Wow. It's been like 12 years...

I used same guy. He must have known people because he was constantly getting new copies.

 

I never spent any money on fight dvd/tapes but did do some trades.

 

I wonder how often he got asked about Harry Greb fights.

 

Brian Cooper had his fights listed in alphabetical order by fighter name, and I swear to God it seemed like he had every champion/contender/fringe contender in history listed, with like 90-95% of their fights.

His collection was absurd. I bought from him for 16 years.

 

Yep...

He'd Snail Mail an Updated List of His Fights Every Couple Months or So, Free of Charge...

REED Looooooooooooooved How Kurt Would Occasionally Add his OWN Opinions of Fights/Fighters On his List...

____ vs. ___ Overrated Loudmouth Finally Gets Silenced
____ vs. ___ Historic Fight, Not Much Action




REED

 

Ironically, Jake Used to Work for a Company that Did Promo Printing for HBO...Homey Hooked REED Up w/Probably 15-20 Fight Posters...

Anyways, Jake FREQUENTLY Suggested HBO Sell Copies of Their Own Fights, KNOWING How their Product was Circulating Underground....But They Repeatedly Told Jake they DIDN'T See Much Revenue to Be Made in that Capacity...




REED

 

Cooper did the same on his lists, only I can't recall him listing too many negative opinions. For wars/epic KO's he'd just have parenthesis (great fight!) or (Awesome KO!)

He was a huge fan of Tyson and Roy, so naturally... we were on the same page.

 

At this point, the vast majority of HBO fights have been uploaded to YouTube anyway.

It's not like HBO is stopping anybody from doing so... their focus is far removed from our sport now.

 

Pretty sure they were right. Dont think there was a big market for old fights.

 

True, but This was Turn of the Century When Jake Had These Conversations w/His HBO Contacts...

YouTube Wasn't Around Yet and Wouldn't Be for Another 3-4 Years...






REED

 

Alter the Marketing Strategy and INCLUDE Recent Fights...

Granted, REED is THANKFUL HBO Had the Unwritten Rule of Broadcasting PPV's the Following Weekend, but Imagine if they Didn't???....Imagine if they Waited a MONTH Before Finally Showing their PPV's on "Regular" HBO???...

Fight Night Price is $59.99...Milk the Shit Out of It, Especially an ENTERTAINING PPV Fight, By Selling it at an Increasingly Reduced Rate Over the Next Month Before FINALLY Releasing it for "Regular" HBO Viewing...

Even a BROKE Hardcore Boxing Fan Would Pay $25-30 to Finally Watch a "Fight of the Year" Bout he Missed on PPV, a Week or 2 After the Fact...






REED

 

Cooper sounds familiar, I might’ve bought from him

 

Went by the alias SilverSurfer.

He actually posted on Eastside in the mid 00s.

I found him circa 99 or 00.

Fucking awesome guy. I got bummed when I found out he died. He died young too - couldnt have been older than his early 40s. Think it was a heart attack.

 

Damn, now I miss the good ole days thinking bout guys like Jake, Donnybrook, Kid Dynamite, ect.

There was a point where even Esk was a top poster, before he went kinda troll-ish.

Muzse, Tap, and Everlast in their primes... and yes, even Stafford was good back then.

Then you had the cross-forum thing, where guys like Dosta and Hitman were quality on BF.

2000-2005 was the shit on Boxing Message boards

 

Maybe not "huge" but since they often owned the rights to them and had access to such a huge library they could have made an attempt at doing something with it/them. And like REED pointed out they could have used various ways to tie it into whatever they were promoting at the time.

The internet would have all but killed it eventually but there was a window.

 

I heard Jim Jacobs owned the biggest VHS collection at the time of his death?

I used to record stuff off the Pay Per View channels and stockpile it.

I actually had to BUY a Video called "Reg and Harrys Classivc Fight Night" in 1999.

I bought it in the Virgin Megastore for about £13 old Irish Pounds, well over $20 in todays money, fucking rip off.




But I had never seen Hagler vs Hearns, or Dempsey vs Tunney or Zale vs Graziano. {III}

Literally never had seen those fights.

The version I got had Al Bernstein doing the commentary for Hagler vs Hearns.

