Step into the ring: The best bouts in movie history

Listen, sometimes a cheesy topping is plenty tasty, and the slightly bonkers B-movie Bloodsport offers its share of fromage. But it makes the cut due to its special effects, the impressive martial arts skills on display and the astonishingly sculpted physique of the Mussels From Brussels himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme in his breakout Hollywood role. As Frank Dux, an AWOL Army officer trained in the ninjutsu arts since his youth, he squares off against the ruthless, even-more-mightily yoked Chong Li, whose last competitor died at Li’s hands. Ever the dirty fighter, Li blinds Dux with crushed salt, but Dux falls back on his early training in blindfolded combat to battle back in a grimace-filled orgy of slow-mo action.

Body and Soul is a film noir morality drama in sports movie clothing. Under the tight, controlled direction of Robert Rossen and the brilliant handheld ring photography of James Wong Howe, it conveyed the up-close brutality of the fight game. Oscar-nominated John Garfield, showing strength and vulnerability, plays Charley Davis, who achieves fame and fortune in the ring, but gradually recognizes all the compromises he’s made in his rise to the top. As he enters his biggest bout yet, a title fight that he’s been paid to throw, the weight of his choices hit him as hard as his opponent’s every blow, prompting him to summon the moral courage to defy his unctuous promoter and win the fight. Even if he’s also dooming himself.

In Bruised, Halle Berry (who also directs) plays self-destructive ex-UFC fighter Jackie “Pretty Bull” Justice who, years after forfeiting a crucial fight, finds her way back into the octagon, shedding damaging habits and toxic relationships while re-bonding with the son she left behind. But Justice’s anxiety threatens to be her undoing upon discovering that she’d been set up as an easy defeat in a comeback cage match. Drawing largely on Berry’s expressive acting, the fight sequence deftly balances visceral action with Justice’s gradual awakening, as she funnels both her drive and her pain into the match. She doesn’t win the match, but in realizing her fighting spirit won over the crowd—and her opponent—Justice recognizes her hard-earned personal victory.

Based on Ring Lardner’s short story, Champion is one of the earliest prestige boxing dramas, a reverse-Rocky centered on antiheroic prizefighter, Midge Kelly (a chiseled, intense and charismatic Kirk Douglas, Oscar-nominated for his performance). Kelly rises from humble beginnings to become a boxing champ, but his unquenchable hunger for success leads him to embrace corruption and betray those closest to him. In the final match, Kelly takes on a contender who pummels him—until a ring announcer’s offhand remark that a new champion was about to be crowned fills Kelly with fury and he battles back to victory, only to succumb to the injuries he endured in the bout. The blistering black-and-white cinematography is a precursor to Raging Bull’s photographic style and the bleak worldview undeniably marks the movie as film noir.

Director Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man is one of the best of the many boxing biopics with an eye for both Depression Era authenticity and sepia-tinged nostalgia. Russell Crowe plays former boxer-turned-longshoreman James Braddock, who attempts a comeback so his family can survive hard times. His surprise rags-to-riches winning streak, powered by his now-even-more-formidable southpaw—and his charitable largess with his winnings—earns him the nickname “Cinderella Man” (so dubbed by Damon Runyon) and a bout with the vicious and arrogant heavyweight champ, Max Baer. In the final fight, using innovative techniques like illustrating Braddock’s inner visions via black-and-white cutaways, Howard cannily draws on Braddock’s grass-roots popularity by making the admiring crowd—in the ring and across the nation—a key part of his success.

Director Ryan Coogler’s Creed propelled the Rocky franchise into the 21^st century. Michael B. Jordan plays Adonis “Donnie” Creed, the illegitimate son of the late heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, who struggles with his father’s absence, his stepmother’s reluctance to let him box and his own feelings of inadequacy—until Apollo’s old rival, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), agrees to coach him. To snare a title bout against “Pretty” Rick Conlan, Donnie agrees to stop fighting under his mother’s last name and use the name Creed, amping up the pressure on him to perform. During the lavishly shot fight in which he seems radically outmatched, Donnie digs deep—aided by Rocky’s sage mentoring—to hold his own, and then some. Though Conlon wins in a split decision, Donnie not only puts his demons to rest, he announces himself as a legacy champion in the making.

Even scene-stealing Clyde the orangutan takes a back seat when Clint Eastwood’s laconic comedy, Every Which Way But Loose, gets serious in the finale: Eastwood’s truck-driving, bare-knuckle boxer Philo Beddoe finally gets to square off with reigning champ Tank Murdock, who’s about to retire with an undefeated record. No lavish arenas or Vegas-style pomp here: the two men throw down in a gritty parking lot as rednecks bet on the outcome. Pummeling Murdock with barbs and blows, Philo swiftly gains the edge, but soon realizes that Murdock’s reputation and mystique is all he, and his fans, really have—and he’s not sure he wants to inherit it. So in a noble sacrifice, Philo drops his guard and lets Murdock have his victory, his record unsullied, allowing Philo, with Clyde in tow, to return to his everyday life.

