Boxing at the Movies: Kings of the Ring

Boxing and film goes back to the early days of cinema with footage surviving from Edison's days.

Boxing has always been a popular subject for movies because you can have stories of not only pugilists slugging it out in the ring but stories of crooked managers and weak willed boxers.

Danny Leigh examines the popularity of boxing films but also how boxers transgress themselves into film by way of documentaries such as Muhammed Ali in When we were Kings or playing themselves as Mike Tyson does in The Hangover films.

We go through some of the most popular boxing films. On the Waterfront, Rocky, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby. We have an academic explaining the relevance of the films and the examination of race, gender and films as well. In the early years, there was resistance of showing footage of actual black boxers beating up white boxers and movies substituted stories of black boxers with whites ones.

However the documentary felt a little empty. Leigh might be a boxing fan as well as a film buff but so many interesting boxing films were ignored, those that appear in different genres such as comedy. There is a rich tapestry out there and although interesting to see Kubrick's take on a boxing film, we needed more diverse nuggets like that.