Million Dollar Buffer Baby

May 25, 2005

Renowned boxing announcer, Michael Buffer, called in today to discuss “The Contender”. Unlike Howard, Buffer did not like “The Contender” that much. Howard thought the show would be much better if Buffer had been the announcer since the one they had wasn’t very good. Before discussing that, Michael wanted to let Howard know how good he thought the new boxing movie, “Cinderella Man” was. Howard and Robin both agreed with him. Buffer even thought this film rates up there with “Raging Bull” as one of the best boxing movies ever. Buffer was not so enthusiastic about “The Contender” though because, according to him, the show has very little to do with boxing. As he put it, the fights weren’t really fights, they were fight scenes. He said because they were edited, you could never tell how close the fights really were. Howard said he just liked to see a good beating and didn’t care if it was manipulated or not. Buffer tried to argue that this wasn’t his point, but Howard said it didn’t matter; he just likes it for entertainment aspect — not the pure boxing part of it. Buffer said last night’s fight was a perfect example of what he was talking about. The fact that The Snake won by a landslide was odd considering the fight everyone saw seemed much closer. Howard had enough of this so he moved on to Michael’s personal life. First, Howard wanted to know who he was banging and Robin brought up the HBO special that featured a whole profile of Buffer. She said the most interesting thing was that Buffer only met his brother — who runs Michael’s business — 15 years ago. Buffer explained how he was born during WWII and was raised by foster parents, when his biological parents split up and out him in a foster home.

His brother was raised by his father and had a different mother. Michael said he lucked out and was raised by really great foster parents. Buffer said he was raised with a different name and only discovered that his birth name was Buffer when he joined the army. Howard asked if his real dad had seen him on TV and said, “Hey that’s my kid!” Buffer said that actually was how it happened, sort of. Howard thought it was very convenient for him to show up back in his son’s life AFTER he became successful and wondered if he now felt he had given up the wrong baby. He wanted to know if Michael got angry at his dad for giving him away, but Buffer seemed to be okay with it.