The director who hated Michael Bay so much he challenged him to a fight: “He sucks big time”
Michael Bay is a truly polarising figure.
On one hand, you can’t argue with his box office returns; his movies have made billions and billions of dollars worldwide, making him the fifth-most commercially successful director of all time. On the other hand, they all suck. Few filmmakers have contributed more big-budget brain cell-killers as the master of the revolving hero shot. From his dire Transformers series to the utter catastrophe that was Pearl Harbour, Bay is the ultimate villain for fans of so-called ‘real’ cinema.
It’s not just critics and fans who have their issues with Bay, as some of his fellow filmmakers don’t like him either…well, if you want to call Uwe Boll a filmmaker. The maverick German director is famous for two things: making some of the worst movies ever made, and being bonkers.
To promote his utterly dreadful film Postal, he released a video calling out some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and Bay was one of his targets, which began as a heavily one-sided feud akin to a grasshopper trying to take down an elephant.
Bay actually responded to Boll’s insults, which turned out to be a major misstep. In claiming that he “didn’t care” about the comments, he poured more gasoline onto the fire and gave a hack nobody a platform he didn’t deserve. Armed with this newfound confidence, Boll released a video with an ultimatum for the Bad Boys impresario.
“He sucks big time,” he said of his opponent (via Slash Film), “Michael, in between your pool parties in LA or your casting sessions with the strippers, you should start training now… Let’s meet in the ring in September or October. Pay-per-view. Mandalay Bay. Las Vegas. Twelve rounds of boxing. Boll against Bay. And it’s also independent against the studio system, and I think that this day in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas we will clear it up who is not only the better director [but] who is also able to fight more for what he wants.”
Boll went on to claim that Bay actually agreed to get into the ring with him, and the latter strongly denies this, however, claiming that the pair have never even spoken. Ultimately, he was proven right when the Boll vs Bay clash never happened, but that doesn’t mean that the man behind Alone in the Dark never got the chance to prove his boxing prowess.
Insanely, Bay isn’t the only person Boll has challenged to a fight, and even more insanely, some of them accepted. In late 2006, the crazed director fought five journalists who were equally as deranged enough to entertain this ridiculous notion. To give Boll a smidge of credit, he actually won every single fight, being declared the ultimate victor in a publicity stunt dubbed ‘Raging Boll’.
Regardless of what you think of Bay and his work, at least he never stooped to these lows. As entertaining as it would have been to watch Boll slug it out with his most famous foe, it was never going to happen; although, given the rise of influencer boxing over the past few years, maybe Boll was ahead of his time…
