12/9/2023 0 Comments Boxing commentator![]() ![]() And even though he hasn’t attended a fight for a couple of years because of the pandemic, he intends to go again when it is feasible. He still watches boxing from his home in Santa Monica. Merchant was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2009.Īlthough, Merchant, now 91, no longer works for HBO, he is remarkably spry and sharp for a man of his years. My boss, Seth Abraham, who I still communicate with on a weekly basis, he lives in New York, would say to me, ‘You make my job harder, but keep doing what you do.’ I was very lucky to have television executives like that because nobody wants to deal with a character like me.” “As a columnist, I was somewhat provocative from time to time and they wanted someone to tell it like it is and provoke fighters with contracts with HBO and promoters and managers and so forth. “I was very fortunate that I had this great boss – he wanted to be me,” quipped Merchant. In 1978, Merchant began working for HBO, where he enjoyed a hugely successful career, one he looks back on fondly. ![]() I did some part-time television work when cable television happened and they were looking for newspaper men to be television men. “I came to California and met my second wife. “I had written a book, that was bought by a producer and they were trying to make a movie out of it,” he said. However, Merchant decided he needed a new challenge and left the print media in 1976. “That’s where I covered these fights, Ali, Liston and so on.” “I covered a lot of big fights in that time frame,” he said. I saw some pretty good fighters in that time.”Īll told, Merchant worked for the Philadelphia Daily News, New York Post, Associated Press and as the sports editor for a smaller newspaper in Wilmington, North Carolina. “There were so many fighters that they had to separate which ones were going to become pros in what they call the gym wars between fighters. “Philadelphia was a great fight town,” he explained. Upon returning to civilian life, Merchant based himself in Philadelphia where he spent 10-years as a columnist. I just covered them naturally wherever I was.” “The big games in America at the time were baseball and boxing. “That’s where I covered my first fights, every division had boxing teams and I covered some of those fights. “I wound up working as a sports writer for the Stars and Stripes in Germany and Europe,” he recalled, referring to the US military newspaper. He spent two years in the Army and was based in Germany for one of those years. Merchant was then drafted into the Army to serve during the Korean war. “I got injured in football and I transferred into Journalism as my major and that’s how it started.” I was on the team for two years as what I call a last string half back. “Then I went to the University of Oklahoma, in part because I thought I could play football there. “I was a month short of my 17th birthday when I graduated high-school,” he said. I keep telling people that was because he didn’t want me to stay up too late.”Īs a youngster he enjoyed playing games with his friends and was a good student in school. I listened to the fight and Joe Louis knocked Schmeling out in the first round. It had political undertones because of the German’s invading Czechoslovakia and about to start the World War and whether or not Schmeling was connected or not to Hitler or the Nazi’s, he was branded in that way and Joe Louis had lost to Schmeling a couple of years earlier and represented American power and combativeness. “The first big fight I was ever involved in was when I was 7 years old, my father told me I could stay up and listen to the rematch of Louis and Schmeling. It was during those years that Merchant became interested in boxing. We didn’t have to scrap for food or anything like that.” “My mother was a great example of early feminism, she was always practicing shorthand and working on a typewriter and became a legal secretary. ![]()
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