Christian Mbilli KOs Maciej Sulecki, and I survive my Play-by-Play debut

QUEBEC CITY — I made my debut as a play-by-play broadcaster on Friday night, without the benefit of tuneup fights to sharpen my skills, and no chance to fatten my record on a series of washed-up former champs. Instead I headed straight into a world title showdown — this one pitting Christian Mbilli against Maciej Sulecki. At stake were the WBC interim championship at super-middleweight, and a big ticket to the Canelo Alvarez Sweepstakes.

As for the fight itself, Mbilli, born in Cameroon, developed in Paris, and based in Montreal, delivered a quick, definitive, message-sending finish. He’s a smart pressure fighter, and a tactical power puncher. A left hook to the body and an uppercut to the chin, and bonne nuit.

A short outing for Mbilli, who signalled to the boxing world that there’s basically nowhere else for him to go in the super-middleweight division. Showbiz aside, marketing aside, if you’re looking for somebody who has earned the right to fight the division’s best, and who would create fireworks against Canelo or anyone else, you’ve found him. His name is Christian Mbilli.

And a long night for me — five hours on the air, in a new role, navigating plot-twists and last second changes in plans, lineups and language. I left Centre Vidéotron with a raspy voice, and a new respect for play-by-play professionals.

How did I wind up there?

It’s simple.

Usually I work these Eye of The Tiger Management fights alongside play-by-play man Corey Erdman, who is one of the best, and certainly the busiest, broadcaster in the boxing business. He’s in a different city literally every weekend, racking up airline points and on-air reps, and building his brand as boxing’s go-to commentator.

But then he messed around and caught a bad cold, which had him exhausted, and sounding, in his words, like Macho Man Savage. A wonderful development if he were cutting a 90-second promo about Ricky Steamboat’s cup of coffee in the big time, but the opposite of ideal if you’re about to spend an entire evening on the microphone.

So the folks at Punching Grace bumped me up to play by play, and sent Matt Casavant, who usually serves as the analyst on their French-language broadcasts, over to the English side. I tried to fill Corey’s shoes, and Matt more than filled mine.

Because here’s the thing about working with Corey:

He’s very very very very very very good. Sharing a broadcast booth with him teaches you all kinds of lessons about the best way to call a fight. You can, for example, simply allow the fight to breathe instead of feeling obligated to talk over every second of the action. And you learn that narrating every single punch and slip and parry matters less than telling a textured story of a boxing match and the athletes in it. Your main goal is to invite viewers to experience the event with you.

But all of that still depends on staying tuned in to the action in front of you.

Early in the first round of Jhon Orobio’s emphatic win over Zsolt Osadan, I was set to launch into an anecdote about how Orobio and former light-heavyweight champ Eleider Alvarez, two Colombians transplanted to Montreal, had something else in common.

They’re both barbers.

But then a straight right hand from Orobio sent Osadan to the canvas, so I scrapped that note mid-sentence to focus instead on their shared punching power.

The crookedest curve ball came about an hour later, when, facing a 5-minute gap in the broadcast, and having already interviewed every English speaker available, we welcomed Orobio to our broadcast station. He doesn’t speak English, and we both speak a “navigate daily tasks” level of French. It’s functional and sort of conversational, but certainly not ready for a live interview on an international broadcast.

So we did the interview in Spanish, after I warned the worldwide audience not to expect professional level translation.

So yes, we got through it, speaking with Orobio in Spanish, a director on my headset in English peppered with French.

I finished with a deeper appreciation for full-time play-by-play people, who, I now know, can section off part of their brains to deal with directors while they stickhandle through on-air interviews. It’s an ability but it’s also a skill. Ideally you hone it on low-wattage broadcasts nobody watches. Any errors you commit may as well not exist.

But me?

I had to prove it on a moment’s notice.

On the air.

Live.

And I made it through. Add two more skills to my LinkedIn profile.

Next time, though, my Spanish will be sharper.

Promise.

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