A Ring Master Like His Dad : Boxing announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. follows in his father’s footsteps with flair, becoming a respected presence in arenas around the world

To hear Jimmy Lennon Jr. tell it, his family reunions resemble all-star revues.

“First the Lennon Sisters sing,” said Lennon, a cousin of the famous 1960s group. “My uncles harmonize--they were the Lennon Brothers before there were the Lennon Sisters. My other cousins have a rock band. There are violin players and guitar players. Everyone trades off.”

At a recent wedding, the band played “You Send Me,” and the family kept the music going until each and every relative had stepped to the microphone to sing a chorus, either in falsetto or bass, jazzy or plain.

“It went on forever,” Lennon recalled.

Then he stepped to the mike and did what he does best, a talent that has brought the Lennons back into the spotlight.

Actually, his father gets most of the credit. Almost 50 years ago, Jimmy Lennon Sr. was an Irish tenor who showed up to sing at a nightclub only to find that the evening’s program had been switched to boxing. So he stepped through the ropes to act as ring announcer.

Previously, announcers went about the business of introducing fighters in strictly deadpan style. The elder Lennon brought a performer’s flair to the work--a splendidly ironic gesture within such brutal confines. His tone of voice was elegant, his words spoken with dramatic cadence and extravagantly rolling Rs.

In the years that followed, Lennon became synonymous with boxing, introducing virtually every big fight of his era and playing the role in dozens of television shows and movies ranging from Elvis Presley’s “Kid Galahad” to Robert De Niro’s “Raging Bull.” In a purely sporting arena, he found a way to become famous as an entertainer.

Which brings us to Jimmy Jr., who never meant to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had other things on his mind when he graduated with a psychology degree from UCLA and began teaching at a small private school.

But, of Jimmy Sr.’s five children, he was the one who looked and sounded exactly like his father. Jimmy Sr. wanted desperately for his son to continue the family name in boxing. He asked again and again. He bribed. Now, at age 33, Jimmy Jr. finds himself traveling the world to announce championship bouts and appear in movies.

So, at the wedding, Jimmy Jr. stepped to the microphone and introduced the newlyweds: “Wearing the white dress and black tuxedo, weighing in at a combined weight of 293 pounds, making their matrimonial debut. . . . “

Five years ago, as Jimmy Lennon Sr. began to withdraw from the fight game because of age and illness that required intermittent hospitalization, his son started announcing. First, he did fights in such places as San Bernardino and San Diego. Then, he became the ring announcer at the Forum. Last year, he worked the Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas bout, one of the greatest upsets in boxing history.

It was Lennon’s first megafight, his first time on international television. Since then, he has worked 10 more title fights on NBC, HBO and pay-per-view television.

“He’s one of the best,” said Brad Jacobs, a boxing consultant and coordinating producer for the USA Network. “Obviously, he comes from great lineage.”

Lennon is regarded as the No. 1 contender among ring announcers. The reigning champion is Michael Buffer, a strikingly handsome man with a booming voice and sure-fire slogan, “Let’s get ready to rumble,” that he uses to open every fight.

“Buffer is a ‘90s guy,” said John Beyrooty, a former boxing writer for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and current Forum spokesman. “Jimmy has adopted his father’s style of 30 years ago, and nobody did it better than Jimmy Sr.”

Indeed, while Buffer looks as if he stepped off the cover of GQ magazine, Lennon has inherited his father’s frail Irish looks, thin blond hair and boyish face. If Buffer is a sledgehammer, then Lennon is finesse and grace. His voice is not so much deep as it is melodic. He uses no dramatic gestures and begins each fight with a short, “All right, fight fans, here we go.”

“Classy and simple,” Beyrooty said. “And he can enunciate the Hispanic names better than the Hispanics can.”

A ring announcer’s work may seem insignificant, but the best announcers get flown around the globe and paid well to spend those few minutes in the ring. Lennon got first-class air fare to Japan, a week’s accommodations in a Tokyo hotel and $2,000 for working the Tyson-Douglas fight. Buffer makes a full-time living at the job.

Promoters and television executives say ring announcers are vital to a smooth-running evening.

“We’re throwing the show over to him,” said Jacobs, of USA. “He’s got to get the crowd ready for the fight, and not just the fans in attendance but also in 55 million homes across America.

“If you’ve got a guy who isn’t a seasoned professional, it really shows.”

A veteran announcer is often the one who organizes the evening’s fight card. He’ll tell the promoter when to have the national anthem performed and when to announce celebrities in the audience. Like a ringmaster, he keeps the action going. Like a carnival barker, he works the crowd.