I remember getting it and me and my father and brother watching it and I might as well as turned the volume down cos my old man just kept doing his own commentary..."Oh good right, Oh, he's gone, Oh he's not getting up, The referee needs to stop this, Nobody was harder than the Rock, Joe Louis had a triphammer......" FFS etc etc etc....

Louis vs Schmeling 2 was on it but not the first fight. It also had Jeffries vs Johnson and some other good stuff too.

 

It was at that same time I also bought Fight Night on the PS2 and that was a load of fun. It was really very playable.

You could throw the short hook on the inside, if you were close enough, it was great fun.

Stuff today is too good in a way.

 

Funny you should say it.........but Lou Duva said he used to hitchike 20 miles up to the Catskills to watch Joe Louis spar.

Then I walked 20 miles to get a video of Lou Duva being KO'd by Roger Mayweather

 

He died? Fuck. I hadn’t gotten anything from him in years, but I always went to him for the obscure hard-to-find stuff.

 

I purchased a tape full of Ali's fights from REED back in the day, maybe around 2004 or so. It was a big deal also for my father, then in his early 50s who had grown up reading about Ali's first title fights but only seen a couple of them.

In Finland there is still a guy with a huge collection of fight tapes which you won't find from the internet. Of course most of the stuff is totally obscure bouts between long-forgotten scrubs, but there are some gems in there too. He used to share some of them in wbva

 

Jean Pascal bandwagon

 

Back in like 97 when I first joined the Air Force and was stationed in Germany the only way I could watch fights was by ordering it from guys who sold copies on VHS. They used to post ads in the back of boxing magazines like The Ring and it’s sister publications. Usually whenever I would order a fight that had recently happened I would also order past fights that I hadn’t seen yet.

By the way after coming in to say hello one time I think Ikokjones ghosted us.

 

Yeah man.

I wanna say that he's been dead since 2015.

He was a good dude. He had possibly the biggest fight collection on Earth.

 

Wow.

Comedy genius-alert.







Die!

 

Yes, understood

 

Fail, faggot, fail.

 

Works fine from here

Faggot

 

Yep, They Could've Easily Packaged Pre-Fight Shows, Pressers, Weigh-In Footage, etc., w/the Actual Fights...

You Think Fans WOULDN'T Have Purchased a Box Set of All 3 Gatti-Ward Bouts??!!...Or a Box Set of EVERY Roy Jones or Felix Trinidad or Oscar dela Hoya or Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao Fight Televised on HBO???...

And When All Else Failed, Provide an "ala Carte" Option, Which was Prevalent in Underground Sales...

Knowing the Internet WOULD Have Affected Them Eventually, it's Strange for a Company of HBO's Ilk to Completely Snub Their Noses at a Potential Revenue Stream w/Out Investing @ Least a YEAR or So Into It...

For a Very Loooooooooooooong Time HBO WAS Boxing...They Would've Been the OBVIOUS Starting Point for Anyone Looking to BUY Boxing...



REED

 

Jim Jacobs Literally Had Reels of FILM, Not VHS...

Whenever You See Footage of Tyson and/or Cus Next to a Projector, Watching Old Fight Films, that's Jim Jacobs' Shit...He Sold His Reels to ESPN Who Estimated He Possessed Miles and Miles of Film...If REED Isn't Mistaken, Access to Jacobs' Vault is Part of the ESPN+ Monthly Subscription...

Jacobs is Kind of the FORGOTTEN Man in the Mike Tyson Story These Days...Cus was THE Guy, Clearly, but Mike ADORED Jim Jacobs as Well...Mike's a FAN and STUDENT of the Game Because of Jim Jacobs...

Cus and Jacobs Both Died in a Relatively Short Period of Time...There's a GOOD Chance Jacobs Could've Kept Mike's Discipline and Focus Somewhat in Check, but when Him AND Cus Died, It was a Wrap...





REED

 

Didn't Know That About Your Ol' Man but GLAD to Be a Part of it Ugo!...

REED's Biggest Boxing VHS Related Thrill was SHARING his Library w/His Ol' Man Before he Passed...A True Boxing FAN Until His Last Breath, REED's Ol' Man Died the Night of Cotto-Margarita I...




REED