Sylvester Stallone’s favourite boxing movies beyond ‘Rocky’: “There’s been a couple of good ones”
Along with the likes of westerns and comedies, sports movies seem to be inextricably linked to the history of film, particularly boxing. From the time of silent films, there were boxing epics, and they were integral to the development of the motion picture. Apparently, it was a boxing match that inspired the very first feature film.
However, no boxing movie in the history of cinema has more of a legacy than Rocky. Penned by its lead actor, Sylvester Stallone, it went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1976, and received ten Academy Award nominations, of which it won three, including ‘Best Picture’. It has spawned several sequels and spin-offs, is a pop-culture phenomenon, and is etched into movie history.
Stallone himself put it to Rotten Tomatoes, “There aren’t many fight films like Rocky. Rocky is more of a fantasy in many ways”. Maybe this is the secret of its legend, but all of this begs the question: what is your favourite movie boxer’s favourite boxing film? Stallone has a few in mind.
The first fight film he mentions is Fat City by John Huston. As he points out, like many of the great boxing films, it’s much more realistic and rather more depressing than Rocky, “Because most fighters have these horrible lives”. Where Rocky is a triumphant rags-to-riches story, Fat City takes a look at what happens when the gloves come off, following the life of a washed-up champion boxer.
For the next film, he mentions that “James Cagney did a great one”, presumably talking about the 1932 film Winner Take All, featuring the classic Hollywood star Cagney as a boxer sent to a health ranch to recover from a few too many punches, drinks and affairs. It’s a pre-code era story of love versus boxing and womanising.
Then comes “The Champion, which was excellent”. Again, there are so many boxing films, and as you can imagine, quite a few with this name, but it seems most likely he’s taking it even further back to the days of Charlie Chaplin—given this interview dates back to 2007. The Champion sees Chaplin’s iconic character, The Tramp, as he decides to try for a place in a boxing camp when he passes by and comes across a lucky horseshoe. Of course, he loads his glove with the horseshoe, and hilarity ensues.
It doesn’t quite fit the mould of the sad boxing story, however, so I do wonder if there’s a chance he could actually mean Franco Zeffirelli’s 1979 remake of The Champ. Featuring Jon Voight as a former boxer turned single father who returns to the ring to support his son, it fits the tag much better, but there’s no way of knowing. Just that, it might not be great if you mixed them up, given the vast difference in moods.
And, of course, we’d all be questioning Stallone’s sanity if he didn’t mention Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Luckily, it’s the last on his list. Adapted from the autobiography of boxing champion Jake LaMotta, it follows the highs and lows of his career and his turbulent, rage-filled personal life. With Robert DeNiro as LaMotta, it garnered him his second Academy Award and is still considered one of the best films of all time, despite its original mixed reviews. For many cinephiles, it is the definitive boxing movie, offering a far more realistic portrayal of the sport than Rocky’s fanciful one. But there’s room for both, and undoubtedly, there will be many, many more boxing films to come.
