Speaking of the movie Creed 3, we saw a trailer for a new biopic about George Foreman that definitely looks worth watching, just called Big George Foreman. Plenty of real life boxers have seen feature-length movies (as opposed to TV or documentary) of their lives but it's actually pretty surprising how many great boxers have never been portrayed as the main character on the silver screens: Sugar Ray Robinson (though there is talk of one going into production soon), Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Leonard and plenty of others. Even Joe Louis hasn't had a film made about him in 70 years. Not that Hollywood is just churning out boxer pics left and right but fighters do make for interesting cinematic subjects. Their lives are generally tough, they do a job 99.9999999% of the population in their right minds would be afraid to do (rightly so) and can be a great model for admirable qualities like determination, perseverance and heart, triumphing over adversity.
This got me thinking about boxers who I would like to see in the movies. I'd certainly watch any from the abovementioned list but Jack Dempsey might be my top pick just because of how important he was to the sport and our culture at the time. I'm very surprised no one has even attempted this, outside of a made-for-TV movie starring Treat Williams and Sally Kellerman. Dempsey also had that classic, handsome, American icon look so you'd get a lot of high-profile actors wanting to play him and probably wouldn't have trouble filling the seats.
Although the much bigger shock is that there is no high-budget theatrical version of the Jack Johnson story. He broke the color barrier many many years before Jackie Robinson and Marion Motley, faced even more scrutiny marrying multiple white women, and also opened some interracial night clubs (one later became the Cotton Club after Johnson sold it). He faced scrutiny from both blacks and whites at the time, lived a life mired in controversy, had a professional life outside of boxing and even spent time in prison. If a movie studio wants lots of money and at least a few Oscars, this one seems to be pretty much tee'd up.
Plus, very few people know what Jack Johnson looks like and even less know what he sounded like so we would all go in with no expectations of the man himself. This gets the filmmakers around the problem that I, as a boxing fan, have when they cast actors to play boxers. I could never get past Will Smith in Ali. Not that he did a bad job at all, he did as well as anyone could to encapsulate the Ali persona but it all came through a Will Smith filter. I had the same problem with the Tyson series on Hulu recently. The actor did a fine job but just like Ali, Mike Tyson is such a truly unique character that no one else can really play him but him. I don't have a problem with them not being to pull off the boxing part, it's just that I have such a strong association with these fighters that I can't get immersed into the story when I only see the actor, especially a really well-known one.
So if I'm a studio head, I will definitely greenlight the Jack Johnson biopic. Sugar Ray Leonard is another one of the high-profile boxers I'd like to see up on screen too. I'm a little afraid of the paradigm with Ali and Tyson I mentioned above since I have a strong association with Leonard too but he was played by Usher in the Roberto Duran film (Hands of Stone) and even though he looked nothing like Sugar Ray, I still wasn't put off by it. So maybe I could handle a whole film about his life with an actor playing him. Plus we'd get to see the other 3 kings - Hagler, Hearns and Duran - since their careers were so intertwined. Sugar Ray was a golden boy for sure but he had his share of issues in his personal life and I wondering if that is something he would want to see portrayed in a movie. I hate to say it but the best version of this story might have to come after Ray Leonard has passed on.
Speaking of Golden Boys, I expect an Oscar de la Hoya movie will emerge at some point, but maybe also down the road as Oscar's professional life is still playing out.
One much lower-profile fighter who I think has an interesting life's story is Matthew Saad Muhammed. He was left on the steps of a church as an infant, taken in by nuns, eventually adopted, and turned into one of the more exciting, underrated fighters of the 70s and 80s. His fights were exciting and often involved comebacks, perfect for a movie. He even fought in one of the very early, pre-UFC MMA-type bouts in 1991 against a grappler who submitted him in under a minute. Unfortunately, he was one of those athletes who lost all of his money and declared bankruptcy, eventually becoming homeless on the streets of Philadelphia. So it wouldn't exactly be the happiest of endings but still inspiring to see him go from rags to riches, before eventually going back to rags.
Then there are plenty of current fighters who might one day make for an interesting movie in the future. Tyson Fury, Floyd Mayweather Jr., hell even the Paul brothers' legacy will probably be immortalized on film after their story comes to an end. One thing's for sure that whoever gets a movie, I will be there to watch it. I will watch any movie about a fictitious boxer too. In fact, if I'm being totally honest, the first boxing hero/inspiration was none other than Rocky Balboa himself. Who knows where I would be without him!
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