Boxing on the screen – World Boxing Association

A few days ago in a friendly chat over coffee, we talked about the film released on 26 August 2016 about the legendary Panamanian boxer Roberto ‘Mano “E piedra” Durán – written and directed by the Venezuelan Jonathan Jakubowicz with his countryman Edgar Ramírez in the starring role, with Robert De Niro in the role of trainer Ray Arcel, and also – in the film’s large cast – salsa singer Rubén Blades as Carlos Eleta, the millionaire who was the lifelong manager of Duran, the legendary Panamanian boxer.

We also talked about the biopic ‘El Inca’, directed by Ignacio Castillo Cottin, which was not shown in Venezuela at the express request of the family of the tragically deceased Merida boxer Edwin ‘El Inca’ Valero, who was WBA super featherweight and lightweight world champion in 2006 and 2009, and who has gone down in the history of the discipline as the only current world champion to have won all his fights by knockout, 27 in his case.

We thought it would be interesting to address the relationship between cinema and boxing, undoubtedly the sport that has had the greatest presence in the Big Screen industry since its birth on 28 December 1895, when the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere presented in Paris their production ‘The Exit of the Lumiere Factory Workers’, which lasted only 46 seconds, but which marked a historic event.

Before addressing the central topic at hand, it is worthwhile to take a short walk through the boxing life of the man who is unanimously considered the best lightweight in history and without a doubt a member of the exclusive list of the ten best fighters of all time. 

Durán was world champion in four divisions (lightweight, welterweight, super welterweight and middleweight) and was the first Latin American to achieve that feat in a 33-year career that spanned from February 23, 1968 to July 14, 2001, in which he left a record of 103 wins with 70 by KO, 16 setbacks, 4 of them by knockout and no draws. (We are preparing a more extensive article in the next few days about ‘Cholo’, now 73 years old, who a few months ago went through health problems, fortunately now overcome).

5 OSCARS OUT OF 8 

Now let’s talk about what we came to talk about, as they say popularly. Did you know that out of 8 sports films that have won at least one Oscar, 5 are about boxing? Such films are, unless we miss any, ‘The Champ’ (1931), ‘The Hustler’ (Best Black and White Cinematography and Art Direction, 1961), ‘Rocky I’ (film, direction and editing, by Sylvester Stallone, 1976), ‘Ringing Bull’ (‘Raging Bull’, Best Film Editing and for which Robert De Niro won Best Actor, 1980), ‘Chariots of Fire’ (from the Olympic Games, 1982), ‘Million Dollar Baby’ (Best Director, Clint Eastwood, 2004) and ‘A Possible Dream’ (American Football, Best Actress for Sandra Bullock and Best Picture, 2009). 

A second question: Did you know that Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific inventor in the history of mankind with about a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb (although he only really perfected it), the dictaphone and the kinetoscope, was a fundamental factor in the beginnings and progress of cinema.

We were also unaware of this. We found out about it thanks to the reading of ‘El boxeo en el cine 1894-1994’, by the Spanish writer Pablo Mérida, a work that fell into our hands in 2001 as a gift from a friend. In a review of the book we find the following, at the beginning of Chapter I: ‘After the discovery of photography at the end of the 19th century, a frantic race began to obtain a device that could capture and display moving images. The first discoveries astonished the public and, very soon, the followers of the new invention showed their preferences about the subjects to be seen. Among the first were boxing matches’ (*).

(*)Ob.Cit. Pag.47, Laertes S.A de Ediciones, 1995.