Broadcasts of Fight Will Downplay Stunt

HBO, which will show Saturday’s Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe heavyweight title fight on three successive nights beginning Thursday, will downplay as much as possible the para-glider who crash-landed on the ring apron during the seventh round.

“This was not a fun stunt,” Ross Greenburg, HBO’s executive producer of sports, said Monday. “This was a stupid, idiotic stunt by an egomaniacal moron who could have been responsible for as many as 100 deaths.

“It was impossible to do what he tried to do--to fly under the canopy that covered the ring and the first few rows of seats and land in the ring. Naturally, he failed. Fortunately, no one was killed.

“What could have happened was for him to hit the canopy and send it crashing down. Then we would have had a disaster beyond description.”

Greenburg, who served as the executive producer of both the live TVKO pay-per-view coverage and the taped show for HBO, was in the production truck Saturday night.

“I had 11 monitors in front of me and first saw this nut during the middle of the fifth round on one of the monitors. Our blimp camera picked him up and I saw him make a pass over the ring. I breathed a sigh of relief when he went out of the picture.

“But my wife, Michele, who was sitting at ringside, later came into the truck and said she saw the guy make two passes over the ring before coming in on the third pass.”

Greenburg said the para-glider’s crash-landing will be part of the taped coverage that will be on HBO Thursday night at 9, Friday night at 12:30 and Saturday night at 6:30, “but the last thing we want to do is glorify this guy.”

Greenburg said it upsets him that the para-glider, James Miller, is using footage taken by the combined TVKO-HBO crews for publicity. “We made a decision to release the footage to news outlets because it was a news event,” Greenburg said. “But then I see our footage (on CNN) with this clown being interviewed and calling himself the ‘Fan Man.’ I was incensed when I saw this.”