Boxing Movies

Robert DeNiro in 1980's Raging Bull
Robert DeNiro in 1980’s Raging Bull

Want to know the best Boxing Movies?  How about the worst Boxing Movies?  Curious about Boxing Movies did at the box office or which Boxing Movies picked up the most Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins? Need to know which Boxing Movies movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

This page represents part 5 in a series of pages that are trying to identify the Top 100 Sports Movies . This page will look at the top 63 boxing movies.  Movies are ranked by using a combination of box office results, reviews from audiences and critics and award recognition.  To be considered for the page the movie had to be released at movie theaters. If you see a movie not on the list, just put the title in the comment box and I will add the movie as long as it was released in theaters.

As for this boxing page, we have two Oscar® winners for Best Picture….Rocky and Million Dollar Baby and numerous Oscar winning perfromances for playing boxers……Christian Bale, Hillary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Robert DeNiro, Wallace Berry and Melissa Leo(although she won for playing a boxing manager/mother of boxer).  The boxing movies in this page are broken down into three tables…Table One looks at the Top Ten Boxing Box Office hits, Table Two looks at the Top Ten Boxing Critical hits and Table Three ranks all 64 boxing movies from Best to Worst.

Since 1976 it is almost impossible to think about boxing and not think of one of the Rocky movies.
Since 1976 it is almost impossible to think about boxing and not think of one of the Rocky movies.

Boxing Movies Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Boxing Movies by the star of the Boxing movie
  • Sort Boxing Movies by actual domestic box office grosses
  • Sort Boxing Movies by adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort by how Boxing Movies were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Boxing Movie received.
  • Sort Boxing Movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Boxing Movies Table

  1. Nine Boxing Movie crossed the magical $100 million mark.  That is a percentage of 14.28% of his movies listed.  Rocky (1976) is the biggest box office hit when looking at adjusted domestic box office.
  2. An average Boxing Movie grosses $61.40 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  38 Boxing Movies are rated as good movies…or 38.63% of his movies.  Highest rated Boxing movie is Raging Bull (1980).  Lowest rated Boxing movie is Teen Wolf Too (1987).
  4. Twenty-one Boxing Movies (Hoosiers) received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 33.33% of the listed movies.
  5. Nine Boxing Movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 14.28% of his movies.
  6. An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 39.86.  20 Boxing Movies scored higher that average….or 31.74% of his movies.  Rocky (1976) got the highest UMR Score….Teen Wolf Too (1987) got the lowest UMR Score.
Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in 2010's The Fighter
Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in 2010’s The Fighter

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37 thoughts on “Boxing Movies

  1. Rocky 1 is one of the best boxing and love story movies of all time. So many people probably missed out seeing it because they supposed it was just about the boxing. Sylvester Stallone was brilliant at playing down Rockies attributes, of humility and inner strength. I loved Cinderella man, raging bull, the power of one, and million dollar baby. Great homage to the art of movie boxing. Cheers

    1. hey attempted humour….I appreciate your comments….all the movies you mentioned are outstanding movies….I am glad to see someone else mention The Power of One…that is a great movie….although he was ranked pretty low on my rankings(46th)….I appreciat the compliment as well.

  2. Boxing as a sports movie genre is an intereseting one. Because boxing and betting on boxing can be fixed, there are a lot of crime movies-particularily film noir-where boxing plays a significant role-and yet because of the predominance of films where boxing the sport itself is the focus rather than the coaches, mob etc. the definition of the genre as a sports genre is narrower than say in the football genre where Heaven Can Wait had few actual football scenes. An example of a movie with crime as the focus rather than sport that isn’t included– because it is wrestling-is Night and the City starring the great Richard Widmark-one of the best films he ever made. as a fan of film noir, I know a lot more about boxing films than I care to know-I hate to watch boxing.

    Here is a list of my favourite boxing films. I am a fan of crime films and studio-era films and this is reflected in the list of films I choose:

    The Champ-orginal version only

    Golden Boy

    Here Comes Mr. Jordon

    Night and the City

    The Set-Up — a Robert Ryan classic! It deserves a better audience

    Further thoughts:

    I have yet to see The Harder They Fall. The fact that it was Bogart’s last film might have something to do with it. Requiem For a Heavyweight made me angry and I cried over what happened to Quinn’s character. I’ve never been able to watch it a second time. Even when the film is a classic such as Champion, I’m not likely to ever watch it if there are a predominance of boxing scenes with blood gashing around. I’ll just spend the time looking at the ceiling. However, I love crime films, so the number of movies I’ve seen would surprise you. But it wasn’t until Jackie Cooper died that I finally watched The Champ. I cried,of course.

