NEW YORK—Thousands of movie-goers filled theaters across the country last weekend to see Mark Wahlberg’s stirring portrayal of Micky Ward in “The Fighter.”
The film about the hard-scrabble Boston-area boxer raked in more than $12 million its first full weekend, has been nominated for six Golden Globes and figures to be an Oscar darling when nominations are announced next month. Wahlberg and co-star Christian Bale even graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, which trumpeted the film as an instant classic.
The sport itself only wishes it could get the same kind of publicity.
While boxing remains one of the great storytelling backdrops, with its inherent drama and truthful cliches about long odds and overcoming adversity, the sport continues to suffer. Empty seats greeted fighters stepping into the ring in 2010, and the one fight that many hoped would generate some verve—Manny Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr.—still hasn’t happened.
It creates this seemingly incongruous juxtaposition: Boxing has never been more popular on the big screen, and perhaps never less popular in real life.
“You’ve got a couple things happening, you’ve got mixed martial arts and you’ve got no great heavyweight champion.
You’re going to need great boxers to bring people back to the sport,” said Wahlberg, who first met Ward about two decades ago and has spent plenty of time with him at Arthur Ramalho’s unpretentious West End Gym in Lowell, Mass.
“My thing is, every boxer that I’ve ever met has a story worth telling on the big screen or a book or television,” Wahlberg said. “It takes a very special individual to choose boxing as a career, and usually the sport chooses them anyway, not having any alternatives.”
Perhaps that is why boxing has been a formula for cinematic success.
Martin Scorsese’s epic “Raging Bull,” which landed Robert DeNiro the Academy Award for best actor in 1981, is still considered a masterpiece. “Cinderella Man” got three Oscar nominations in 2006, two years after “Million Dollar Baby” nabbed golden statuettes for best picture, best director (Clint Eastwood), best actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman).
Then there’s the film that started it all, the original “Rocky,” which took home two Oscars in 1976 and is still spawning sequels.
“The two things that brought boxing back to the forefront with the public was the great success of the 1976 Olympic team and when Sylvester Stallone gave us our heavyweight champion, Rocky Balboa,” Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward said.
It helped the sport experience a short-lived renaissance in the 1970s and ’80s, though the steady stream of folks who walked from movie theaters straight into arenas ran dry years ago.
Exorbitant ticket prices during a poor economy, squabbling among promoters, out-of-control sanctioning bodies and few identifiable stars have crippled attendance, especially in the United States. When Pacquiao fought Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium last month, the 41,734 paid patrons were less than what promoters and team owner Jerry Jones had hoped.
Bob Arum, who has been promoting fights for more than four decades, was optimistic that 30,000 fans would come to see Miguel Cotto face Yuri Foreman in June. The first fight at the new Yankee Stadium instead drew just over 20,000 to the grand ballpark in the Bronx.
Both of those events had major attractions—Pacquiao, boxing’s biggest star, and Cotto, wildly popular in New York—along with novel venues. But when those ingredients were missing, even fewer fans were turning the turnstiles.
Sergio Martinez’s stunning one-punch knockout of Paul Williams in a middleweight title fight was witnessed by 5,502 fans at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. In Las Vegas, the self-proclaimed “Fight Town,” junior welterweight champion Amir Khan and Marcos Maidana drew 4,632 people.
The sport itself only wishes it could get the same kind of publicity.
While boxing remains one of the great storytelling backdrops, with its inherent drama and truthful cliches about long odds and overcoming adversity, the sport continues to suffer. Empty seats greeted fighters stepping into the ring in 2010, and the one fight that many hoped would generate some verve—Manny Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr.—still hasn’t happened.
It creates this seemingly incongruous juxtaposition: Boxing has never been more popular on the big screen, and perhaps never less popular in real life.
“You’ve got a couple things happening, you’ve got mixed martial arts and you’ve got no great heavyweight champion.
You’re going to need great boxers to bring people back to the sport,” said Wahlberg, who first met Ward about two decades ago and has spent plenty of time with him at Arthur Ramalho’s unpretentious West End Gym in Lowell, Mass.
“My thing is, every boxer that I’ve ever met has a story worth telling on the big screen or a book or television,” Wahlberg said. “It takes a very special individual to choose boxing as a career, and usually the sport chooses them anyway, not having any alternatives.”
Perhaps that is why boxing has been a formula for cinematic success.
Martin Scorsese’s epic “Raging Bull,” which landed Robert DeNiro the Academy Award for best actor in 1981, is still considered a masterpiece. “Cinderella Man” got three Oscar nominations in 2006, two years after “Million Dollar Baby” nabbed golden statuettes for best picture, best director (Clint Eastwood), best actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman).
Then there’s the film that started it all, the original “Rocky,” which took home two Oscars in 1976 and is still spawning sequels.
“The two things that brought boxing back to the forefront with the public was the great success of the 1976 Olympic team and when Sylvester Stallone gave us our heavyweight champion, Rocky Balboa,” Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward said.
It helped the sport experience a short-lived renaissance in the 1970s and ’80s, though the steady stream of folks who walked from movie theaters straight into arenas ran dry years ago.
Exorbitant ticket prices during a poor economy, squabbling among promoters, out-of-control sanctioning bodies and few identifiable stars have crippled attendance, especially in the United States. When Pacquiao fought Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium last month, the 41,734 paid patrons were less than what promoters and team owner Jerry Jones had hoped.
Bob Arum, who has been promoting fights for more than four decades, was optimistic that 30,000 fans would come to see Miguel Cotto face Yuri Foreman in June. The first fight at the new Yankee Stadium instead drew just over 20,000 to the grand ballpark in the Bronx.
Both of those events had major attractions—Pacquiao, boxing’s biggest star, and Cotto, wildly popular in New York—along with novel venues. But when those ingredients were missing, even fewer fans were turning the turnstiles.
Sergio Martinez’s stunning one-punch knockout of Paul Williams in a middleweight title fight was witnessed by 5,502 fans at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. In Las Vegas, the self-proclaimed “Fight Town,” junior welterweight champion Amir Khan and Marcos Maidana drew 4,632 people.
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