Word: perenchio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gladiators were the supreme fighters," says Joe Frazier, trying his mightiest to explain why he and fellow Heavyweight George Foreman were suited up like Roman combatants to hype interest in their June 15 bout. The idea for the gladiator getup came from Fight Promoter Jerry Perenchio, who borrowed two outfits that had been used in MGM's 1959 film Ben Hur. Perenchio's costuming may be entirely apt, but his choice of battleground is far from Rome. Foreman and Frazier will square off at the Coliseum all right-the one in Nassau County...
Meanwhile, Promoter Jerry Perenchio is talking up a second Court-Riggs contest, this time in Australia-if anyone is interested...
...midwifed by the match with Court and the vast interest it created in the Riggs shtik. An ecstatic Bobby suddenly captured the fame that had eluded him even when he was the nation's top amateur tennis player in the late 1930s. After he signed with Promoter Jerry Perenchio, president of Tandem Productions* (Maude, All in the Family, Sanford & Son), Tandem sent him on a promotional trip to Beverly Hills...
Further, Americans have always worshiped at the fountain of youth, and here is Riggs, one of the most publicized and highest paid athletes over 50 in history, telling them that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong and there are second sets in American lives. Says Perenchio, who also masterminded the Ali-Frazier fight: "Riggs is the Muhammad Ali of the Geritol set." As Bobby boasts: "I've got Bobby's battalions all over the country, the over-45 guys who want to see one of their own make it big. I know beating a woman isn't like...
That is only the beginning. According to Promoter Jerry Perenchio, who approached 70 possible backers before he got Los Angeles sportsman Jack Kent Cooke to put up the bulk of the purse money, 300 million spectators in more than 26 countries will see the fight. A successful theatrical agent who cheerily admits that "I really don't know the first thing about boxing," Perenchio is not missing a trick; after the bout is over, he hopes to auction off the fighters shoes, trunks, robes and gloves "If a movie studio can auction off Judy Garland's red slippers," he says...