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Michael
Buffer knows how to put an exclamation point on the
anticipation of a major boxing match.
The
veteran ring announcer stepped into the hot Las Vegas
spotlights in March, knowing something the crowd didn’t:
that these precious seconds at the center of attention
could be his last. The man whose voice had made a few
simple words so famous was facing throat surgery. He had
cancer.
So, he
prefaced those trademarked words.
“And
now, for the most famous phrase in boxing,” Buffer said,
then paused. “Let’s get ready to ru-m-m-m-b-l-l-l-l-e!”
The
crowd that filled Mandalay Bay Events Center for a
super-featherweight title bout between Manny Pacquiao
and Juan Manuel Marquez cheered, even if a few wondered
if Buffer’s ego had gone wild.
“It may
be the most famous phrase in boxing, but who in the hell
are you to say so?” an HBO producer text-messaged
Buffer.
HBO
broadcaster Larry Merchant said he sat there wondering
how Joe Louis’s legendary, “You can run, but you can’t
hide,” and Muhammad Ali’s, “Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee,” had dropped to second and third
place, but understood the announcer “was suffering
through a lot of stress at the time.”
Buffer’s
preface came a few days ahead of the surgery, in which
doctors removed a cancerous lymph node attached to his
tonsils. He had told only a few people about the medical
plight that threatened to silence prize-fighting’s
prized voice, including his fiancée, family members and
Merchant’s HBO partners Jim Lampley and Emanuel Steward.
”When I
got the diagnosis, not knowing if I’d ever work again, I
asked to delay the surgery a week so I could do the
Pacquiao fight,” Buffer, 63, said. “They were going to
be cutting into my neck, and even if I got through that,
I knew the radiation can mess with your salivary gland.
I don’t think it’d look good announcing with a
microphone in one hand and a water bottle in the other.”
Looking
into the mirror one day in February, he had been
concerned about the shadow of a lump that emerged on the
left side of his Adam’s apple. He underwent an MRI exam
and biopsy at
USC
Medical Center
to investigate. Buffer answered the telephone in a
Manhattan
hotel room across from Madison Square Garden.
“There
comes a time when you know what’s what,’ Buffer said.
“You still hate to hear the word.…”
Prepared
to announce the heavyweight title fight between Wladimir
Klitchsko and Sultan Ibragimov that February weekend in
New York and in the midst of planning his May 10 wedding
to fiancée Christine Prado (an engagement that began
with a Tonight Show proposal), Buffer was told he had a
squamous cell carcinoma.
It
could’ve been Buffer’s last.
“I’m
sitting there, thinking first about my loved ones,” said
Buffer, who lives in Encino and is the father of two
grown sons. “My fiancee is so happy, sending out
invitations. Then, not knowing what would happen to me.
I knew the radiation could’ve dried me up. For an
announcer, that’s the kiss of death.”
Said
Prado: “It was pretty emotional. He did think that next
fight would be his last.”
Buffer
said he was “getting paperwork together, making out a
will” ahead of the Las Vegas fight.
Then he
learned that his foster father, Ralph Huber, with whom
Buffer was close, died.
“I go
into that fight knowing I had to catch a red-eye
afterward to attend my father’s funeral,” Buffer said.
“I also knew if I didn’t work again, I wanted this to be
a good night, and add something that months later people
could say, ‘Oh, I get it.’”
Buffer
said his copyrighted claim to “Let’s get ready to
rumble!” and his own celebrity has generated $400
million in gross retail sales of video games,
motion-picture appearances, action figures and other
licensing deals. He guards any infringement of his
intellectual property intensely, suing violators.
Added
boxing publicist and former ring announcer Bill Caplan:
“He’s the best-looking ring announcer I’ve ever seen,
and he plays off that. He’s become the standard, and
stands alone like John Wayne did when he was the No. 1
box-office attraction. Even though there are others who
are good, no one’s a close second to Michael.”
Merchant
agreed.
“He’s
made more of that role than anyone,” Merchant said.
“He’s created a mantra that has come to signify ‘big
event.’”
Ring
announcer with Bond flavor
Buffer’s
career started as a longshot. He was working as a model
on the East Coast when his young son complained after
watching a televised fight that the ring announcer
spoiled the drama of a split decision by reading the two
decisive judges’ scores first.
Buffer
agreed. So he sent a head shot and a letter to the
director of entertainment at the Playboy Hotel in
Atlantic City,
suggesting the hotel would be “better served by someone
in the ring who had a suave, James Bond appearance.”
His
timing was perfect. There was dissatisfaction with an
announcer who had rambled so badly that he forced a
Sunday CBS Sports boxing card to delay the beginning of
the network’s top-rated show, 60 Minutes. ”I was
terrible, but I got my foot in the door,” Buffer said.
“I wanted a hook to what I was doing, a ‘Gentlemen,
start your engines…‘to get people into it.’”
“He was
dreadful,” Arum said. “He didn’t know the boxers, and
needed a lot of work. But he had a great presence and
really worked at it. He knew he just needed a
catchphrase.”
Buffer
finally recalled Ali and his former cornerman Bundini
Brown hyping fights with sayings such as, “Rumble, young
man, rumble.” He turned that into “Let’s get ready to
rumble! Twelve rounds of boxing!” but was saying it too
quickly and lacked drama.
At an
after-party of a fight at the Reseda Country Club in
1986, Buffer was chatting with dinner-club singer Jody
Berry, who often attended fights.
Buffer said
Berry
offered this advice: “People want to hear, ‘Let’s get
ready to rumble!’ I know it! So after you say it,
shut…up!”
“As I
started using it in [Mike] Tyson fights, it got real
big.”
He ‘gets
roller coaster going’
He
learned to capture the spectacle, and has seen an aged
George Foreman upset Michael Moorer, watched the classic
toe-to-toe battle of Roberto Duran-Iran Barkley, and
Oscar de la Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year.
“It gets
you,” said Buffer, who worked Saturday’s fight at Home
Depot Center between Oscar de la Hoya and Steve Forbes.
“I would imagine the only thing that rivals the two guys
walking in before a major fight is seeing Ohio State or
USC’s football team run out before their big games. The
crowd goes ballistic.”
Ring
announcer Lupe Contreras puts it best.
“That
moment leading up to the fight is like a slow climb up a
roller coaster,” she said. “Your role is to stir the
crowd that’s ready to go into a frenzy. Michael spiced
it up 100 notches from what it was before. He added that
flair, and he gets that roller coaster going down the
first hill.”
Postsurgery, Buffer said, “The first thing I did was
wake up, which was nice, and then I talked. I heard my
voice. It was perfect, not even raspy.” |
