Barry Tompkins

Barry Tompkins (born circa 1940) is a well known American sportscaster. He is better known for his work as a boxing commentator, but he has covered football and another number of sports as well.

Tompkins began his broadcasting career as a writer and producer for San Francisco radio station KCBS-AM in 1965, before being hired as sports director at the local CBS television affiliate, KPIX-TV. In 1974, he moved to New York to join WNBC-TV as a sports anchor and feature reporter, before moving to NBC Sports in 1975 to host weekly radio shows as well as television play-by-play for basketball and football.

Tompkins returned to San Francisco in 1978 and joined then-NBC affiliate KRON-TV as sports director, while continuing to cover Pac-10 basketball for NBC as well as feature stories for its NFL pre-game show. He left KRON in 1980 to join the then-fledgling cable channel HBO.

At HBO, Tompkins came into much greater national prominence alongside Larry Merchant and Sugar Ray Leonard as a member of the HBO Boxing show's team. He called fights at HBO for many years and some of his commentaries became famous, such as his call when Alexis Arguello was hurt by Aaron Pryor in round fourteen of their Battle of the Champions ("Arguello...oh! Arguello is hurt!!"), when Hector Camacho was buckled by Edwin Rosario in round five of their fight ("Camacho had never been hurt before!") and when Mike Tyson won the WBC world Heavyweight title with a second round knockout of Trevor Berbick ("And we have a new era in boxing."). In 1992, he won the Sam Taub Award for excellence in boxing broadcasting journalism. [ [http://www.ibhof.com/ibhfbwaa.htm Internantional Boxing Hall of Fame / BWAA Awards ] ] Tompkins also co-hosted HBO's baseball program, Race for the Pennant.

Tompkins made his acting debut in 1985, when he portrayed a USA Network sports-caster during the "Rocky Balboa"-"Ivan Drago" fight in "Rocky IV". Later he moved to the ESPN network, where he covered mostly ten round bouts alongside Al Bernstein on "Thursday Night Fights" for a number of years.

Currently, Tompkins is the color commentator of the Fox Sports Network's "Sunday Night Fights", and he travels through the United States alongside Sean O' Grady and Amy Hayes each two weeks to tape the Fox fight show. Tompkins commentates much of FSN's poker coverage, including the Aussie Millions and Poker Dome Challenge. Most recently, he has ventured into the sport of mixed martial arts as commentator for the newly revamped World Fighting Alliance.

Tompkins covered Pacific Ten Conference college football with Petros Papadakis in the 2005 season. Tompkins has also announced Pac-10 basketball games for Fox Sports Net alongside Dan Belluomini.

References

[http://www.thetennischannel.com/programs/talent/Barry_Tompkins.aspx Profile of Tompkins from the Tennis Channel website]