By Gerardo Granados: No it is not a joke, I mean it. Some can argue all they want, but movies have been and still are a major boxing promoter. At the beginning of the last century the radio was king, later on the Cinema Scope was invented, people gather at theaters to watch a fight that they could not have seen live; then the television arrived, cable, satellite television, and finally the internet. Now you can watch live, live broadcast or differed boxing bouts from every where.
Have you seen the Rocky I, II, III, IV, V or VI? Does the name Rocky Balboa, Ivan Drago, Apollo Creed or Mr. T is familiar to your childhood? Did you watch Robert DeNiro in Ragging Bull? Or Jon Voight in The Champ? Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby? Annapolis? Will Smith in Ali? Russell Crow in Cinderella Man? Denzel Washington in The Hurricane? James Cagney in City for Conquest? Humphrey Bogart in The Harder They Fall? If you haven’t seen any, then you should get it and enjoy.
I´ll be honest, no matter how many times I have watched Rocky each and single time that I´ve watched it I get the urge to go to the gym and train.
Actually the PPV is a great business for promoters and for TV as well, but it doesn’t help boxing that this PPV bouts are almost restricted to the hard core boxing fans willing to pay to watch the fight; even worst when the undercard fight aren’t as exciting as they should have been in theory. There are boxing fans and there are people who like to watch boxing fights but that aren’t as interested to follow a boxer career or to pay $50.00 to watch a fight. So, if you watch a great boxing movie for the first time while young or as a kid there are big chances that you will be interested in the sport years after.
In my personal opinion Rocky (I) is the greatest boxing movie of all, Million Dollar Baby would be second and on third I’ll pick Ragging Bull.
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