By Ken Hissner: In doing my research about boxing movies, I couldn’t believe one article was “The Best 100 Boxing Movies.”
I could think of about half a dozen off the top of my head. When I started my research, others mentioned reminded me of those I forgot about. I am the only person in boxing that I know who didn’t think the original “Rocky” was believable and never watched another associated with it.
- No. 1 is my all-time favorite boxing movie starring my all-time favorite actor John Garfield in the original “Body and Soul” movie in 1947. Garfield was an amateur boxer, from what I have read.
- No. 2 “Champion” a boxer’s rise to fame by stepping on others starring Kirk Douglas in 1949.
- Let’s name another thirteen movies, and you can add ones I leave off. I will start with the one’s I watched first.
- No. 3 is “Hurricane,” was the movie based on the life of middleweight Rubin “Hurricane” Carter starring Denzel Washington in 1999.
- No. 4 is “Cinderella Man,” the life of heavyweight champion
James Braddock starring Russell Crowe in 2005. - No.5 is “The Harder They Fall,” about an ex-sports writer hired by a shady promoter to promote his fighter starring Humphrey Bogart, among others, in 1956.
- No. 6 “Million Dollar Baby” starring Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank in 2004.
- No. 7 is “Ali” wasn’t one of my favorites since it starred whom Muhammad Ali called “Jughead” starring Jamie Foxx in 2001.
- No. 8 was “Rocky” starring Sylvester Stallone in 1976.
- No. 9 “Raging Bull” story about Middleweight champion Jake LaMotta starring Robert DiNero in 1980.
- No. 10 “Somebody Up There Likes Me” about Middleweight champion Rocky Graziano starring Paul Newman in 1956.
- No. 11 “Gentleman Jim” story about heavyweight champion Jim Corbett starring Errol Flynn in 1942.
- No. 12 “The Great White Hope” about heavyweight champion Jack “Galveston Giant” Johnson starring Samuel L. Jackson in 1996.
- No. 13 “Requiem for A Heavyweight” starring Anthony Quinn playing a fictional heavyweight felled by Cassius Clay in 1962.
- No. 14 “The Champ” is about a down-on-his-luck boxer starring Wallace Beery in 1931.
- No. 15 “Big George Foreman” starring Forest Whitaker in 2023.
