By CompuBox
Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century. A generation. If a person is granted his promised three score and 10 years, it takes up more than one-third of his life span and if he is fortunate the next 25 years will prove to be the most productive.
With any luck, that will be the fate enjoyed by CompuBox.
Anyone who has watched boxing over the past 25 years has no doubt seen the numbers flash on their TV screens after virtually every round. In their own way the figures tell the story of a fight: Who is throwing and landing more punches? Whose jab has been more successful? How many body punches and power shots have landed? How effectively are the fighters avoiding the incoming fire? The data, while voluminous, helps amplify what the viewer is already watching and much more often than not it serves as a barometer in terms of who is winning and losing – as well as why.
This is why CompuBox is, has been, and will continue to be, the gold standard in terms of compiling and analyzing boxing statistics. The brand is known and respected worldwide and while there have been imitators none have achieved the level of recognition enjoyed by CompuBox.
It has been said that the best ideas are the simplest ones and in 1985, Bob Canobbio and co-founder Logan Hobson, who left the company in 2003, hatched one of their own.
“We got the idea after seeing a demo of a stat-driven program for another sport,” Canobbio said. “We immediately thought a similar application could be used for boxing, which had no stats outside of tale of the tape, wins, losses, knockouts, etc. So we had a program written by Bob Orf, a programmer with whom I played softball on Long Island, and we did some off-TV fights to work the bugs out. We taped a couple of smaller shows and presented them to HBO, where I had worked as a freelance researcher on some of their series such as ‘Boxing’s Best.’ This was how I knew Ross Greenburg, who was then a producer, but would become executive producer of HBO Sports. He liked what he saw so much that he bought it on the spot. So we were in business.”
The CompuBox program – which was dubbed “PunchStat” by HBO – made its network debut on February 16, 1985 when WBA lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble met Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini for the second time. “PunchStat” couldn’t have asked for a better product launch because the bout featured tremendous back-and-forth action, a highly-charged crowd and a split decision that inspired howls of protest. What better way to settle – or perhaps exacerbate – arguments than with actual punch figures?
“Bramble threw 880 punches and landed nearly 50 percent while Mancini was much busier as he threw more than 1,400 punches but landed less than 30 percent,” Canobbio recalled. “The crowd was all for Mancini and many of them thought he won because he threw more punches, but the figures showed Bramble was more effective. The numbers got a good ride from the beginning.”
That fortuitous jump start allowed CompuBox to gain in stature and as a result the company established long-term relationships with HBO and ESPN, along with appearances on various other programs and pay-per-views. CompuBox indirectly broke into the national mainstream when Johnny Carson cited a CompuBox stat to Marvelous Marvin Hagler during a “Tonight Show” appearance following Hagler’s destruction of Thomas Hearns.
“Marvin, you threw 82 punches in the (first) round and landed 50,” Carson marveled. “No jabs. Man, you really meant business didn’t you?” At this Hagler smiled and nodded.
In the early years Canobbio and Hobson handled all the shows but the explosion of assignments eventually got to the point where they couldn’t handle the workload by themselves. Over the years, people from a variety of boxing-related backgrounds “worked the keys” at ringside. They include writers Joe Carnicelli and Dave Raffo, former fighters Genaro Hernandez, Saul Avelar, Dennis Allen and Shelby Pudwill, writer/historian/researcher Lee Groves, precocious jack-of-all-trades Aris Pina, sports enthusiast Jason Griggs and video collector/musician Andy Kasprzak. Also manning the CompuBox keys as well as designing and maintaining the CompuBoxonline.com website is Nic Canobbio, Bob’s son. Each brought their own perspective to the assignments but the results were thankfully always the same.
Over the past quarter-century CompuBox has been present at sites around the world. Besides working more than 40 states in the U.S., company punch-counters have traveled to Canada, England, Wales, Germany, Japan, Puerto Rico and South Korea and were right there as boxing history was made.
Besides the explosive Hagler-Hearns superfight, the early years were highlighted by the controversial Leonard-Hagler megamatch, Donald Curry’s wipeout of Milton McCrory in their long awaited welterweight unification, Hector Camacho’s brilliance against Jose Luis Ramirez, the waning days of Larry Holmes’ magnificent reign, and the rise and fall of Mike Tyson. Those years also saw the emergence of Julio Cesar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker and Meldrick Taylor as impact fighters as well as the improbable return of George Foreman, whose odyssey later reached a crescendo the moment a vintage right hand put Michael Moorer down and out.
CompuBox provided its services at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, but the fight that is most remembered was the 156-pound final that saw Roy Jones denied his rightful gold medal against hometown hero Park Si Hun. According to CompuBox – dubbed “Count-A-Punch” by NBC, Jones out-landed Park 86-32, which served to confirm what everyone (except the majority of the judges) saw.
The passage of time had no bearing on the endless stream of events for which CompuBox was present. The tension leading up to the Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight was as unforgettable as the brutality of “Iron Mike’s” subsequent assault.
The first Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield fight, whose draw verdict remains among the most scandalous in boxing history, generated plenty of publicity for CompuBox – but for all the wrong reasons. The fight stats only stirred the debate more; in fact the numbers were prominently displayed on enlarged poster at one of the New York State Commission hearings about the fight.
