Al Bernstein: Who Will Be Boxing’s Next Superstar, Where Olympic Boxing Went Wrong and How to Keep Boxing Interesting After 35 Years of Coverage

Exclusive Interview by Jesse “New School” Wright

Photo Copyright Ringside Report (Debbie “D2” Edwards Producer of The “Bad” Brad Berkwitt Show with Al)

“Every single boxer deserves respect. Because to step in the ring, for those of us who even boxed as amateurs, you know what it’s like to just step in the ring and you know somebody’s gonna punch you. So it takes a certain courage, it takes a certain fortitude, especially to be a professional boxer.” —Al Bernstein

He is the voice of Showtime boxing and one of the most senior play by play guys in boxing today. He’s seen everything there is to see in the sport. Although he maintains an air of professionalism, Bernstein still gives straight answers to straight questions. He’s shockingly unbiased in all of his responses and doesn’t play favorites when it comes to saying what’s wrong in boxing and who the best is in the game. There isn’t a better brain to pick than Al Bernstein’s.

JW: You’ve been covering boxing for 30 years.

35 actually…..

JW: Does boxing ever get old to you?

That’s a good question. I feel it never gets old to me as far as the broadcasting part and doing the shows. I love doing television and I love the other things that attended with it. So that part’s always new and always exciting. There have been times in my career, I will contest, when I was so focused on boxing, I really needed to diversify. When those times came, I’ve done that. I did an all sports based show with NESPN, an ESPN affiliate here. I did work for Sports Center, covering other sports such as baseball and other things. I’ve done a lot of music performing. The first thing I did was back in the day, I did a musical show at Caesar’s, and in fact I’m getting back to doing that now. The key is to diversify so it doesn’t feel stale as that does happen when you solely focus on one sport for so long.

JW: Next weekend there are quite a few fights going on. Frampton and Quigg should be really exciting, but on HBO, Terence Crawford is fighting Lundy. No offense to either of them, but that might not be an interesting fight. Are there ever times where your assignment is to cover a fight, but to you it’s not necessarily a fight that you want to cover?

Well, first of all, it’s your job, so you have to approach every job with the same enthusiasm. Now obviously, not all things are created equal. So some fights you’re looking ahead to them, a good example is Thurman and Porter (note as of the posting of this interview, the fight is postponed because Thurman was injured in a car accident), obviously everybody’s been looking forward to that for forever. Now here’s the thing about that, and this is really true, and this last year has pointed that out. There have been five or six fights this last year: Glowacki vs. Huck, Fonfara vs. Cleverly, and three or four other fights like that where you look at them and think, hmm, okay, probably not. Then they turn out being spectacular fights, and I’ve been involved in many of those.

A perfect example is the Leo Santa Cruz vs. Kiko Martinez fight. Now on paper, Kiko Martinez lost to Frampton twice although he went the distance, and he lost to Quigg and that was by knockout, now he’s going to fight Santa Cruz. So you think well, that means Santa Cruz is gonna dominate him. But there are a couple things here. Number one, Santa Cruz doesn’t punch like Frampton or Quigg. He’s a different kind of fighter. Martinez is also only 29, he’s facing probably his last title opportunity. So how motivated will he be, and we know he’s a quality fighter. So he’s easy to discount, but I’ve seen so many fights like this that you have a preconceived notion of, and then it doesn’t go according to plan. So no, I try very hard not to go in to fights with a feeling of less than anticipation.

And listen, there are some fights I do that you look at it and think, I don’t think this can work out, and it doesn’t. I don’t think it happens nearly as often as we think it happens in boxing. I think we notice the ones that are like that; they look like a mismatch, they end up being a mismatch, and everyone walks away dissatisfied.

JW: You’ve been covering it for 35 years, so you’ve probably seen every evolution that’s taken place in modern day boxing. As far as the technical aspects, have you noticed that anything’s changed in the sport over the years?

You know, everybody fights to their own strengths, so the basics of course are the same. The only way you can say that is that certain types of fighters have become more prevalent. Actually, I have to scratch my brain to think about that, so I don’t think that’s true. So I think what we have now is what we’ve had forever in boxing; we have fighters who fight to their strengths or alter it to utilize their boxing skills a little more or try to be more aggressive. So what we see now are things that we’ve seen before in boxing, just by different people. I can’t say that the sport has evolved in too many ways, because there aren’t many ways for it to evolve.

