As he watched the bloodbath that was Sebastian Fundora's win over Tim Tszyu on March 30, veteran broadcaster Jim Lampley knew all too well that the ringside commentary team would be leaving T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas with the two boxers’ bodily fluids splattered across their clothing. And his mind cast back to the first fight he ever called in his legendary career.

“Mike Tyson versus Jesse Ferguson, in upstate New York,” he recalled in a recent interview with BoxingScene.

“Alex Wallau had completed the in-ring interview with Tyson after the fight, and when I prepared to leave, there was something sitting on my brown leather portfolio on the table at ringside. It looked like a strawberry. And I thought, How did I get a wet strawberry on top of my brown leather portfolio? And I looked closer and picked it up and realized, ‘Oh my God, that's the inside of Jesse's nose.’ Which, in fact, it was. You can't have a more vivid illustration of boxing punishment than the inside of Jesse Ferguson's nose sitting on my portfolio.” 

Cut to last month: As Tszyu’s corner struggled unsuccessfully to stem the gusher of blood erupting from the wound that Fundora’s elbow had carved into the Australian’s scalp, Lampley’s memories drifted still further back, almost 70 years in fact, to when he was a young boy of three or four in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

“My older brother took me down the street to play with some other kids and was given the right by my mother to escort me alone,” he said. “The street where we lived at that time was not fully paved. It was partially a rock road, and somehow or another my brother dropped me headfirst onto a jagged rock and we wound up with him carrying me home, screaming and yelling, ‘Oh my God, Jimbo is going to die.’

“He had blood soaked all through his T-shirt, blood-soaked jeans, et cetera, et cetera. And from my uncle, a doctor, I learned on that day that the top of your skull is the most populated convergence of blood vessels anywhere in the body. Why? Because the brain needs blood. So there are more blood vessels interacting with each other and connecting to each other on the top of the skull than anywhere else in the body.”

It was a memory that Lampley was able to put to good use as he offered text commentary on the fight alongside BoxingScene’s Lance Pugmire on PPV.com.

“The instant I saw where the elbow had cut the top of Tszyu’s head, I made a comment to the effect that ‘They’re not going to be able to stop this bleeding; this is going to be an enormously prolific blood flow; there is no technique by which a cut man can stop this. And you’re going to be seeing a gruesome bloodbath if the fight continues.’ Which, of course, is exactly what happened. And if I had not been dropped by my brother on Hebron Drive in Hendersonville, North Carolina, when I was 3 or 4 years old, I don’t know that I would have known what I knew at that moment.”

Lampley, who will be ringside in New York City on Saturday to cover the Devin Haney-Ryan Garcia card for PPV.com, hopes that Tszyu is able to secure a rematch, given the circumstances of the fight and the handicap under which he fought once the accidental cut had opened up.

“A governing body has to straighten this out,” Lampley said. “Somebody has to get involved in creating a proper, just outcome here by making sure that Tszyu gets a rematch when he wants a rematch, and when he’s ready to do it. 

“Fundora is a nice guy – I don’t wish him any ill will. I’m happy for him that he got this circumstance and the convenience of a title more or less dropped into his lap. But he needs to go back into the ring with Tim Tszyu and defend his new status rather than simply being allowed to go forward and exploit it without Tszyu having a say in it.”

Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcasted about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.