Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [31]
BILL SHANAHAN:
I think being in Bristol, Connecticut, was a blessing because we weren’t in a major-media capital, we weren’t surrounded by industry “wisdom”—“Oh, you have to do it this way” or “You can’t do it that way.” We were just a bunch of younger guys making it up as we went.
JIM SIMPSON:
Chet asked me to give kind of a motivational speech at the first Christmas party, in ’79. At that time I think ESPN had maybe sixty employees and most of them—except for those putting tape on the air—gathered at the local Holiday Inn. My little speech was, “This is the beginning. You’re in on the ground floor and those of you who stick it out are going to be glad you did.” I believed it. I told them, “I know there’s a lot of newspaper people, radio people, and media people who are saying this thing isn’t going to work. They’re wondering, “Who is going to watch sports twenty-four hours a day? Who is ever going to watch this thing?” I told them, “Nobody in their right mind. But if they want sports, they’ll know where they can get it.”
2
The Utility Of Daring: 1980–1986
“If there is no wind, row.”
—Latin proverb
SAL MARCHIANO, Reporter:
I did a lot of stuff with Muhammad Ali when I was at ABC. Cosell was his guy, obviously, but I still managed to do a bunch of interviews. The greatest assignment I ever had in my career was going to the Thrilla in Manila. Cosell wasn’t enthusiastic about traveling internationally—he picked his spots, but he certainly wasn’t going to go to a country that was under martial law. So I got the assignment and spent ten great days there.
Now we jump forward to when Ali fought Larry Holmes in Las Vegas in October of ’80. I was there with ESPN. I was in the coffee shop and Angelo Dundee comes up to me and says, “I understand you videotaped Larry Holmes today at his workout over at Caesars Palace.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You know, maybe the champ would like to take a look at that tape.” So I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah.” So I said, “Well, maybe I would like a one-on-one interview with the champ.” He said, “Well, let me go ask him if he’ll make a trade.”
Dundee comes back down and says, “He’ll make the trade. Can you come up this afternoon?” I said, “Yeah.” So I go with Tom Reilly and Jeff Israel up to the suite and they tell us where to set up in the living room. While Riles and Jeff are setting up, I bring the tape into the champ’s bedroom, where Ali is getting a massage on the trainer’s table. We put the tape in the deck and he watches Larry’s workout. The sparring is what he wanted to see; he was obviously looking at it for timing. So he watched the whole thing quietly and then he said, “Put it back at the beginning.” We put it back at the beginning, where Larry is sparring. All of a sudden, Muhammad gets up—he’s naked—and he starts to shadow box against the movements of Larry Holmes. His dick is flapping in the air and I can’t believe that I’m seeing this. When he finished, he said, “I’ll be out in a minute. I’m gonna take a shower.” He came out and we started the interview.
In the middle of the interview we hear someone banging at the door, so we have to stop. In walks Bundini Brown, his so-called trainer, stinking drunk. He comes over and gives me an open-mouth kiss. Ali sees him do this, rips his microphone off, gets up, slaps Bundini in the face, drags him to the door, throws him in the hallway, and fires him. Then Muhammad comes back, puts on the microphone, and we start up again. But throughout the rest of the interview, in the background, we can hear Bundini whimpering in the hallway. Somehow, he wound up working the Holmes fight. As a matter of fact, Bundini was the only guy in Ali’s corner who wanted the fight to continue. What did he care? He didn’t have to take the beating.
ESPN didn’t air the actual Ali vs. Holmes fight; Marchiano was there just doing