Boxing TV Commentary & Ring Announcer
HERE IS A COLLECTION OF MY BOXING PLAY BY PLAY AND RING ANNOUNCING VIDEOS
This is Round 11 of the IBF Jr. flyweight world title between Brian Viloria of the Hawaii/Philippines and Carlos Tamara of Columbia. The fight was held in Manila Jan. 23, 2010. Viloria had been in control of the fight through 8 rounds until Tamara made a stunning comeback.
From big time word title fights to small town fiesta fight cards in the most remote villages, Ted Lerner has been a familiar face inside the boxing ring for the last 20 plus years in the Asia Pacific region, especially in the Philippines, where he resides. With his booming voice and passion for the sport, Ted brings a unique excitement to the squared circle, with ring announcing that turns even an ordinary fight into a major event. With hundreds of fights on his resume, including dozens of world title fights, it’s no wonder that when promoters want their promotion to be just right, there’s only one person they call.
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Fascinating Ring Announcing Facts about Ted Lerner…
*Ring announced in front of the largest fight crowd in history when over 100,000 people turned up in Manila’s Luneta Park to watch Manny Pacquiao vs. Serikzhan Yeshmagambetov. March 15, 2003.
*Is the only known person to have ever ring announced a cockfight. And not just any cockfight. The World Slasher Cup, the world’s largest cockfight. Held every January at the Araneta Coliseum, Quezon City, Philippines.
FOR BOOKINGS PLEASE CONTACT
TED LERNER AT…
ted@tedlerner.com
“I’ve always loved being in the ring and on the microphone.”
Q & A WITH RING ANNOUNCER TED LERNER
Rob Wiser, managing editor of Casino Player Magazine, America’s number one gaming publiccation, recently sat down with Ted and got his thoughts on his extensive ring announcing career.
Q: How long have you been doing ring announcing?
TL: I first started ring announcing in the late 1980’s in Hawaii. I was a sport talk show radio host and also a big boxing fan. The famous Elorde boxing family from the Philippines used to come over to Honolulu to promote fights and they always hired me to be their ring announcer. I also got into doing ring announcing for professional wrestling in Hawaii for several years, as well as many other kinds of events like bikini contests, car shows, body building contests, you name it. 
I’ve always loved being in the ring and on the microphone. Growing up my brothers and I were heavily into sports and we always used to imitate all the famous announcers. So it was something that I always wanted to get into and I’ve sought out this kind of work. Especially boxing. There’s nothing like the drama and excitement just prior to a big time main event in boxing. So to be able to be inside the ring and to be a part of that is about as fun as it gets.
Q: What makes a good ring announcer?
TL: A good ring announcer and event emcee has to be able to capture the flavor and the essence of the live event. And not just that. A good ring announcer actually helps to build the event, little by little throughout the evening, until you reach the main event, when you take the show into the stratosphere. To me it’s all about the live event in the arena. It’s about timing and capturing and building on the excitement inside the arena. If you can do that, then that drama will translate right through the television and into people’s living rooms.
Q: How important is the job of the ring announcer to a promotion?
TL: The ring announcer at a boxing event is certainly not the most important part of the show. The fighters are the most important part. But the ring announcer plays an integral part in the success or failure of the show. A good emcee can make the event just perfect. A bad emcee can ruin the entire show. I often think ring announcing and emcee work is one of the most under appreciated aspects of sporting events and show business. I’ve run across many promoters and event organizers who don’t even bother to think about hiring a proper emcee. They figure they can hand the microphone off to anyone who wants it, pay him cheap, and that’s that.
Ted Lerner with the main man, Manny Pacquiao. Ted has ring announced many Pacquiao fights going all the way back to the Pacman's early days in boxing.
They’re happy just to save a few bucks. I never understood this way of thinking. Promoters spend big time money on flying in fighters from all over the world, advertising, hiring TV crews and all the equipment. And yet they scrimp on the one guy who is the front man for the entire event: the ring announcer. The ring announcer is the glue that holds the event together. The ring announcer focuses the audience’s attention where it needs to be focused, and encapsulates and delivers the inherent drama in a boxing and/or sporting event. When you do it right, it sets the drama just perfect. When you do it wrong, it can take an expensive promotion right into the toilet.
Q: Do you have a signature line like Michael Buffer’s ‘Let’s get ready to rumble’?
TL: No I don’t. A lot of people tell me that I should have a tag line like ‘Let’s get ready to rumble,’ but, frankly, it’s not my thing. Although Buffer’s certainly made a massive killing with that phrase, a tag line is not me. I like to let my voice and my style do the talking. I’m a bit old school like that. I try to just get the job done and get out of the way and let the boys who are fighting do their thing.
Q: How do you prepare for an event?
TL: One of the important aspects that I bring into the ring is that I know the sport and I do my homework. I’ve been announcing professional boxing for 22 years all over the Pacific region. And I’ve been writing about boxing too as the Philippines correspondent for the Ring Magazine in the US. So I know the game and I know the fighters. And I have a tremendous respect for the fighters. I take it upon myself to get to know the fighters, how to properly pronounce their names, if they have any nicknames, where they are from. I’m a fight fan so I’m genuinely excited about a good fight. Even more so when I’m in the ring and I get to introduce the main event. There is nothing in all of sport quite like a main event boxing showdown between two good fighters. It is just pure adrenalin and excitement. I know what the fans are feeling because I’m also a fan. It’s my job to capture that excitement and take it even higher so they think what they are about to see is the greatest thing on the face of the earth.