Other sports, especially football, can evolve in a lot of different ways because it involves a lot of people, there’s trickery, there’s a lot of different formations, players get bigger. But here, the weight divisions stay the same, the rules haven’t changed effectively and MMA is a perfect example. MMA has evolved because it started a certain way not very long ago, and it’s still in the evolutionary process and it has all those disciplines. It has many more disciplines than boxing. You can kick, there’s submission, there’s Jiu Jitsu, but boxing as a sport is still what it was. And that’s part of the charm of boxing. We know what it is, but still with that, we get a lot of surprises.

JW: As far as evolution goes, you were covering Olympic boxing during the glory years in the 90’s, but since then, it seems that it’s lost some of its luster. Would you say that it’s lost its luster and if so, what do you think it’s missing now that was once there during the glory days?

Now that would be the slight contradiction to what I said, because amateur boxing has changed in some respects, because it’s causing people to fight differently than they fought before, the scoring system has been tinkered with on many occasions, and amateur boxing is a sport that has had a hard time figuring out what it’s supposed to be. Because of that, we have seen a series of changes in it and that’s bred confusion for the participants, the people who coach it and even the people who cover it.

Now they’re trying to go a little bit old school with the current concerns for safety. In America certainly, Olympic boxing has taken a hit. The amateur boxing program in America, the purpose of it is not to win championships or Gold Medals, it’s there to help kids. In my mind, the American boxing program has been a huge success, but clearly we have not faired well in the international scene both at the Olympics and the world championships, and we focus on that. That’s where people can look at it and measure achievements.

And listen, I covered the 96 Olympics, and that was the start of major networks not covering boxing. I did the 92 Olympics as you recall, Oscar De La Hoya, his story was presented, and it’s not surprising to me by the way, that he and Floyd Mayweather, JR. are the last two superstars in the sport. Well Mayweather, JR. made it there a little bit differently. Ironically, Mayweather, JR. won a Bronze Medal and didn’t get a lot of attention, but was able to get there through different means. But De La Hoya was the last superstar to make it through the Olympics, because of how his story was told at that Olympics. In 96 NBC showed almost nothing on boxing. When Floyd beat a Cuban, for the first time a Cuban hadn’t been beaten in 20 something years by an American, it didn’t even get 20 seconds of highlights on the late show or anything. That was tough. Now NBC’s coverage has included other outlets that have shown the boxing, but still not in primetime on the over the air networks. So that’s a lot of the reason why amateur boxing and Olympic boxing has suffered in terms of its exposure.

JW: I know there was talk about bringing professional boxers in to the Olympics.

I know in basketball it’s been done. I can’t imagine it happening in boxing because boxing is a different kind of sport. I don’t know that boxers would risk it for no money at all. Even in basketball we see concerns on their part where sometimes they’re concerned about injury and risking it. So I couldn’t imagine it happening in boxing.

JW: What’s the difference between Al Bernstein covering a fight live, and Al Bernstein watching a fight at home on the couch?

Me covering live, I’m very focused, I’m just doing what I’m suppose to do. If I’m sitting at home watching on the couch, of course I can be a fan, which I frequently do, and I’ll do what fans do. You know, I’ll go oh why did he do that!? My wife will laugh if she’s watching with me, which she doesn’t very often, but she’ll still laugh, because I’ll say something about what’s going on and she’ll go oh, you’re giving me color. I will react like a fan. I’ll be engaged, and you know the funny thing is, because I have deliberately, you know, I can’t be fan of any fighter. I appreciate a lot of fighters, and maybe get a kick out of them, and maybe in my living room, I don’t even want to say cheer for someone, but maybe encourage someone.

But because of that, the irony is that, usually when somebody watches boxing, they have somebody to cheer for, don’t they? Not always, because it’s not like me watching the Cubs play somebody, but it’s like, when you go to a fight you always got to decide you’re for somebody. You know, it’s like Thurman and Porter, there aren’t many fans that dislike either of them, but while they’re getting ready for the fight and getting ready to watch, they’re starting to develop a rooting interest. I’m really devoid of that to a great extent when I’m watching a fight. So I’m really kind of watching from a pure standpoint because I work hard at never developing that. So I’m watching the fight from a different standpoint, but I’m still a fan.

JW: You watch at home, I’m sure you watch HBO and see you’re counterpart Jim Lampley. What are the differences between Jim Lampley and Al Bernstein?

Well he does Play by Play for one thing, now I’ve done a lot of play by play, but I’m an analyst so we have a different role. Look, HBO does boxing different than Showtime, literally it’s a whole different philosophy. I don’t mind saying this because it’s just a fact: they view it as a discussion while the fight’s going on. I mean that’s truly the way they do it. They have three announcers who are, for the most part discussing the fight. Jim will do a certain amount of informational or play by play, but for the most part they view it as a discussion during the fight.

