NBC Muffs First Day of Olympics Boxing Coverage
What an embarrassingly poor presentation of this year’s Olympic boxing by NBC so far!
The first afternoon telecast on CNBC, which was taped earlier Saturday, August 9, began by showing the same fight, between middleweights Emilio Correa of Cuba and Jarrod Fletcher of Australia, twice, from start to finish.
Although Correa deservedly won easily, he had an eight-count called against him in the fourth and final round when he kneeled to the canvas after a combination to the head by Fletcher, although those punches did not seem to do much damage. Even though they showed this fight twice, and it was pretaped, they never showed a replay of this knockdown.
Announcers Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas did correctly point out that the punches Fletcher landed which caused Correa to kneel down did not even result in one point being tallied by these judges. Generally they did a good job savaging these supposedly reformed Olympic boxing rules. They even had a nice replay of a Chinese boxer getting smashed directly in the face, without a point being scored for his opponent. And they now even have open scoring in Olympic boxing.
The fight they likely skipped involved Russian middleweight Matvey Korobov, a 2005 and 2007 amateur world champion, who outpointed Naim Terbunja of Sweden, 18-6. Korobov is a favorite to win a gold medal this year. Plus, for the American-centric NBC, his parents and older brother reportedly live in Florida, and he plans to turn pro after the Olympics.
The NBCOlympics.com boxing page, with schedules, results, etc., is at http://www.nbcolympics.com/boxing/index.html.
The boxing page on the official Beijing 2008 Olympic Games page is at http://en.beijing2008.cn/sports/boxing/index.shtml.
Most of the boxing in the U.S. will be on CNBC, live at about midnight EDT (more likely with the boxing part of those shows beginning around 1:30 AM EDT) and taped starting at 5 PM EDT most days. The boxing competition runs from August 9-20 and August 22-24, with the finals on August 23 and 24.
Interestingly, although NBCOlympics.com will stream a lot of the action (supposedly only available in the U.S.), there are no plans to stream any boxing – perhaps because they know that so many people in boxing love to brag that they are too lazy or stupid to use the Internet. Of course, this will only encourage more people to seek out these videos online, whether or not the sites offering them are provided by rights holders or by people who just decide to stream them for free.
Here are some links to articles which will help you do that, assuming, of course, that you are not one of boxing’s proud technophobic idiots:
Watch the Olympics Online
How To Watch The Beijing Olympics LIVE On The Web -- Even If NBC Doesn't Want You To
Ready to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Labels: 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing, Bob Papa, boxing, CNBC, Emilio Correa, Jarrod Fletcher, Matvey Korobov, Naim Terbunja, NBC, NBCOlympics.com, Olympic Games, Olympics, Teddy Atlas
posted by Eddie Goldman @ 8:18 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Olympic boxing has become a bad joke. A Chinese fighter gets hit with a punch that puts him down, and the opponent doesn't get credit. And then showing boxing at midnight?
There was some other news fight related. I see that three Americans were kicked out of China for protesting. That's the good news. The bad news is they arrived back in the States in one piece!
Actually, I’m enjoying it so far. Despite the scoring farce, the right fighter has won most of the time.
The NBC announcers, Teddy Atlas and Bob Papa, occasionally mix up the fighters and continuously talk too much while the action goes on. But most of the fights, even though they are still in the prelims, are just as or even more watchable than what they have on every week on ESPN2.
Look, these guys are amateurs, mainly kids in their late teens and early twenties. Don’t expect Vazquez-Marquez or Margarito-Cotto, but they are interesting and talented nonetheless.
They do seem to be fighting somewhat more like pros this year than in the past, perhaps because they know that the pro scouts from around the world are hovering over them, checkbooks in hand. For some of these kids, a good performance here could be the difference between a life in poverty in an underdeveloped country, and a shot at luxury.
Make sure to check out the featherweight fight between Khedafi Djulkir of France and Paul Fleming of Australia. This took place Monday afternoon, and was shown on CNBC in the U.S. live or near the time it happened. While Teddy Atlas’s comparison of this to Ali vs. Frazier was apocryphal and ridiculous, it was an exciting fight with surprisingly good technique.
I hope they rerun it on the evening CNBC broadcast, starting at 5 PM. If not, hopefully it is available online somewhere.
Frank, of course the boxing is on at midnight. China is 12 hours ahead of EDT, so that is the middle of the day for them. It is HBO which starts their multi-zillion dollar main events near midnight EDT, from the U.S.
Plus, as I said, CNBC reruns most of the fights from 5-8 PM EDT almost every day. That means we have three hours of new boxing, with some of tomorrow’s pro stars, on every day, along with the online content.
To me, then, all this outweighs all the crap.
I wish I could bring myself to care, even a little bit. I'm pessimistic about these fighters' chances of becoming the top pros. Increasingly, Olympians have shown themselves to be pampered prima donnas, ill-prepared to deal with the hard knocks they'll encounter once they've joined the professional ranks. I don't have the wherewithal to follow the general trajectory of early success leading to a nearly inevitable unfurling that tends to be the lot of these guys.
I guess I'll miss most of the Olympic boxing this year. And to think I wrote about a lot of it for the Sweetscience in 2004. It's just not likely I'll stay up past midnight to watch boxing being scored by a computer. Come on, the computer had Marciano knocking out Ali.
Just watched the 125 lb American fighter, Williams. He clearly won, but the scoring was so atrocious, I won't be watching anymore Olympic Boxing.
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