The Fighter, David O. Russell’s biopic of boxer Micky Ward, goes the distance with its focus on Ward’s fractured working-class family and their persistent dream to escape their lot in life. Dicky (Christian Bale, in an Oscar-winning performance) is a former boxer whose personal demons scuttled his chance at glory. Despite effectively training his half-brother Micky (Mark Wahlberg) to compete in a higher weight class, he eventually crushes Micky’s rise as well. But the siblings reconcile, and Micky takes on undefeated Shea Neary in a climactic bout that cannily uses the verisimilitude of television-style coverage, complete with ongoing color commentators, to illustrate just how outclassed Micky appears to be. But inspired by Dicky’s rousing, last-chance speech and fueled by his family’s belief in him, Micky battles back (with Wahlberg summoning full beast mode) and knocks his opponent to the mat.

Rocky director John G. Avildsen reinvented that film’s winning formula by adding high school angst and martial arts to create another classic, The Karate Kid. Bullied at his new school, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio, brimming with charisma and vulnerability) turns to the enigmatic teachings of Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita, Oscar-nominated for creating one of the all-time greatest sports mentors), whose lessons are as much about life as karate. Rallying after being intentionally wounded by a dirty leg-sweep at the All-Valley Karate Tournament, Daniel’s final face-off against his cocksure high school bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), under the sway of Lawrence’s unethical sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove), is a model for making audiences cheer.

Director/co-star Clint Eastwood begins Million Dollar Baby by telling a nuanced underdog story in the grand Hollywood sports movie tradition, as promising, determined female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank in an Oscar-winning turn) comes under the wing of Eastwood’s shrewd veteran trainer, Frankie. Despite Frankie’s reticence, the duo form a deepening, surrogate father-daughter bond as Maggie rises through the ranks. But then the film flips the script during Maggie’s $1 million title bout against the women’s welterweight champ, a notoriously dirty fighter. After an initially rousing back-and-forth shot with verve and style, the fight is cut short when Maggie’s opponent sucker punches her at the end of a round, causing her to break her neck and become a quadriplegic. The sequence illustrates the looming, lingering dangers of a sport steeped in violence. It’s startlingly brief, but it’s the lynchpin for the harrowing emotional journey that follows. Frankie wrestles with guilt, despair and grief as Maggie urges her father figure to help her end her life.

In Over The Top, Sylvester Stallone brings the underdog spirit of Rocky to a new sport that shows off his bulked-up biceps: arm-wrestling. The film offers its share of schmaltz as Stallone’s down-and-out trucker Lincoln Hawk, who side-hustles as a competitive arm wrestler, re-bonds with his estranged young son Michael as he rises through the sport’s ranks. Director Menahem Golan infuses the arm-wrestling scenes with flashy editing—using the then-novel “MTV style”—and a trucker-hatted professional wrestling ethos, making for a series of compelling bouts. Lincoln’s rise through the rankings culminates with an eye-bulging, vein-popping, sweat-dripping, muscle-rippling mano-a-mano against trash-talking champion, Bull Hurley. Lincoln’s victory, fueled by Michael’s belief in him, is doubly sweet, allowing father and son to finally be together.

There’s no sports arena here, just the lovingly photographed green hills of rustic Ireland that serve as the battleground for the delightful donnybrook of director John Ford’s, The Quiet Man. Retired American prizefighter Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to his ancestral land seeking a peace he never knew in the ring—and a wife, in the form of tempestuous Mary Kate Danaher (fiery Maureen O’Hara). But just as their Taming Of The Shrew-esque romance finally ignites, her irascible brother Will throws up roadblocks; Sean, who previously killed a man during a match, reluctantly puts up his dukes once again to have it out with Will. Their epic battle rages across the countryside (with the local villagers providing comic relief as they trail the brawl and speculate on the outcome) and they even pause for a pint together in a local pub before the final knockout. The subsequent fallout is the best kind of blarney.

