HBO Expects Ratings of a Week-Old Fight to Be Simply the Best

HBO is expecting a huge viewing audience for tonight’s two-hour special on the Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson fight, which begins at 9:30.

It should do considerably better than the live telecast last Saturday, which drew a 30.9 Nielsen rating, meaning it was watched in 30.9% of HBO’s 17 million homes. That’s a typical rating for a Tyson fight.

HBO says its best rating was a 39.4 for the premiere showing of “An Officer and a Gentleman” in November, 1983.

The premiere showing of “Jaws” in 1976 had a higher rating, but HBO is not releasing that figure because it says it’s not comparable to today’s ratings.

HBO is planning to present tonight’s special only once. It will not permit any broadcasts by an outside network.

Jim Lampley, through the magic of jet travel through time zones, left Tokyo Sunday afternoon, immediately after calling the fight for HBO, and was back in Los Angeles by 10 a.m. Sunday.

He did the news for Channel 2 that night.

“It’s February sweeps,” Lampley said. “I promised the station I’d be back in time.”

Lampley said he had planned to sleep during the flight.

“I tried, but was just too excited,” he said. “I couldn’t get the fight and the magnitude of it out of my mind.

“I kept reliving it and wondering if there was anything that we had overlooked. I was worried if we had been received well and done a good job.”

Lampley needn’t have worried. He was excellent.

His call at the end of the fight, “Mike Tyson has been knocked out,” was simple but poignant.

It may not go down in history with Al Michaels’ “Do you believe in miracles?” call at the 1980 Olympics, but Lampley Saturday night was as good as Michaels is at his best--and that is quite a compliment.

When Lampley was Roy Firestone’s guest on “SportsLook” this week, he didn’t pull any punches.

About Don King’s long-count charge, Lampley said: “It is a non-issue. It’s an absolute smoke screen, a Don King ploy to ensure Tyson an immediate rematch.

“Buster Douglas could have gotten up at the count of five. No count starts right when the fighter hits the canvas.”

Of King, Lampley said: “I don’t think it’s surprising that Don King would try to insult the boxing public and all its fans by suggesting a fighter who was kicked all around the ring somehow deserved to win the fight.

“I think it somewhat surprising he would insult Mike Tyson’s integrity, making him look like a little boy. Is his self-esteem so low he can’t admit he’s had the living stuffings knocked out of him?”

Of King’s handling of Tyson’s career, Lampley said: “Mike emerged as a creation of an ideal situation in which his talent was nurtured and developed. His talent hasn’t been nurtured and developed in the same way since King has been in control.”

As Lampley drove away from the Hollywood studio in which “SportsLook” is taped, it suddenly occurred to him that King, the man he had just criticized on the air, does business with HBO, which pays Lampley a yearly salary of almost $300,000.

Lampley called his HBO boss, Seth Abraham, to alert him to what was coming later in the day. But Abraham simply told him, “Don’t worry, Jim, you’re not the only one who has criticized King.”

That’s for sure.

The HBO team of Lampley, Larry Merchant and Sugar Ray Leonard did some outstanding work in Tokyo, although Merchant has taken some criticism for his postfight interview with Douglas.

Todd Christensen, on “SportsLook,” was particularly tough on Merchant.

“Here you had a great human interest story,” Christensen said. “Man, oh man, this was something that makes ‘Rocky’ look like real life, what with Douglas saying he won this one for his mother, who had died a few weeks earlier.

“I was watching the fight with a cynical group, but we all had tears in our eyes. And Merchant is asking him about the left hook?”

The feeling here is Merchant, under very trying circumstances, did about as well as could be expected.

As Douglas was crying, his cornermen were telling Merchant, “Let him go, Larry.”

But Merchant held his ground and eventually got Douglas to compose himself and give a pretty good interview.

The question that seemed to clear Douglas’ head wasn’t about a left hook. It was: “What did you try to do from the get-go?”

Said Douglas: “Exactly what I did--whip his . . . “

Christensen, the former Raider tight end, might have been a little tougher on Merchant than necessary, but at least he speaks his mind, and there’s no question he’s bright.

What other former athlete would open a commentary by quoting Oscar Wilde, as he did Monday?

“Oscar Wilde may have said it best when he said, ‘When gods wish to punish, they let us believe our own report.’ Mike Tyson believed his own report.”

Christensen also said: “Tyson has surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants.”

Sycophants? Look it up. It means favor-seeking parasites.

TV-Radio Notes

Buster Douglas, who was a hit on “Late Night With David Letterman” Wednesday night, will be on “Later With Bob Costas” Monday night and on the “The Tonight Show” with guest host Jay Leno Tuesday night. . . . Pay-per-view mogul Rick Kulis said a Douglas rematch with Mike Tyson on pay-per-view probably would go for $50 in Los Angeles. . . . A news conference was held in New York Thursday to announce that Thomas Hearns and Michael Olajide are scheduled to fight on Showtime April 28.

NBC is counting on a 10% buy rate with its pay-per-view Summer Olympic programming in 1992. But Tyson-Michael Spinks, the most successful pay-per-view sporting event to date, other than some of the Wrestlemania shows, got only an 8 1/2% buy rate. And one could get Tyson-Spinks for $25-$50.

George Green, the general manager at Dodger flagship radio station KABC, said the absence of spring training games would not have much effect on the station. “We simply would continue to air Michael Jackson’s show, which ratings-wise does about as well as a Dodger spring training game. Where we would start to get hurt would be the regular season. We then could be talking about big losses.” . . . Bud Furillo, former KABC “Sportstalk” host who now does a late-afternoon sports talk show with Steve Hartman for KFOX-FM, is moving the show to KIEV (870) and making it a morning show. Hartman said the plan is for the show to begin at KIEV March 1, from 8 to 9 a.m.

ESPN has named John Saunders and newcomer Dave Marash, a news anchor at a Washington TV station, as the main hosts of its nightly baseball program, “Baseball Tonight,” which makes its debut March 19, whether there is baseball or not. Baseball writer Peter Gammons and former major leaguers Ray Knight and Bill Robinson will be regular contributors. . . . West Coast correspondent Chris Myers has been doing a nice job this week as a fill-in host on ESPN’s late-night edition of “SportsCenter.”

ESPN is still running “SportsLook” at 3:30 p.m. and midnight in the West, meaning the first showing is too early, the second too late for most viewers. The second used to be at 11, but ESPN moved it to midnight to make room for live college basketball. It would be nice if it went back to 11 after the college basketball season.

CBS offers an attractive sports doubleheader Sunday, the Daytona 500 at 9 a.m., followed at 12:30 p.m. by the Lakers and Celtics from the Forum. . . . For its Daytona coverage, CBS will have cameras in the cars of Geoff Bodine, Darrell Waltrip, Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin. . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be interviewed live from Hawaii during halftime of the Laker-Celtic game.

Attention surfing fans: Prime Ticket offers taped coverage of a competition in Puerto Rico Sunday at 6:30 p.m. . . . The final of the Virginia Slims of Chicago tournament will be on Prime Ticket at 5 p.m. Monday, a one-day tape delay. . . . Tulley Brown, executive director of the Direction Sports program aimed at helping youths by mixing sports and academics, will be a guest on “Impact” on KLOS-FM Sunday night at midnight.