We view it as calling the fight. So if you listen, it’s a very different approach. Our focus is almost always directed on what’s happening in the ring, almost 90% of the time. Now there will be anecdotal information given like Mauro and myself, not so much Paulie. We will give anecdotal information about the fighters, whether it’s historical, or about them, and Jim will do that on their broadcast as well. Other than that, we have a different approach as we are focused on exactly what’s going on in the ring, while they’re more big picture.

JW: During the MayPac fight, I thought that was the most bizarre thing, because you have the HBO team and the Showtime team working together in conjunction. How did you guys make that work and what was that experience like?

Showtime led the production to an extent, David Dinkins our producer produced it. But for the most part, it went very smoothly. Everybody was very kind with each other and everybody was very cordial, it was good. I was the one at ringside with Roy and Jim and I tried to do what I do within the confines of what they do, and for the most part I thought we actually got pretty good reviews for the broadcast, so I assume it worked. Even in that, you can see that there might be a slightly different approach. The idea from the beginning was to make a good broadcast. The one thing that nobody wanted to do was be responsible for that not being a good broadcast and I think starting with the weigh in all the way through everything we did, I think from both sides we were all very conscious of trying to make sure even though the behind the scenes preparations are done differently by the two entities, we made sure that the show wasn’t going to suffer because of that.

JW: Do you think it’s likely that that’ll be repeated again where guys can cross those network lines? The one I’m thinking of is Kovalev vs. Stevenson.

That’s been floated out there and talked about. For it to happen again, it’s gonna have to be something so huge. That one of course was the biggest Pay-Per-View ever. It was so monetarily lucrative that it motivated both entities to do that. I don’t know if Kovalev vs. Stevenson is in that category. As we see fighters get entrenched with certain networks, and it’s only been done twice in life. We saw it with Tyson vs. Lewis of course and it was done with Pacquiao vs. Mayweather, and those were two gargantuan fights that were gonna produce huge revenue.

JW: A lot of guys are on the right side of the respective lines right now where the biggest fights can be made.

I think you can make the argument that there are cross network fights to be made, but they’re not of the magnitude that those were. The Kovalev vs. Stevenson fight is the prime example of that. I was gonna say you could make the case with Golovkin, but there isn’t really anybody on the Showtime side for him.

JW: Who would you put on your short list as who is the biggest contender in boxing right now, and conversely who is the biggest pretender?

What do you mean contender?

JW: In the post Floyd Mayweather, JR. era, who would you say is the most talented fighter?

The most talented is probably Roman Gonzalez, but because of his weight class, he’s probably not going to be the best known of all fighters. I mean, if the question you’re asking is who looks like they can become the next superstar of boxing, that’s a very tough question, because it takes a lot to be… boxing isn’t covered by the mainstream media like it was obviously. Breaking out as a superstar, right now the only person who people think of in that way is Canelo, and he’s not really at that level either because limitations in his fan base. Gennady Golovkin fighting David Lemieux, I thought that was gonna vault him a little bit, but the Pay-Per-View numbers were not good, and it didn’t do much to raise his profile fanatically.

There are a lot of really good fighters around like the Keith Thurman’s of the world, Deontay Wilder the first heavyweight champion from the United States to have a portion of it. He could be a fighter if he could beat a Tyson Fury or Wladimir Klitschko, could be put in to the consciousness of the casual sports fan, not just a boxing fan. That’s the question: what fighters that exist now could cross over to be known by the casual sports fan in the United States. That’s a tricky question and I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know which ones can do that.

JW: On the other end of that, who do you think is getting a lot of publicity, but isn’t as good as we might think they are?

That’s a tough one. Well the obvious answer to that probably at some point is Adrien Broner because he still hasn’t proved himself and he’s had failures along the way. So we don’t know yet. It’s not even that he isn’t all that. This late in his career we see flashes of him being who people think he can be, but then he falls back a step every time he goes forward a step.

JW: If you were to have one quote to leave your fans with, what quote do you live by?

You mean for what I do, or just in general?

JW: Just in general.

My quote would be that every single boxer deserves respect. Because to step in the ring, for those of us who even boxed as amateurs, you know what it’s like to just step in the ring and you know somebody’s gonna punch you. So it takes a certain courage, it takes a certain fortitude, especially to be a professional boxer. My statement would simply be that the words tomato can and bum don’t exist in my vocabulary, there is no such thing. Yeah, some fighters may come not prepared to fight as well as we’d like, some may not have ability, but I think any fighter that steps in the ring deserves respect.

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