Not All Matchups on Pay-Per-View Are Knockouts

Not that disarray and confusion are new to boxing, but what’s going on in the televising of the sport these days is enough to make one punch-drunk.

It used to be that everything was fairly orderly. There were weekly fights on cable, higher-quality fights on the three major networks, even better attractions on HBO and the occasional megafight on pay-per-view.

Now, run-of-the-mill fights end up on pay-per-view.

There are still fights on cable, but very few on the networks. HBO is still in the fight game but appears to be in competition with its pay-per-view sister, TVKO.

HBO will show a doubleheader of note from Palm Springs Saturday night free to its subscribers, and then two weeks later, TVKO will charge $19.95 for fights of a lesser caliber from Sacramento.

Saturday’s HBO card, promoted by Dan Goossen, has Sugar Ray Leonard’s conqueror, Terry Norris, facing Donald Curry and Meldrick Taylor taking on Luis Garcia.

The TVKO pay-per-view acramento show on June 14 has Loreto Garza meeting Edwin Rosario and Jorge Paez going against Tracy Spann. Hardly pay-per-view material.

Monday night, there will be a legitimate pay-per-view attraction, the Virgil Hill-Thomas Hearns bout at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, a Jerry Buss-Bruce McNall promotion. The price is $29.95.

Coming up June 28 on pay-per-view, perhaps, will be Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddock II. This mess will be explored by ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” Saturday, when a tape of the first Tyson-Ruddock fight with its controversial finish is scheduled to be shown.

ABC had planned to show taped coverage of the last Ironman Triathlon on “Wide World” but dropped it to make room for the fight. Interestingly, NBC recently made a deal to televise the next Ironman Triathlon.

Rich Marotta will do the blow-by-blow on Monday’s Hill-Hearns telecast, which is being distributed to 17 million pay-per-view households nationwide by Rick Kulis’ Event Entertainment. Ferdie Pacheco will be the commentator, ESPN’s Al Bernstein the host.

It’s nice to see the likable Marotta draw the assignment. “I’d have to say it’s the single most important event of my career,” he said.

Marotta, probably best known as the Raiders’ radio commentator, has held a variety of jobs over the years.

A 1967 graduate of Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks who studied broadcasting at Cal State Northridge, Marotta, 42, has worked in Southern California since a 3 1/2-year stint in Colorado after college. In Colorado, Marotta did football and basketball for the Air Force Academy and hockey for the University of Colorado.

Marotta spent two seasons as Bob Miller’s partner on the Kings, was the USC football commentator for Prime Ticket, conducted the cable network’s “It’s Your Call” show and was associated with radio stations KNX and KRLA. He currently does morning sportscasts for KFI.

Marotta also has a fairly thorough background in boxing. “It’s probably the sport I know the best,” he said.

At one time Marotta announced boxing for the USA network with Allan Malamud, did fights from the Irvine Marriott on local cable and later worked on Forum boxing for Prime Ticket. He recently started his own boxing radio network, and covered four major fights during a two-year span.

This is a busy time for Laker owner/boxing promoter Buss, who got into the fight game nine years ago with the idea of promoting heavyweight title bouts.

Monday’s card is a big step in that direction.

Henry Gluck, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Caesars World, sees the positive aspects of teaming with Buss and McNall on boxing. “It’s a joy getting businessmen of repute into this business,” he said.

Buss said boxing has been a losing proposition for most of the nine years he has been in it, but he sees possibilities.

The hope is for a 4% buy-rate Monday night, which would translate to about $20 million in gross pay-per-view revenue.

The fighters will split $4.4 million, with Hearns, the light-heavyweight challenger, getting $3 million and Hill, the champion, getting $1.4 million.

Much of the investment for the promotion is being spent on television advertising, mainly with NBC. Buss and aide John Jackson hope to bring in NBC as a partner on future pay-per-view fights.

Saturday’s HBO fight at the Palm Springs Radisson Resort will be the second for new commentator George Foreman.

What did Foreman learn from his first HBO assignment, the May 18 Hector Camacho-Greg Haugen match?

“He’s going to have to coordinate his bathroom time,” said Ross Greenburg, HBO Sports’ executive producer. “The first time, he didn’t realize that without commercials, you’re on the air for two hours without a break. I think he went through half the broadcast with a full bladder.”

Greenburg said Foreman’s next bout as a boxer might be overseas on Sept 7. But Alex Garcia, the possible opponent, hasn’t decided if he wants the fight.

TV-Radio Notes

Commentator Steve Jones, praised here last week for his objectivity on the Laker-Portland games, has since sounded more like a Trail Blazer announcer, which he is when not working for NBC. . . . Play-by-play announcer Dick Enberg is off to the French Open now that he is done with the Laker-Trail Blazer series. Asked if he prefered going to Portland or Paris, Enberg laughed and said: “It really didn’t matter. This was a great series and we went out with our best game.” . . . Marv Albert and Mike Fratello will work the final series. . . . And then there is Chick Hearn and Stu Lantz on radio. . . . Pat Riley’s interview with Michael Jordan last weekend may be the best thing he has done for NBC. It sure beat shooting baskets with Bob Costas or chatting with Peter Vescey and Bob Ferry.

Credit former USC coach Rod Dedeaux for lining up Kevin Costner to do part of the College World Series opening for ESPN, which will be seen today at 1 p.m., before the Fresno State-Florida State game, and later throughout the tournament. At first rebuked by Costner’s press agent, ESPN went to Dedeaux, who was the technical adviser on Costner’s “Field of Dreams.” Dedeaux got Costner to agree to do it, and ESPN this week sent producer Jay Rothman to New Orleans, where Costner is filming an Oliver Stone picture on the assassination of President Kennedy. It took Costner only two takes to do the one-minute piece. . . . CBS will show a College World Series first-round game--Clemson against Creighton at 10 a.m. Saturday--as well as the championship game the following Saturday. ESPN will televise all other games, some delayed to rather odd hours.

Ratings game: The Lakers on Channel 4 beat the Indy 500 on Channel 7 last Sunday, 14.4 to 11.0. . . . Attention, ABC: Those shots of the Indy drivers’ wives are being overdone. Also, there’s too much jumping around from camera to camera, making it difficult to follow a particular story line.

With Channel 2’s Steve Alvarez having taken a job in Miami, KNX’s Rory Markas will do some fill-in work at the station. He will handle the sports news on Fridays and Saturdays, along with an occasional feature piece. . . . Scott St. James’ sports talk show on KMPC will begin Monday. Originally scheduled for 4 p.m., the start time is now 5 p.m. After a half-hour out for Jim Healy at 5:30, the show will end at 8 when there is no Angel baseball and at 7 when the Angels are at home or on the West Coast. It will be preempted when the team is in the East. . . . It was good timing by SportsChannel to have Wednesday night’s Dodger game on its schedule. It was bad timing to have commentator Al Downing interview therapist Pat Screnar when Orel Hershiser took the mound to a standing ovation. . . . The Dodgers will be back on SportsChannel tonight and Saturday night.

CBS announced Thursday that it will use Katarina Witt as a figure skating commentator for the 1992 Winter Olympics. . . . NBC, as expected, announced that Enberg and Bill Walsh will work the six Notre Dame home football games it will televise next season. Enberg and Walsh remain NBC’s No. 1 team on the NFL, but they will not work NFL games on the weekends they do a Notre Dame telecast.