“Television rarely covers sports with aggressive, independent reporting. After all, television is in business with the various professional sports leagues and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It pays vast sums for the rights to broadcast the games. Serious reporting runs counter to what TV viewers – to say nothing of advertisers – are thought to want: a three-hour spectacle, the intricate fun and undeniable beauty of a well-played game, a mental vacation from life’s uglier precincts. It’s nearly impossible to imagine someone on the air who is, at once, an impressario, a circus barker, an analyst, and a serious journalist. Only one person in the television era managed to do it, and he became a national figure. His name was Howard Cosell.”
– David Remnick,
The New Yorker, Nov. 28, 2011
Cosell, whose career became entwined with that of Ali and who brought millions of television viewers to ABC’s Wide World of Sports, walked away from boxing after witnessing a brutal mismatch between heavyweight champion Larry Holmes and challenger/punching bag Randall “Tex” Cobb.
At one point in the fight, Holmes landed 26 consecutive unanswered blows. The fight was not stopped. Cosell referred to the bout as “an unholy mess.”
Cosell had covered boxing for ABC for nearly 25 years. If his stint on Monday Night Football made Cosell a star, it was boxing that had launched his career.