Jim Lampley Barely Holds It Together While Closing HBO Broadcast With Muhammad Ali Remembrance

Jim Lampley closed last night’s live boxing telecast with a final word on what Muhammad Ali meant to him—and the world—with an observation about The Greatest that choked up the longtime HBO announcer.

“The ‘60s were a decade which, in many ways, belonged to Muhammad Ali,” Lamps noted, before asking the audience to consider how many other athletes in the world would give up three years in their prime for a sociopolitical principle.

That closed the broadcast; earlier HBO aired its own retrospective on Ali which was itself excellent:

[HBO]