxing pre-1960s was recorded with one camera (usually with a zoom lens*), though some big name events would be worth the expense of bringing additional ones so that there were would be more angles and footage. The main camera would use either a long-shot or medium-shot.

It's very straight-forward. The long shot lets you see everything happening in the ring, including the footwork. When there's an exchange on the inside, usually on the ropes, a medium shot can cut the fighters off at the knee to give a closer look at which punches are landing. And when the ref breaks them up it's back to the long shot. Zoom in when the fighters are close to each other, zoom out when there's daylight. Rinse and repeat. By the 1970s, it became standard to have two cameras to instantly cut between instead of zooming in or out.

Though not all long shots are created equal. Much like in old recordings of football, different countries had different standards and different camera positions in stadiums. There was no standardised "this is how it should be done" approach.

Though there is now a largely standardised long-shot (with the top rope nearest to the camera being aligned to the edge of the apron or bottom rope opposite), there's still some difference in when to make cuts. A good example of diverging schools of thought is the Pacquiao-Hatton fight. Most boxing fans have seen this fight. Did you know people around the world saw different versions of it? I've uploaded a splitscreen video to the Internet Archive to make the comparison easier.

The medium shot was already falling out of fashion by the 1990s as camera technology continued to evolve. Both directors of Pacquiao-Hatton make use of the modern 'over-the-shoulder' camera angle, which is usually captured by opposing camera-operators on the ring apron**. I'm not a fan of this angle. Most of the time you're just looking at someone's back, so it's harder to see which punches land clean or get blocked, leaving you reliant on the commentators or crowd reactions. It also gives more prominence to whichever fighter we see the face of. Sometimes it's a better look at how damaged someone is but in big fights it's often used to give us a closer look at the 'star of the show'. Bias can also go the other way, in protecting the 'home' fighter's image.

"There’s often a difference between UK and US coverage. When Hatton got knocked out by Pacquiao, Sara [Chenery] decided to cut away from the American pictures, which were zooming in on Hatton’s face." - https://sportsgazette.co.uk/nuanced-perspectives-in-boxing-make-the-knockout-by-andy-clarke-a-must-read/

My grievances aside, it's popular for the proximity it gives. The traditional angles show more, making them better suited for analysis and scoring. The over-the-shoulder angle is close-up, as visceral as witnessing a fight IRL. In real life you're never going to see a fight where people always face the viewer like it's a stage play or 2D fighting game. But we have the technology to provide home viewers the best possible experience. Maybe in the future a designated fight director will put together the definitive fight film after a live director's first draft?

*Another bit of trivia for ya: Computer-controlled zoom lenses didn't exist before the 1970s, so if you look up old fights you'll notice that zooming was done live the old-fashioned way.

**I'm never going to beat the weeaboo allegations but in Japanese boxing, remote-controlled cameras are mounted on to the neutral cornerposts. This comes with the added benefit of being able to adjust the height of the camera and include footwork in the shot. It gives more control to the live-broadcast director and it also means the actual fight itself is less obscured for both the in-person audience and photographers. I'm frankly amazed it's not standard practice for shows in the West. Despite my best half-hearted efforts to find out, I don't know when cameramen were first put on the apron.

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"The High Light Zone"

Another topic I've not seen much discussion about is highlights. If live sports broadcasts are cinema, then highlights packages must be propaganda. What else would you call the subjective creation of narrative through wilful ommission of context? Granted, this is irrelevant in sports where winners are decided by an objective and incontrovertible score. Boxing, barring knockouts, is not one of those sports. You cannot condense 36 minutes of fighting into a 3-6 minute video and do it justice. You can, however, do it artfully and with some method.

In a more perfect world, a higlights package should include;

• the referee instructions and the boxers facing off,
• every knockdown (if any),
• every big punch that may have stolen a round, inflicted a cut, stunned an opponent or the crowd etc,
• any great defensive sequences,
• anything entertaining from either the boxers, corners, or commentary,
• select reactions from either either the corners or crowd,
• the referee reading out scorecards if it goes to a decision,
• and select post-fight interview comments.

This should be in sequential order with at least some footage from each clearly-stated round. Slow-motion replays that we usually see between rounds should used if it's a better shot, even if there is no matching/fitting live commentary. The idea should be giving people "the story of the fight" and a feel for how things went in a more streamlined form. That's hard to do when entire rounds are skipped over and entertainment value is stripped out.

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'Let's get ready to fumble!'

