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Five Boxing Documentaries You Need to See
There is no other sport that lends itself to dramatic, real-life storytelling like boxing. You have two protagonists and with most boxing narratives, you have grit, grime, colourful characters, improbable come-from-behind victories, and underdogs.
Besides, while life is often stranger than fiction, boxing is often stranger than even life itself.
When We Were Kings, 1996
I have written on When We Were Kings already this week, but this 1996 Oscar winner by Leon Gast remains a superlative piece of work. Mostly shot in 1974 around the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship, the film largely leans into the mythology of Ali and his place within popular and political culture.
When We Were Kings is also a blistering look at a world that has seemingly long vanished – when foreign travel still seemed exotic and when writers and reporters often became celebrities in their own right, gilded with the proximity they had to star athletes.
Thrilla in Manila, 2008
Made as a corrective to cheap Ali mythology, Thrilla in Manila made its debut on television in 2008 and tells its story not only of the third and final fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, but their rivalry from the mid-1960s when their paths first begin to cross to the rubble of their ‘friendship’ once all the shouting had died down and the bright lights had faded.
On watching the film, a friend of mine – a boxing fanatic – was saddened to see how frail Joe Frazier looked, largely living out of the back of his gym in Philadelphia, his body stiff and his voice soft and raspy. In hindsight, Frazier looks more broken than anything else, having immolated himself with his hatred for Ali.
After the Last Round, 2009
There is a great argument that this documentary, which seemingly vanished without trace, is possibly the greatest boxing documentary ever made.
A look at boxing from start to finish, from the young boys to the old and broken man, this film looks not only at the less-glamorous parts of boxing but also tries to explain why so many are attracted to it.
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The people taking part are also the stuff of dreams of any boxing purist – Joe Mesi, DaVarryl Williamson, the Moyer boys. Fantastic from the start, After the Last Round falters in the last few moments, comparing sentient beings to greyhounds, but consider it a rough landing after a great flight.
Pariah: The Lives and Deaths of Sonny Liston, 2019
He is perhaps not as popular as he once was, but Sonny Liston terrified American society in the early 1960s, given his proximity to organised crime and his glower that let people know that this was not a man to be messed with. Such was Liston’s reputation that Cus D’Amato twenty years later would bend people’s ears to say that the young Mike Tyson was Liston’s nephew. It was an apt comparison.
Liston became heavyweight champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in one round. Eight months later, he did the exact thing again. He then lost the championship to Cassius Clay in his first defence, seemed to go into the tank in the rematch and gradually worked his way out of contention.
Liston died in mysterious circumstances in 1970, found dead in his home just after Christmas. As the writer Nick Tosches later pointed out in The Devil and Sonny Liston, nobody has ever been sure in either case of when Liston was born or died. Pariah: The Lives and Deaths of Sonny Liston goes some way to exploring this complex man.
Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story, 2005
Documentary and non-fiction deal in truth, but there is a lot of smoke surrounding Emile Griffith, so thick that the facts of a life remain obscured: Griffith was or was not gay, he did or did not kill Benny ‘Kid’ Paret in the ring, Paret should or should not have been in the ring.
When Griffiths and Paret met for their final fight in 1962, it came against a backdrop in which Paret had insulted Griffith’s sexuality (or rumour of it). When Paret died after the fight after being knocked out by Griffith, the story was easy to write: an insulted Griffiths beat a man to death for an insult.
But the truth was far more complex, and far more emotional. The final scene, when Griffith meets the son of the man who died, and is forgiven, will break most people.
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