![]() ![]() ![]() When he joined HBO Sports in 1986, he added a new and critical component to live boxing coverage. Harold was happiest when seated ringside, studying the action and scoring the fight. Over the past fifty years he was universally respected and celebrated by the many people who make the sport what it is. “Harold Lederman had a lifelong love affair with the sport of boxing. Peter Nelson, executive vice president, HBO Sports, released a statement, saying: Lederman is survived by two daughters, Iris and Julie, who has followed in her father’s footsteps as a judge, and his beloved wife, Eileen. In 2006, the Boxing Writers Association of America awarded him with the Marvin Kohn Good Guy Award and in 2008 with the Sam Taub Award Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Lederman was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2016, and inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997. In one of his final public appearances, Lederman speaks at the 2018 BWAA award dinner after being honored as a beloved fixture of the boxing industry. His voice had a unique quality all itself. In 1999, Lederman retired from active judging, making the transition in 1999 as HBO’s “unofficial ringside scorer.” His big national break came in 1986, when then-HBO executive producer Ross Greenburg invited Lederman to join HBO’s boxing show World Championship Boxing as an “expert commentator.” By his own count, he judged over a hundred title fights in every corner of the globe, while still working at his pharmacy practice in New York. He attended Columbia University and earned a license from New York State Athletic Commission to judge title fights on June 26, 1967. Lederman, when he wasn’t ringside scoring some of the biggest fights in boxing history for HBO, was a pharmacist by trade. He was one of a kind and there will never be another like him in boxing.” “Harold lived boxing, Harold loved boxing, and Harold died boxing. Any show that Harold could physically attend, when he was working in a pharmacy, he was there. I’ve known Harold my whole 30 years in boxing. “In a lot of ways, HBO Boxing is now dead, but nobody represented HBO Boxing better than Artie Curry, may he rest in peace, and Harold Lederman. He was as loyal to boxing and to fighters as he was his own family. No one loved fighters more than Harold Lederman. “No one loved boxing more than Harold Lederman. “He had no malice toward anyone in this world. “I knew Harold was suffering and I knew he was in hospice, and Harold was truly one of a kind,” said Lou DiBella, the former executive vice-president of HBO sports. ![]() You knew it was a big fight when you heard Harold say, “OK, Jim!” in between rounds with his score. He died Saturday at 79 following a lengthy battle with cancer. RIP Harold Lederman, the long-time boxing judge and unofficial scorer on HBO’s boxing broadcasts. ![]()
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