At the time of writing, Michael Buffer is 79 years old and will be turning 80 in November. His iconic catchphrase has been one of only a handful of boxing motifs to escape into the wider world since the 1980s - it's been reproduced or parodied in scores of movies, games, songs, rap samples etc. Much like how the only S-rank boxing promoters were Tex Rickard and Don King, the only S-rank ring announcers have been Johnny Addle and Michael Buffer. Nothing lasts forever and challengers have been auditioning for a while now, how are some of the more known ones doing?

• Jimmy Lennon Jr.
  • Catchphrase: It's showtime!
  • Simple, classy, and elegant. Also a trademark of the broadcaster, Showtime. The alternative became "It's time for the main event of the evening!" which is more of a mouthful and less memorable. His voice is still charming and his foreign language pronunciation was also endearing. You just feel like you're something special is on the cards when he purrs "alright fight fans, here we goooo", a true master of ceremonies.
• David Diamante
  • Catchphrase(s): The stage is set and we are here. This is it. The time has come. I SAID: THE TIME! HAS! COME! From the four corners of the world to the four corners of this ring, the fight starts now!
  • David either doesn't know the definition of 'fight' or the definition of 'now', because this schpiel is actually followed by the fighter introductions. Bless him, he's really trying his best. He even appeals to the boomer in me that likes it when a fighter's surname is called out twice. But overall I'm not sold on it (like many others if you believe online comments). It's too long and nonsensical. The world has more than four corners unless you're a map-earther. I don't think you should end a sentence with 'come' if you plan on shouting it with added emphasis the second time around. The added emphasis does not do enough to beat the monotonous allegations.
• Kody 'Big Mo' Mommaerts
  • Catchphrase: So [place], I need you all to get up out of your seats, raise your drinks HIGH, and get wiiiiiiiiiiiild!
  • An American who couldn't make it in America and instead has to ply his trade in Blighty, that's got to be a little embarrassing. This catchphrase doubly irks me because a woke voice in my head always reminds that it can be interpreted as ableist and the drinks being referenced are presumably alcoholic. Other than that, it does feel like it's crafted thanks to the rule of three structure and elongating two vowel sounds in 'wild' (wai-uld), harkening back to 'rumble' (rum-bull). "Get wild" makes the imperative faux pas that a lot of ring announcers do, prefixing it with "let's" would go some way to making it feel invitational. Though Big Mo isn't carrying a drink for us to join him. This one just needs some more time in the shop.
• "Ramblin" Ralph Velez Jr.
  • Catchphrase: It's time to shine!
  • Every choice made by Floyd Mayweather's 'The Money Team' brand (TMT) feels like it was done on the cheap, and their ring announcer of choice, Ramblin' Ralph, sadly doesn't buck the trend. Very much a "when you order a ring announcer off Wish" type energy. His voice and delivery don't make me feel hyped and worse still he ends up reminding me that Super Mario Sunshine exists. Unacceptable.
• Joe A. Martinez
  • Catchphrase: And now, ladies and gentlemen, the judges are ready, the fighters are ready. [place], MAKE SOME NOISE! IF YOU! ARE! REEEAAADDYYY!
  • If this catchphrase sounds familiar, you wouldn't be the first person to think so. Part of the Golden Boy furniture and frequently seen in the world of MMA, people have mixed reactions to him according to their various forums. To my mind's ear he sounds like a generic radio announcer doing an impression of a generic modern ring announcer, the attempt at excitement is held back by insufficient energy levels, so the last "ready" sounds unfortunately constipated.
• Mark Shunock
  • Catchphrase: This is boxing! This is Top Rank!? And oooooh BABY, this is the main event!
  • Shunock seems like a nice guy so I don't want to say anything bad about him. But everyone else took their lumps so zanzibart... forgive me. This one also follows the rule of three but it's far less memorable. Plus his delivery also strays into strained/forced territory. The confused inflection on "this is Top Rank!?" always makes me chuckle though.

Sorry for being critical. I don't do it to be catty. I do it because I believe things can and should improve. The important thing to note is that this generation of ring announcers, in addition to any currently undiscovered ones, have decades to hone their skills and become more familiar to audiences. (Still gonna mute Diamante tho tbphaqfwy fam.)

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"All you heard was "Poppa, don't hit me no more'"

The free market provides consumers with many different choices, but no commentary broadcasts are arbitrarily kept from us by broadcasters. Presumably because they're already paying the commentators and don't want to feel like they're wasting that money, but since they're paying them regardless why not have an optional no commentary feed? With many pay-TV sporting events the option to switch commentary tracks between different languages is already present so we definitely have the technology.

