Gerrie Coetzee/televised & filmed fights(1974-1997)

[Caractacus]

ABC Sunday afternoon June.24.1979

Live from Monaco (France)

Live from Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas Nevada (USA)

[Caractacus]

wel Sugar Ray Lleonard was not going to fight a preliminary to a Leon Spinks fight.
also it says "Live from Monaco" there in the Spinks fight.
The fight most likely started 10 pm in Monaco (which is 7 hours ahead of Mountain time)

[Caractacus]

hey Joe Kelly,

I think you just may have came home late in the afternoon and missed the Coetzee vrs Spinks
at the beginning as it only lasted one round (scheduled for 10 rounds)
Sugar Ray Leonard vrs Chavarini was scheduled for 10 rounds but only went 5 rounds
so they(ABC-Sports) had a lot of time and probably had to re-run the Spinks fight several times
during the 2 hour broad-cast.

[Caractacus]

yeah, Leonard vts Chavironi was shown live on ABC but it only lasted 5 rounds
( scheduled for 10) that is when they re-played Spinks vrs Coetzee beamed live from Monaco from about an hour earlier
in the show.
The reason I probaly did not stick around to watch the Leonard fight was because I figured Chavaroni had a "Snowballs' cahnce in H*ll In winning the fight and it was a beatuful day in June and I wanted to go somewhere not be stuck inside watching TV.

[sweetsci]

The Coetzee-Spinks and Leonard-Chiaveroni were shown on different networks, NBC and ABC respectively.

[Caractacus]

was wondering why Ken Norton there at ringside in Monaco was working for ABC and not NBC for that fight.
were they shown live at the same time ?
No wonder I didn't watch the Leonard fight.
I wonder which got the higher ratings.
I would guess the Leon Spinks fight.
also what did NBC show for the time filler for the rest of the hour ?

[sweetsci]

I don’t know if they were shown at the same time or not. If the Coetzee - Spinks fight was tape-delayed, it might depend on your time zone. I was in California and the difference there is nine hours from Monaco. Even U.S. fights on the weekend sports anthology shows were sometimes tape delayed on the west coast. I had to be careful not to listen to radio news because they might report the result of a fight. That’s how I found out that Coetzee shockingly kayoed Spinks in one. It didn’t matter in my case because we didn’t have an NBC station. I do remember watching the Leonard fight on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

As for what NBC showed due to the quick ending in the Spinks fight, since it was shown on an anthology show (Sportsworld?), they may have shown any number of things: cliff diving, ice skating, or whatever.

I miss the days of top quality fights airing on Saturday and Sunday afternoons on network tv.

[Caractacus]

[Caractacus]

-2022-.

[Riddick Bowie]

Coetzee speaks well and looks solid. Remarkably preserved compared to his opponents.

Schutte, Tate, Spinks, LeDoux, Ward, Dokes, Page - dead.

Weaver, Tillis - almost unintelligible.

Bruno - pretty serious mental problems.

Only Thomas and Snipes seem in good nick, and the latter had to battle cancer (which he fortunately seems to have beaten)

How's Kallie Knoetze doing I wonder?

[Bodyshot3]

Great find Caractacus and we need more stuff like this

Coetzee is ultimately way more important beyond the fights he won and lost - he was a decent, good guy - when Afrikaners were almost untouchables/villains because they drove Apartheid.

It took a special guy - who was assuredly also a proud Afrikaner - to cross the divide and be acceptable to everyone.

I can always recall Bruno - not always articulate - putting a mark in the sand and saying he had no problem fighting Coetzee because Gerrie had always been a fighter first and a gentleman.

When I lived in South Africa for a year - all the kids whether white, black or coloured - knew and likes Coetzee. He was someone all of South Africa could agree upon and therefore was important.

[Caractacus]

I remember I always looked forward to watching Gerrie Coetzee fighting on TV back in the 1980's.

[Caractacus]