“The fighters come out and there’s music and excitement,” Buffer said. “Then the announcer has to introduce the commission and the doctors and the supervisors . . . and the room can go flat. You try to keep the fans involved.”

If there are any doubts that this effort requires an entertainer’s touch, just glance at the young Lennon’s screen credits. So far in his eight-year career, he has appeared in such television shows as “Hunter,” “Highway to Heaven” and “Webster.” He was in a CBS Movie of the Week, did voice-overs for car dealer commercials and has a role in the Charlie Sheen movie “Hot Shots.”

Still, he might have been content to restrict his performances to family reunions and the history classes he has taught for 10 years at small West Los Angeles Baptist School. “Teaching is fulfilling in a deep sense,” he said. Lennon began attending fights only after his ailing father asked for help.

“I said, ‘I wish you’d do announcing,’ ” the elder Lennon recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t think so.’ So I told him I’d give him a third of what they pay me, and he brightened up a little.”

The younger Lennon found he liked announcing. As his father phased out of the business, he worked at it more and more. He insists on continuing to teach while working an average of two fights a week. The school gives him time off for out-of-town events. Promoters and crowds seem attracted to him as a reminder of old times.

At a recent nationally televised fight, the younger Lennon showed all his father’s flair. Fighters’ names, especially the long Latino names, were delivered in sing-song fashion punctuated by dramatic pauses. “Ra--faelllll R-R-R-Ruelas,” he intoned. Mexico was pronounced “Meh-hee-co.” Instead of simply announcing a fighter’s weight, Lennon told the crowd that the boxer was “a trim and ready 150.”

When it came time for prefight instructions, Lennon held the microphone in front of the referee so the audience could hear as well. His father developed that trick.

“You don’t think the referee could hold the mike himself?” Beyrooty asked. “Jimmy Sr. started doing it because it gives the ring announcer six or seven more seconds on camera. It’s brilliant.”

After a close fight, Lennon drew out the announcement of the decision, building suspense. Another fight ended with an unpopular ruling, and Lennon tried to defuse the crowd’s anger by speaking as briefly as possible. He learned that lesson from his father, who survived a few riots in the days of the unruly and now-closed Olympic Auditorium.

“You have to downplay it,” said the younger Lennon, who recently announced a controversial decision at the end of the Azumah Nelson-Jeff Fenech WBC Super Featherweight Championship in Las Vegas.

“I knew the crowd was going to be mad,” Lennon said. “I told them, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve seen a great fight. No matter who the winner is, both these fighters deserve a round of applause.’

“People clapped and that let some steam off.”

Lennon believes this is his responsibility: “To be a good announcer you have to be in charge. When I put on my tuxedo and walk from my car to the arena, I change. I’ve got to make a show out of it.”

At the merest clank or crash, anything that sounded like a bell--a dropped pot hitting the kitchen floor, for instance--Jimmy Sr.’s children would erupt into imitations of their father. They had seen him on television hundreds of times.

Maybe there was something in Jimmy Jr.’s blood, even back then, a likeness that might have peeked through in those childish imitations.

This year alone, Lennon has traveled to Hawaii, Australia and Japan as an announcer. He went on a promotional tour in Jakarta, Indonesia, with Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes and Tim Witherspoon, and spent evenings watching Ali do magic tricks in his hotel room. He has introduced thousands of boxers.

When discussing the fight game, it is people Lennon mentions most. His father taught him to talk to everyone--boxers, officials, managers and corner men. One fan who attends fights throughout California found out that Lennon likes mango juice. Now, when the ring announcer arrives at an arena, he often finds a glass of the juice waiting at his ringside seat.

“What else could you do that people would treat you this nice?” he asked. He constantly checks with his father, who watches all his bouts on television. When Jimmy Sr. is without cable television in the hospital, his wife stays at home and holds a telephone to the TV set, so he can hear their son’s introductions.

“He’ll ask after the fight, ‘How did I do?’ ” Jimmy Sr. said. “I tell him he did wonderful, but there’s a couple things I might change. Give a little flair to it. Like when you come to heavyweights, say: ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, presenting the big men of boxing!’ Play it up.”

Jimmy Jr. insists he doesn’t try to imitate his father. He says it comes naturally. But he likes the fact that, through him, people are reminded of the Lennon legacy.

“Jimmy Jr. will probably always be criticized for being like his father,” Beyrooty said. “He could do worse.”