Maybe some decision-maker feels like commentators are essential to explain things that cannot be ascertained through sight and environmental sounds alone. Another factor could be that a lot of the people who attend sports events, including the athletes and their supporting staff themselves, swear like sailors. You might notice it sometimes on soccer broadcasts that profane chants get mixed out of the audio feed because there are rules against broadcasting inappropriate language before watershed. However, since boxing exists mostly on PPV or internet streaming these days then this shouldn't be a barrier.

Again, it's about giving the home viewer the best possible experience. If you watched a fight in real life, you wouldn't have to listen to witless banter and nonsense analysis unless you got especially unfortunate seats in the arena. This is just my preference though. The key point is consumr choice.

P.S. There used to a YouTube video showing Tyson-Douglas without commentary but the uploader has made it private and I have no idea who uploaded it.

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'HUD Gone Love It'

Time marches on. It always seems to march slower when you're paying attention to it, like the last 15 minutes of a workday dragging because you started clock-watching. Or looking at the corner of a screen and seeing that there's still 2 minutes left in the round of a really boring fight, with at least another 5 rounds still to come.

Just like how turning off commentary would ideally be an option, the ability to turn off graphics should be too. There's a beauty and simplicity to stripping things down to the bare essentials. Old fight films did not need to constantly remind you how much time was left in a round because it largely serves no purpose. The bell, the 10 or 30 second warnings, and round announcements/cards are all you get for most fights in real life.

As far as I can tell, a constant time and round graphic was made standard by HBO Sports. They may well have been the first to show on-screen unofficial scorecards too. The logic behind it made sense in providing fans with more information. And maybe once upon a time, when channel surfing was still a thing, somebody thought it would be helpful to immediately signify to the viewer if they were catching the beginning or tail end of a fight. In the PPV era, people know they're signing up to watch a fight and there are plenty of other ads telling you which network you're watching. The viewing experience could be made more immersive by removing visual barriers to the action. Nobody really needs punchstats.

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"Music is the only love"

The people who put on boxing shows have all taken the same 'if it ain't broke' approach to their playlists. It's so unbelievable dull. On a Top Rank cards, you're always guaranteed to hear the same Jay-Z - P.S.A. (Interlude) + Rocky Theme remix they've been playing for at least 10-15 years to the best of my recollection. Does anybody look forward to hearing that? Or El Sonidito? I get that they like to play music in between rounds to drown out booing when a fight is bad but it also drowns out the roar of a crowd when a fight is great. I've been to a few Matchroom cards IRL in the past and one of the main ways I'm able to talk myself out of going to them again is that I have no interest in hearing 'Freed From Desire' or the extremely overplayed 'Sweet Caroline'. Meanwhile BOXXER tries to sate their crowds with greatest hits by 90s Britpop sensation, Oasis.

New entrants, Saudi Arabia, are taking their cues from existing practice, which is a regrettable missed opportunity. Ok, songs like 'All of The Lights' and 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' are modern classics. More importantly though, they don't present boxing as being at the cutting edge of culture. None of the aforementioned songs do.
You're living in that 21st century and have probably noticed we're caught on a nostalgia wave in film, television, video games, literature, music etc that shows no signs of subsiding. New ventures have to not only compete with their contemporaries, but an entire history that's currently more accessible (and popular) than ever before. So the risk-averse will eschew the future for the tried-and-tested past. Boxing is no exception.

The only reprieve from the ennui is ring walk music. Especially on Japanese cards where they often prefer rock songs or power ballads to the mainstay sound of rap music. I like hip hop and its storied, intertwined history with boxing, so it's a little sad that they've drifted apart since the 90s and early 2000s. Gone are the days of 2Pac recording custom ring-walk music for Mike Tyson, Big Pun walking in with Tito Trinidad, Roy Jones unveiling Meth & Red at Radio City Music Hall etc. Jones would go a step further by recording his own hit rap songs, which the nostalgia-miners of today use as their own ring-walk music.

We shouldn't keep living in the past. Those rap-boxer combinations of yore featured songs that only came out in the previous 12 months. In 2023, Terence Crawford walked out with Eminem to 'Lose Yourself', a song from 2002. Earlier that year Gervonta Davis walked out with Chief Keef performing his 2012 hit 'Love Sosa'. Think for a moment how goofy it would have been if Roy Jones, in the year 2000, walked out to late 80s music by Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.
Or if Mike Tyson, in 1996, was walking out to songs from 1974.
Or if 1974's 'Rumble In The Jungle' left out James Brown and Bill Withers in favour of a repertoire from the 1950s.