Q: What are some of the most memorable fights you’ve done?
TL: I’ve done many world title fights and those are always exciting. Most of these fights took place in the Philippines. Once I did a WBC world title fight in Pattaya, Thailand. They had a Thai announcer standing next to me and we’d trade off our introductions from English to Thai. 
I announced a lot of Manny Pacquiao’s early fights before he started fighting in the US. There were two of Pacquiao’s fights I announced that really stand out. One of my favorites was when he fought Nadel Hussein just outside of Manila. The other one was when Pacquiao fought Serikzhan Yeshmagambetov from Khazakstan in Mania’s Luneta Park. It was free to the public and over 100,000 people watched the fight. It’s a world record for a boxing match that still stands to this day. One of my favorite nights was the WBO Jr. Bantamweight championship in Cebu in 2007. It was an outdoor fight in front of about 20,000 people and the atmosphere was electric. The fight was really close and it came down to a split decision which is always fun to announce.
Some of the most memorable times I’ve had as a ring announcer were for many of the smaller events in some of the most remote places in the Philippines. I’ve been fortunate to literally have seen much of the Philippines through boxing and ring announcing. I’ve been to Mindanao many times to do announcing. In 2008 I was invited by Zander Kahn, the mayor of Jose Abad Santos town, to be his announcer for a fight in his village for the annual town fiesta. We flew to Davao and then had to drive six hours on mostly dirt roads, over several huge mountains, and down through four rivers—literally through the river—before we arrived in the town. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, on the southern most part of eastern Mindanao, a place few foreigners would ever dare travel. They had a small ring set up in the village square and the crowd loved every minute of it. I was treated like a Hollywood celebrity. A few weeks later I did a big fight in Mati, Davao Oriental, which was another town way out there. I think it was the first fight they’ve had in years in Mati and over 5000 people turned out and thousands more were trying to get into the jam packed gym. I remember the mayor of the town telling me about the Muslim and communist rebels that operated in the nearby mountains. She informed me that many of these people would even be attending the fight, albeit in plain clothes. I distinctly remember standing in the ring, commanding the attention of the all these people, thinking to myself as I announced the main event, that everyone in this far away place, good guys and bad guys, is sitting here quiet and listening to me. It was one of those epiphany moments when you tell yourself, ‘Wow, this is an interesting job!’
Q. What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you as a ring announcer?
TL: A lot of times you really have to think on your feet as a ring announcer. I remember a few years back I was the ring announcer at a big fight card in Guam. They hadn’t had much boxing in Guam so when a promoter there decided to put up a card, the fans turned out in full. Many Pacquiao was just starting to get pretty well known and he was on the card for an exhibition. The University of Guam field house was packed with over 3000 people and many of them had been drinking heavily before the fight started and they were clearly ready for some big time fisticuffs. The problem was that the promoter didn’t have his act together and several of the advertised fighters didn’t show up. Of course we couldn’t tell the fans this. It was already 45 minutes past the advertise start time and the crowd was getting restless so I had to go out there and start the show. I remember the first fight of the evening I called out the first boxer from the dressing room. It was just a preliminary fight but the crowd was pumped and they were going nuts as the boxer climbed into the ring. Then I called out the opponent and nobody came out. I announced his name again, and still he didn’t come out. So I’m just standing there looking like a fool. The crowd went from cheering wildly to booing. They started throwing paper beer cups into the ring. I guess they thought it was my fault. So instead of trying to cover for the promoter, I decided I had to save my own hide and I took the side of the fans. I started shouting in the microphone that the guy must be a wimp, a pussy and a coward and that he must be afraid to fight. The crowd loved it and started to laugh and they stopped throwing things at me.
Eventually the promoter found some stiff who came out who ended up getting knocked out in 45 seconds. Naturally the fans started booing and carrying on. Then the same thing happened in the next fight. The promoter didn’t have enough fighters and when I announced the boxers, nobody came out of the dressing room. Eventually they found two guys who could fight and that contest ended in two rounds.
The whole promotion was flopping and I’m standing right in the middle of the action having to manage a totally unruly crowd. I managed to hold it together but it wasn’t easy. I had to become a comedian just the keep the mob at bay. I was so exhausted from carrying the promotion that by the time the fourth fight came around I could barely think straight. Then while I was in the middle of my introduction for that fight I went to introduce the referee, Ferdie Estrella, who happens to be a good friend of mine. But when I went to say his name, I drew a blank. I looked at Ferdie, but I simply couldn’t remember his name. I couldn’t believe it. He was my good friend but I didn’t know his name. I actually had to stop in the middle of my introduction in front of 3000 drunken fans, and walk over to Ferdie and ask him his name. “What?” he said looking at me incredulously. I covered the mike and I leaned in close to him. “I’m drawing a blank,” I said. “Just tell me your name.” To this day Ferdie hasn’t let me hear the last of it.
Q: You must be quite well known after all these years of doing ring announcing in the Philippines.
It’s funny, I’m known all over the Philippines. Boxing is the sport of the common man here, so even the poor of the poor know my name. It’s really bizarre. But at the same time, it’s nice to be known and liked by the common man. It’s a nice safety mechanism. I’m not just any foreigner. I’m the guy in the ring.
TED LERNER…
ASIA PACIFIC’S PREMIERE RING ANNOUNCER AND SHOW HOST
FOR BOOKINGS PLEASE CONTACT TED LERNER AT…
ted@tedlerner.com