The mid-1990s saw the pace pick up even more as HBO added more shows and the association with ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing series reached a peak in terms of activity. Speaking of activity, there were a select group of fighters who kept CompuBox operators’ fingers burning like Ray Oliveira, Zack Padilla, Manuel Medina, Antonio Margarito, Philip Holiday, Paul Williams, Joe Calzaghe, Wayne McCullough, Oscar Larios, Daniel Zaragoza, Leonard Dorin, Paulie Ayala, Vassiliy Jirov, Kelly Pavlik and Daniel Zaragoza.
Over the years, CompuBox has traveled to unique venues that included an outdoor cow pasture in Gardnerville, Nevada, a hockey arena in Indianapolis and a soccer pitch in Wales. Excessive heat, bone-chilling cold, torrential downpours and gale-force winds have accompanied outdoor contests while indoor fights presented their own problems.
“We did one show at a hockey arena in Indianapolis that was like a sauna,” Carnicelli said in 2003. “We were pouring sweat when a mini-riot broke out and some jerks started throwing coffee, beer and soda. We got splattered and needless to say, we didn’t smell too well by the end of the show.”
“We’re rehearsing before the fight and all of a sudden we hear this roar from the crowd,” Canobbio recalled. “It was ‘Smokin’ Joe Frazier working his way to ringside and he stands right in front of me. Well, we’re doing a rehearsal and he has this big cowboy hat on. So, I’m trying to look around him and meanwhile I’m saying to myself ‘this is Smokin’ Joe Frazier and somebody’s got to tell him to get out of the way.’ So finally, I waited until the round was over and I tapped on the shoulder and said, ‘Joe, we’re doing a rehearsal on this fight. Could you please slide over a little bit?’ And of course, he got out of the way, but it was an anxious moment.”
CompuBox operators have also been the midst of bizarre and sometimes scary circumstances. The chaos that swept through Madison Square Garden during the first Riddick Bowe-Andrew Golota fight was frightening while the sight of Hasim Rahman falling out of the ring in his first meeting with Oleg Maskaev was unexpected to say the least. Vinny Pazienza’s blood flow was so copious during one fight that it ruined one of the company’s computers.
But along with the bad was plenty of good – and sometimes great. Marco Antonio Barrera’s savage war with Kennedy McKinney kicked off HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” series and Arturo Gatti managed the impossible by providing even more thrills in the next installment against Wilson Rodriguez. The man known as “Thunder” provided a highlight reel so long it could have been a double feature. The three fights with Micky Ward would have been enough for most fighters, but he gave us so much more than that. Even in defeat he was spectacular as his bout with Angel Manfredy and two wars with Ivan Robinson can attest.
During that era CompuBox was there to chronicle the exploits of Roy Jones Jr., Lennox Lewis, James Toney, Riddick Bowe, Kevin Kelley, Oscar de la Hoya, Evander Holyfield, Marco Antonio Barrera, Ike Quartey, Erik Morales and Naseem Hamed. CompuBox also tracked fights involving a slew of young heavyweights that would make an impact in the future such as David Tua, Hasim Rahman, John Ruiz, Oleg Maskaev, Chris Byrd, Kirk Johnson, Andrew Golota, Shannon Briggs and Michael Grant.
The company also worked fights in that slice of time with fighters who still carry plenty of clout today such as Wladimir Klitschko as well as Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather Jr. – who, by the way, are scheduled to meet May 1.
The transition from the 1900s to the 2000s did little to deter the assembly line of landmark fights. The trilogies between Barrera and Morales, the titanic slugfest between Felix Trinidad and Fernando Vargas, the dramatic and sometimes gory Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko bout and volume-punching festivals like Leonard Dorin-Raul Balbi, Zack Padilla-Carlos “Bolillo” Gonzalez and Micky Ward-Emanuel Augustus. There was the shocking upset pulled by Hasim Rahman over Lennox Lewis in South Africa and Lewis’ unequivocal reply in the rematch. “Little Floyd” continued to roll to the point where he turned into “Money,” both in the ring and in the bank.
A new superstar emerged from the Pacific Rim as Manny Pacquiao shocked the world with a dominant 11th round TKO of Barrera, then proceeded to work his way through the pound-for-pound ranks and came out as a transcendent superstar. CompuBox was there at the beginning when he blasted out Lehlohonolo Ledwaba to win his second divisional title and when he won his seventh with a breathtaking TKO of Miguel Cotto.
As Pacquiao pursues what may be the final chapters of a Hall of Fame career, CompuBox remains a presence at ringside as new stars like Juan Manuel Lopez, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Andre Berto and Alfredo Angulo seek to advance further. Meanwhile, others like Chris Arreola, Victor Ortiz, Lucian Bute, Chad Dawson, Antonio Escalante, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Erislandy Lara and many others work to find their place in the pantheon, and many of their fights will be accompanied by statistics compiled by the operators who work for CompuBox.
CompuBox’s world continues to expand as its operators are used to operate HBO’s Punch Zone, a creation that breaks down a fighter’s connects by location on his opponent’s anatomy. No one knows what the future will bring, but if the past is any indicator it looks bright indeed.
The journey taken by the company since its humble beginnings has been a long and fascinating one, and no one could have anticipated the impact CompuBox would have on the sport. It now is so entrenched that one can hardly imagine a fight being complete without seeing a graphic breaking down how each fighter is progressing. Here’s hoping that fight fans will continue to get their numbers fix to go along with the great action that accompanies it.
Twenty-five years down, who knows how many more to go?