Boxing Biopics are a curious business for movies. Robert De Niro won an Oscar for playing a middleweight champion who defended the title twice before being outclassed by a much superior boxer. Russell Crowe brought James J Braddock out of the historical shadow of Joe Louis and Max Baer despite having lost the title in his first defence. Movies can make a good boxer into a legend and a peripheral boxer (Ruben ‘Hurricane’ Carter) into Oscar-worthy material.
Since we are the black lodge of biopics, let’s explore some high-achieving fighters who won’t be getting the Hollywood biopic treatment any time soon, other than being a side character in a lesser fighter’s story.
The Paul Pender Boxing Biopic – Better than Micky Ward, but didn’t get beaten up as much
Paul Pender beat Sugar Ray Robinson conclusively. He won all of his major rivalries against many other champions and retired to a quiet life. It’s Raging Bull with zero dramatic tension or reflection on the mistakes of life. No corruption or bad habits. He retired as champion and won all his rivalries. He competed in a very big era for middleweights in boxing.
Why won’t it work? Pender was as nice as pie and did everything right. There is no dramatic tension. He retired due to disagreements with promoters and a lack of interest in continuing. He didn’t get bombed out. He didn’t exit in glory or disgrace. Pender didn’t have the disastrous post-career of Jake La Motta. He didn’t have the injustice of a wrongful murder conviction like Ruben Carter.
Ezzard Charles – Great champion (between Louis and Marciano), but boxing biopics need character flaws
Ezzard Charles beat Joe Louis; he defended the title eight times (which would take around four or five years in today’s era) and despite being a natural light-heavyweight, he was able to beat bigger men with raw skill and courage.
Why won’t it work? The only lesson that this biopic would teach you is that going through wars with Joe Louis and absolute hell (twice) with Rocky Marciano won’t save you from the scrap heap, despite being a straight-up fighter.
Marvin Hagler – Marvellous career but boxing biopics need a conclusive finish
Marvellous (his legal name) has one of the most interesting stories out there. As Joe Frazier told him, people would avoid him because he is ‘black, southpaw and good’. He excelled at the sport. Be beat the piss out of Alan Minter in the UK for the world middleweight championship, which caused a riot. He went on to be champion for seven years, beating legends like Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns. In real life, Hagler has the story of a fighter whose name is thrown into the hat of the greatest of all time.
Why won’t it work? Well, Marvellous Marvin trained hard, fought hard and had no bad habits. When he did lose the title, it was in a hotly disputed decision with Sugar Ray Leonard. It was a fight so close that interpreting the decision on either side is inaccurate. And he retired a respected if unfulfilled champion, but he had a great post-boxing career as a minor movie star in Italy before dying of natural causes. Documentaries, there will be many but making a biopic would require some big creative license. David Lynch would have been suited to this head scratcher of a career.
Conclusion – You need a story and not a sport for a boxing biopic
Just ask Tony Zale (who beat Rocky Graziano twice) why he wasn’t the main character of Someone Up There Likes Me. Well, you can’t because he is dead. Because boxing movies are not based on ability. They are whether Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, or another Oscar-baiter can get dramatic tension out of a subject. It doesn’t matter to the audience that Sugar Ray Robinson beat Jake La Motta five out of six times or that Ruben Carter never would have won the title anyway. It’s all in the story that can be told. You might get an Ali Biopic that can manage both drama and realism (or a biopic of Big George Foreman’s career) but more often than not, greatness in the ring is only a secondary historical reason for a production budget. Marvin Hagler starred in some of his own movies, but his life didn’t get a movie of its own. Irish Micky Ward was a tough fighter, but he was not world-class, and they needed to make his brother a central character to paper over these cracks. Ward beat Arturo Gatti in a brutal fight, but he lost the next two to his rival. The movie business is not about sports aptitude, and no biopic is really about history. If it were, Larry Holmes, Joe Frazier and Thomas Hearns would get their own boxing biopic. However, Frank Bruno will get the biopic before the above-mentioned trio will.
Some note of mention is that movies have tried to go outside of trend with the less dramatic boxing stars. However, the Rocky Marciano biopic worked in theory but not in practice, and Hands of Stone produced a ‘so what’. It is proof that great careers and interesting lives lack the formula that The Fighter had with Micky Ward (although Mark Wahlberg was pushing his luck with Father Stu).
Biopics are for us to enjoy, but don’t even dare try to learn as evidenced here.