By Lyle Fitzsimmons
It’s Showtime for travel-happy Johnson
If it’s Tuesday… it must be Louisiana.
Such is the frenetic, on-the-road lifestyle of Gus Johnson - sports broadcasting’s blissful vagabond.
“Fortunately, I do enjoy it and it’s become part of who I am,” said the well-traveled 41-year-old New Yorker, the signature radio voice of the NBA’s Knicks, who’s simultaneously dabbled in college football, track and field, Olympics, football and in-studio work for CBS Sports since 1995.
“I was never thinking it would amount to anything, and then all of a sudden I had the Knicks job and I had a life I loved which allowed me to be gone all the time,” he said.
“You know how sometimes you find loose change in your couch? Well it’s like I looked around in my couch and found a brick of hundreds. I’ve been so, so blessed and I’ve loved every minute.”
Reached via telephone from courtside at New Orleans Arena, where the Knicks were about to play a Monday night game with the host New Orleans Hornets, Johnson enthusiastically discussed his next professional foray - as lead blow-by-blow announcer for Showtime Championship Boxing.
He’ll debut on the cable network on Feb. 7, when he joins color analyst Al Bernstein in calling the WBA/WBC/IBF title bout between unified 115-pound world champion Vic Darchinyan and veteran power puncher Jorge Arce from The Pond in Anaheim, Calif.
“Gus brings incredible energy and a fresh approach to every broadcast,” said Ken Hershman, Showtime’s senior vice president and general manager for sports and event programming. “He has the ability to match the intensity of the moment, and there are few moments in sports more intense than a hard-fought boxing match.”
It’ll actually be a boxing redux for Johnson, who’s previously sat ringside for CBS, MSG and ESPN.
“I think I was at the right place at the right time and it sort of fell in my lap,” said Johnson of the new position, which opened up when 21-year incumbent Steve Albert decided to step down from full-time duty. “I was ready and I’d had a relationship with Showtime from doing mixed martial arts events.
“It’s the chance of a lifetime to be the voice of major championship title fights. It’s unlike anything I do and it’s a wonderful opportunity with a lot of expectations. I have to bring my ‘A’ game, no doubt, and I’m very excited to show the world my skill level.”
Johnson displayed skills of all sorts in a varied athletic career prior to stepping behind the microphone - including several years of youth ice hockey, all-star caliber performance in high school football and basketball and a four-year scholarship to play Division I college baseball at Howard University.
He’s maintained a quest for physical fitness since college and has studied both kung fu and jiu jitsu in addition to boxing, which he’s pursued with particular vigor for the last seven or eight years.
“It’s the best workout around, by far, and it’s allowed me to keep the belly to a minimum, thank goodness,” he said. “I can be 10 pounds overweight on a Monday and by just going in and doing the workout every day - three miles of roadwork, three rounds in the ring shadowboxing, three rounds skipping rope, three rounds working the heavy bag, three rounds on the speed bag, three rounds on the pads and some calisthenics to wind down - I can be where I need to be by the end of the week.”
The ring education provides some valuable on-the-job insight as well.
“I’ve learned a lot of technical things in my years as a student that I think I’ll be able to bring to the broadcasts,” he said. “From what I’ve picked up, albeit on a very limited level, I think I can go out there and give the viewers a pretty good idea of what’s going on in there. And I think that’ll help.
“My style is to bring high energy to the fight or the game or whatever it is I’m calling. So what I plan to do is take that and go with it from there. I’m working with a partner, Al Bernstein, who’s a purist and an encyclopedia of boxing. And we can just sit as two guys watching a fight, in a relaxed manner.”
Johnson’s exposure to the sport began long before he donned a pair of workout gloves.
Growing up in Detroit and with a father who worked at Cobo Hall, he was schooled at a young age on the city’s long connection to the fight game, most notably through long-time heavyweight champion Joe Louis and in later years with the Kronk Gym’s most accomplished alumnus - Thomas Hearns.
But when push came to shove in 1981... the Motor City loyalty only went so far.
“I remember being in school when Hearns fought Sugar Ray Leonard the fight time, and our teacher had a pool where everyone put a dime in and picked the winner and the round,” he said.
“Of course, everyone in the class picked Hearns. But I picked Leonard in 12 and I think I ended up winning $4 or something. I loved Tommy, but I wasn’t betting as a fan. I was betting to win.”
These days, as critics claim boxing’s audience is defecting to the more rough-and-tumble world of MMA, Johnson is hoping the modern era’s fighters are willing to maintain the standard the others - both in Detroit and elsewhere - worked to establish.
“You have the older guys now like Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr., Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins, and they’re still out there fighting, but I don’t think they’re always fighting just for the money,” he said. “They’re continuing a legacy, and I hope the young guys who are getting into the sport now - especially the African-American kids - are willing to fight for that legacy, too.
As for his own legacy, Johnson will continue to enjoy the spicy variety of working life.
“For me, each sport I do is like having a new exotic and beautiful girlfriend,” he said. “Boxing is like my Brazilian. Football is my attractive African-American lady.
“And when you add in basketball - college and NBA - and the MMA events, it’s like I have five beautiful girlfriends whom I like just the same, but all at different times. It’s a dream come true.”
Lyle Fitzsimmons is a 20-year sports journalist and a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him via e-mail at fitzbitz@msn.com .