By Lem Satterfield
Who doesn't know where they were when O.J. Simpson took that famous ride down a Los Angeles Highway in that white bronco on June 17, 1994 -- exactly 16 years ago on Thursday?
Suspected of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman, the former collegiate and professional football superstar had the eyes of people not only nationwide, but, indeed, worldwide, glued to collective television sets as the media cameras rolled covering his trek live.
ESPN's 30-for-30 re-created the event on Thursday evening, detailing how it supplanted, respectively, golf legend Arnold Palmer’s final round at the U.S. Open, the New York Rangers celebrating their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, the opening of the World Cup in Chicago, and, the Game No. 5 of the NBA finals featuring the New York Nicks and the Houston Rockets.
So where were you when that happened?
BoxingScene.com tapped four members of the boxing community to ask them that question.
BOB ARUM, CEO TOP RANK PROMOTIONS: "I remember watching it. I don't remember where I was when I was watching it or where I saw it. But it seemed to me that that chasing scenery was almost an admission of guilt. Well, clearly, he was guilty. What happened, subsequently, was absolutely typical of standing justice on its head.
"If anybody was guilty it was O.J. Simpson. Seeing him running around like that in the bronco -- that immediately said that. He's admitting that he killed her. I had met O.J. when he had worked at ABC and so I sort of knew him. But I had met him the Saturday before the killing at a party. So, obviously, it shocked and saddened me because I had always thought of him as a pretty good guy."
FREDDIE ROACH, THREE-TIME TRAINER OF THE YEAR: "I was sitting in the gym watching it all on television. I don't recall who I was training. But I know that we had a television on in the gym and everyone was waiting for that bronco to run out of gas or pull over or something to happen. It was pretty anti-climatic actually.
"I was really kind of wondering why a guy like O.J. would be involved in something like that. But nobody knew about his outside life at the time, you know?. Maybe how chaotic it might be. Of course, I was surprised when I found out. I had never met him, but my friend was his neighbor. He lived maybe one house away from O.J. in Brentwood.
"You know Billy Keane, he's the manager of Gerry Penalosa, Craig McEwan and Jose Benavidez. Billy's a good friend of mine. And, uh, he said that it was crazy around there. He couldn't even get to his house because of all of the police around there at the time. He lived right beside him in Brentwood at the time."
TONY THOMPSON, HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE CONTENDER: "I was in the house watching it. I was 22. I was reserving judgement until I found out what was going on. I hadnt' even thougth about being a fighter yet. Didn't start fighting until I was 27. I was with some family and friends and we were all huddled around the television trying to figure out what was going on.
"This was a very troubling situation for everybody. He was a hero. I never played football, but he was... just the fact that he was a very positive African American. Very articulate. You had seen him on television a lot, doing his thing. He was an accomplished football player. He was an accomplished actor. He was an accomplished business man.
"He had crossed over from just being a dumb jock to being a very influential African American hero and business person. As I watched him cruise down the road in that white bronco, truthfully, man, I didn't think that he had done anything. I thought that he was just grief stricken. Until I got the facts, man, I felt bad for him.
"Now, it brings back those memories, vividly. It brings back the good and the bad of the system and just a whole bunch of feelings that the American public had to deal with at the time."
TIM SMITH, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: "I was an NFL writer at the New York Times at the time. So I really wasn't doing anything at that time of year. It was like the offseason. I remember that we had some friends over to our house. Chris Brown, who was like my colleague at the New York Times, well, he was covering the NBA finals.
"And his wife and his son -- his son was a baby then -- so he must be like 15, or 16 years old now. But any way, his son was over, and his son was a baby, and they couldn't get the baby to sleep. And I was like holding the baby and watching the finals. I mean I was watching the Knicks and they broke into the programming with the news of O.J.
"And I remember being very upset that they broke into the programming with that. And I was screaming and I was holding the baby and I woke up the baby. If I'm not mistaken it was Game 5, and the Knicks were shooting lousy from the field and they kept shooting the ball. And I was like, 'Why don't they drive the lane?'
"But any way, I just remember thinking, 'Why are we watching O.J?' And I remember thinking, 'We're not even sure that it's O.J.' It was just somebody in a white bronco and his friend, Al Cowlings, was trying to talk him down or whatever. And I just kept thinking, 'How bizarre is this that they would cut into the NBA finals?'
"But then, they went back to the NBA finals, and on a quarter of the television screen they had the white bronco. So here the games going on, and the white bronco is up in the corner. I still think that it's one of the most surreal things that I've ever seen in my life. I just couldnt' figure out what was going on.
"And I still can't figure out why they cut into the game to do that. I'm still upset about that. I think O.J. and the white bronco chase is the reason that the Knicks didn't win the championship."