Director Martin Scorsese infuses so much urgency and artistry into the boxing sequences of his biopic of ’50s-era champion Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro, in an Oscar-winning performance) that while it’s easy to see why Raging Bull is considered the greatest boxing film of all time, it’s harder to pinpoint the finest fight scene. Shot in crisp black-and-white—which reflects the era of the film and subtly evokes classic boxing noir antecedents like Body And Soul—and masterfully employing every cinematic technique at Scorsese’s disposal, the scenes of La Motta’s troubled personal life have a fly-on-the-wall vérité feel. But whenever La Motta’s in the ring, the visuals shift into a unique synthesis of visceral hyper-reality and dreamy, stylized surreality: LaMotta’s middleweight championship victory against Marcel Cerdan takes on an operatic loftiness while his grueling battle against Laurent Dauthuille underlines his brutal cunning as a fighter. But it’s LaMotta’s gloriously photographed and edited title bout against longtime nemesis Sugar Ray Robinson that packs the biggest punch. The vivid depiction of LaMotta taking a pummeling illustrates the depths of his depression, and possibly the end of his career. Yet what’s left of the fallen champ’s spirit gleams through when he reminds his rival that in all their bouts Robinson never knocked LaMotta to the canvas.

While there are certainly many ring fights in the Rocky franchise that are worthy of inclusion on this list, the first remains the definitive: Director John Avildsen and screenwriter/star Sylvester Stallone—Oscar nominated for both his effective screenplay and his breakout performance—crafted a perfect underdog-centric crowd-pleaser with the tale of boxing palooka Rocky Balboa, his odds-defying rise to the title bout and his star-crossed romance with Adrian (Talia Shire). One of the factors that makes the final bout between Rocky and the godlike but cynical champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) so compelling is not just that they’re evenly matched in screen presence and power but also the sheer number of reversals in their long battle, which results in a draw. But most effective is that Rocky, having proven to himself that he can go the distance, no longer cares about the fight’s outcome; all he really wants to win, once and for all, is Adrian’s heart.

After the Italian Stallion failed to unseat the Master of Disaster in the first film, the only way to raise the stakes was with an epic rematch in Rocky II. Even though southpaw Rocky (Stallone, now also in the director’s chair) was pummeling Creed with his right hand, Creed (Weathers) quickly has his opponent on the ropes with his speed, power and sheer cockiness, opening the same wounds he inflicted the first time. But the tense grudge match becomes more and more personal until Rocky rallies to land the final blow. After both battered combatants tumble to the mat, a dramatic race to beat the count ensues. Finally, Rocky at last proves that he not only has the heart of a champion, he’s earned the title to back it up.

In what is to date the ne plus ultra of mixed martial arts dramas, Warrior sees two brothers, emotionally scarred by their youthful experiences with their abusive, alcoholic father (Nick Nolte), on a collision course when both enter a $5 million winner-take-all MMA tournament. Brooding younger sibling Tommy (Tom Hardy) has a checkered military past and a chip on his shoulder toward his elder brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), who fled their troubled home and is now fighting to save his own family’s future. Facing off in the final round of the tourney, Tommy goes after Brendan with relentless aggression, but Brendan, the better fighter, reluctantly dismantles Tommy in director Gavin O’Connor’s tense, frenetically filmed fight sequence as their father watches ringside. Doling out equal parts pain and declarations of brotherly love, Brendan finally gets Tommy to tap out, and the climax becomes a testament to the power of surrender and, ultimately, reconciliation.

Muhammad Ali, the most singular boxing figure of all time, played himself in the 1977 biopic The Greatest, and filmmaker Michael Mann and star Will Smith delivered an even more accomplished take with 2001’s Ali. But no dramatized recreation comes close to capturing the dazzling pop cultural power, charisma and sheer athletic competitiveness of Ali at the height of his fame than Leon Gast’s Academy Award-winning documentary, When We Were Kings. It chronicles the proud, funny, gleefully trash-talking icon’s 1974 bid to recapture the heavyweight title from then champion George Foreman in the famed “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire. After setting the stage and exploring the profound impact of Ali, the most famous Black man in the world, on the African people, the film toggles deftly between a lengthy depiction of the epic fight itself and a deep-dive analysis from the likes of Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, and Spike Lee. They brilliantly demonstrate how Ali’s mental strategy was just as formidable as his physical prowess.

Plodding through a grim existence years after his professional wrestling prime, Randy “The Ram” Robinson (a bravura Mickey Rourke) finally retires when steroid damage to his heart nearly takes his life. He sees glimmers of hope after connecting with equally past-her-prime stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) and attempting to reconcile with his estranged daughter. But when everything collapses again, Ram accepts an anniversary match against old rival, The Ayatollah. Cassidy urges Ram not to compete, but he’s unable to resist the ring’s draw. In perhaps the screen’s most pathos-fueled fight, Ram’s failing heart causes him to falter. A concerned Ayatollah graciously offers to take a dive mid-match, noting that they’ve given the fans enough—but Ram insists on performing his signature finishing move, though Cassidy has vanished from his corner. The Wrestler ends on a perfectly ambiguous note, and Rourke, long-troubled in his own life and career, essays his role so magnificently he earned and Oscar nomination and mounted a major Hollywood comeback, adding an additional dimension of poignance.