To paraphase a piece of conventional business wisdom; the current mantra is
'give them what we think they want',
whereas it should be
'give them what they never knew they wanted'.
Out with the old, in with the new. Please.

Lastly, some ring walks are too long. Take Anthony Joshua's EPIC Entrance vs. Robert Helenius, for example. The video is almost 4 minutes long and he's not even in the ring by the end of it. The time between the first walkout starting and the announcer picking up when both fighters are in the ring has to be averaging 10 minutes nowadays. If it were up to me, 60-120 seconds would be the range for walk-outs with recorded music, ~180 seconds for a live performance.

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'If you don't stand for the special song, the magic sky-cloth won't freedom'

Speaking of music, it is time to relitigate national anthems. Most spectators watch boxing for boxing, not out of patriotism. You may have missed it but this culture war has already been decided, and common sense lost. The last battle was in 2018 when Mexican champion Canelo Alvarez and Kazakh challenger Gennady Golovkin were scheduled to have the 2nd fight of their trilogy in America. One can understand the Mexican and Kazakh anthems being played, it's a little more sketchy when they play the American anthem ""in appreciation of the host country"".
That doesn't seem to happen elsewhere.

Oscar De La Hoya, promoting Canelo at the time, made some indefensible comments about the negotiations with Golovkin's team.

Look, I mean, they have to stop all this nonsense. I can tell you one thing for instance. Talk about not supporting your own country! The Golovkin people didn’t want to sing the national anthems before the fight. That’s a ritual. Having a national anthem before a championship fight is what you’re supposed to do. It makes it feel like a bigger event. Golovkin’s people didn’t want the Kazakhstan national anthem to be sung, the Mexican national anthem to be sung, the American national anthem to be sung. I mean what else are they going to demand? Jesus. Are they going to cancel the fight? You know? It's ridiculous. Just go out there and fight.

Golovkin's promoter, Tom Loeffler, fired back.

I have no idea what Oscar is talking about but it is not true. The truth is Team Golovkin had requested that the national anthems of Kazakhstan, Mexico and the United States be sung before the pay-per-view telecast began so that we could proceed with the fights seamlessly and uninterrupted. HBO supported this position and has always preferred that the anthems take place before the HBO Pay-Per-View telecast begins.

Just another reason to lament the loss of HBO. De La Hoya was dead wrong because 3 (three) national anthems delays the fight for no good reason. Let it be a ritual that people in attendance enjoy and let it feel like a bigger event for them. For those watching elsewhere, it feels pointless. They could always upload the performance and let anyone who cares watch it in their own time. It's also disingenuous to turn it into a question of """supporting your own country""" but identifying with a nation-state will have to be a discussion for another day.

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"It's been a long time"

The ambitious Saudi cards of late have been equal parts welcome and testing. Welcome because we're finally getting big match-ups, testing because there can be too much of a good thing. I enjoy watching boxing and even I can't get behind 8-hour cards. There are only 24 hours in a day and you spend ~8 of them asleep, so spending half your waking hours watching a stacked card is a huge commitment.

The problem is exacerbated by the excessive wait times between fights. I don't just mean ring walks and anthems, I mean all the time between the announced particulars for one fight and the first bell for the next. By my estimation, it ranges from anywhere between 15 and 50 minutes. Sometimes longer if there are a string of early stoppages. Are walk-out times stipulated in contracts? Who knows? In other sports, broadcasters go out of their way to detail why there's a break and how long they expect it to last. In boxing, concerns are waved away with a promise of "coming up shortly" as hollow banter fills the air. It's an even worse experience in-person since swing bouts appear to be consigned to history. Probably not worth the expense.

Collectively, all this wasted time must add up to 1-3 hours of an entire evening depending on the card. And to rub it in further they'll often cut to shots of the fighters in their dressing room, lounging around listening to music or chatting with their entourage. Tremendously poor value for money. The very least they could do is have some fight-week footage ready to roll, like highlights from press conferences or interviews that people may have missed. Or talk to some people in the arena. Boxing doesn't attract stars like it used to but roll the dice and take a cue from aimless F1 gridwalks, you might hear something interesting or entertaining. You'll never know until you try. It's better than literally nothing even if press row and ringside tends to be overwhelmingly pale, male, and stale.

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"The alpha and omega, no doubt an innovator"

Henry Armstrong, one of the greatest p4p boxers who ever lived, had several nicknames but I think the best one was "Perpetual Motion". He kept moving forwards and there's no better way of making progress. Boxing broadcasts have largely stayed put and not evolved in the way that those of other sports have. Then again, I sometimes watch LALIGA EA SPORTS™© matches and think maybe we should count our blessings. The last boxing innovation I can recall is referee bodycam for the closest possible view of the action. It worked better on paper than in practice since the videos were never high quality, and the camera angles we got weren't very good to begin with before they inevitably got knocked or bumped at some point.

Edit: I was watching an ESPN undercard and they just showed a whole fight that that exclusively used the corner coaches as de facto commentators, the main commentators did not jump back in until the final bell. Robert Garcia is a premier trainer, Martino Marino has a pottymouth. It's interesting to hear what the coaches want to see. More accurately though, it's interesting in short bursts (like, for about 30-60s between rounds or at the start of a round). Over a longer period, the calls of "come on!" and "let's go!" quickly become repetitive.

All that said, at least the above were all earnest attempts by people to enrich the viewing experience. Unlike the worst innovation imaginable: Top Rank Boxing Partners with WSC Sports to Generate AI-Powered Highlights. If you were trying to create a news story specifically to upset me, you'd be hardpressed to land a more surgical strike.

Creators involved in this for Top Rank content include IFL TV, Fight Source, Gorilla Productions, Rich the fight Historian, Boxing News, and Narices Rotas. - https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/tech-innovation/top-rank-gets-in-the-ring-with-wsc-sports/5182958.article

Basically, it's become even easier to churn out effortless slop for the content-starved masses. My attitudes to this are exactly the same as my attitudes to AI-generated books; why would I bother to read something that nobody could even be bothered to write? The corporate push for AI in all digital spaces was actually one of the reasons I decided to start my silly likkle boxing blog, so that there would be one more tiny pocket of the internet where inquisitive people could directly access something that another human being personally found interesting or worthwhile.

Remember kids, use uBlock Origin and BlockTube to preserve your online sanity and peace of mind.

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And historically? Tell us more about the old days!

Ummm... well, I've certainly seen really old fight films. And I've read about how they often had audio added in after the fact when they were rereleased, either due to sound never being recorded in the first place or the original audio being unsuitable for whatever reason. But it's an area I would like to know more about. I like to know lots of pointless esoteric things really. Like when/why the canvas in American boxing rings switched from white to blue? Was it to do with colour TV and/or requested by broadcasters? Did a market leader in ring craftmanship take the initiative? Which monster(s) first put ads on the canvas, ropes, corner post pads etc? How far back does sponsorship really go? Maybe it would've been easier to find some answers before Google search became hot garbage, though the more likely explanation is that people don't give it much thought. I might join the IBRO (International Boxing Research Organization) one of these days. My worry is that if I discover nobody else has bothered with 20th century media/broadcast history then I may feel compelled to take up the mantle. I don't think I'm ready to jump down the rabbit hole of being a 'boxing guy' through and through just yet. Perish the thought.

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• This is more focussed on the home viewing experience, because that is how most people will see a fight.
• I wasn't sure how to work in discussing the difference between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios because I can't justify my preference, I just like one more than other.
• Parts 1 & 2 were written in tandem, I don't have a draft for part 3 yet or any concrete idea for what it (or any future parts) should cover.
  • I'm leaning towards ancillary media. Like what does the boxing world directly share with the masses online? What are other sports doing to create stars and maintain a presence that boxing is not doing? Watch this space.
• 'Radio' and 'Statistics' nearly made the cut as subjects until I realised it would be better to cover them in separate articles.
• I would've written something about audio mixing but I don't have as much insight into that. Doing it better was partially addressed in Part 1 but it's only really DAZN that's regularly doing it wrong.
• There was originally a whole section about ring girls, homosociality in boxing, how it relates to Joyce Carol Oates's observation that boxing appears "powerfully homoerotic", and conflicting schools of thoughts during the feminist sex wars in regards to the objectification of women. I got truly lost in the weeds before deciding to give up on that topic and save it for another day.
• For the camera bit I thought about including the different types of cutaway shots and the angles used but it's a bit much to get into for an introductory post.
• The cultural terrorists that AI-upscale, FPS-boost, and colorize old boxing media are out of control. Their cancerous effect is compounded by actually good YouTube videos being buried by the algorithm (or completely lost) for countless reasons.