    1. Hey Flora….excellent points you make about boxing and the different types of movies…..I will make sure to include Night and City in my hub that will include Men With Brooms. Your list of top boxing movies is impressive….I agree 100% that The Set-Up does not get its proper credit….I stumbled across that movie on cable numerous years ago and it blew me away….and yet I rarely ever hear about it. Bogart’s The Harder They Fall is a decent movie, not the best movie to end his career with….I wish he and Gable would have made The Man Who Would Be King..that would have been a great swan song for both great actors…..as always thanks for the comments.

      1. important notice for Rocky fans who are interested in visiting locations where the movie was filmed: The bridge in Hope, British Columbia featured in the first movie is being torn down soon. If you haven’t seen it and want to, you better hurry.

        1. Rereading my first comment, I see in my excitment talking about Richard Widmark, I included his wrestling film in my boxing list. oops. preoccupation with Richard, no doubt. That means I must choose another. hmmm. How about the EG Robinson version of Kid Galahad because I love EG Robinson?

          1. Thanks for the update on the bridge Flora, as for you including a wrestling movie in the boxing movie page…we forgive you….DeNiro remade Night and the City as a boxing movie…..I have included both Night and the City movies on part 5 of this series. Also you will be glad to know that I will be doing a Richard Widmark hub as soon as I finished this sports movie project

  3. YO Cogerson (spoken in Rocky’s tone) The Fighter was a knock out movie! Real tearjerker! My favorite after ALL the Rocky flicks! I still haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby….which reminds me have you completed a Morgan Freeman hub yet? I’m almost positive you have…if not you might want to while he still has a pulse :)) Excellent page! YO thanks alot!

    1. Sunshine625….thanks for reading….I agree that the Fighter is an excellent movie….Christian Bale earned his Oscar for that movie. As for Morgan Freeman….first you need to see his Oscar winning performance in Million Dollar Baby……second…..yes I have done a Freeman…..third….a lady from Orlando requested the Freeman movie page….perhaps you know the lady from Orlando?…..lol.

  4. “In a stunning upset Rocky Balboa is the new heavyweight champion of the world!”, “Adriaaaaan, I did it!”

    Sorry I’ve got something in my eye.. [sniff]

    Who doesn’t want to see the underdog win? It’s audience manipulation at it’s best. I’m not surprised the Rocky films were so successful.

    Raging Bull had a brilliant performance by De Niro and was expertly directed by Martin Scorsese but it wasn’t a big hit or well loved by audiences because the main character was so repellent.

    I’ve seen 19 of the Boxing films on your list Cogerson. One of my favourites is way down on your list, Hard Times starring Charles Bronson as an invincible bare-knuckle boxer. I’ve watched it dozens of times, one of Walter Hills finest films.

    Of the more recent films I didn’t like Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby or The Fighter. But I did like Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler… oh wait wrong page. 🙂

    1. Hey Steve Lensman….sorry I did not mean to get you so upset from reading my boxing movie page…..lol. Rocky Balboa is so good he is in the Boxing Hall of Fame…pretty impressive for a fictional character. As for Raging Bull….great movie but not exactly a movie I want to watch over and over….I bought a special edition of Raging Bull a few years ago…..and I am still waiting for the right mood to watch it. As for Hard Times….I think it finished pretty high….24th out of 61….Coburn and Bronson made a good team….off the top of my head they made at least three movies together….Magnificent Seven, Great Escape and Hard Times…all good movies. The one boxing movie I have always wanted to see but have not….1972’s Fat City directed by the great John Huston. Thanks for the comments.

  5. Very impressive list. I haven’t seen “The Champ” or “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” yet, but I definitely want to though. Thanks again for writing this, as I’ll definitely be sure to rate up this one. Although you might want to add “Teen Wolf 2” as well, as that movie had boxing in it too, since I noticed you put the first “Teen Wolf” in the basketball hub. Anyways, thanks again for writing this Cogerson, as I look forward to seeing how the rest turn out in this series. 🙂

    1. Hey Stevennix2001…if you liked Heaven Can Wait…then you will like Here Comes Mr. Jordan….it is the same story….just a boxer versus a quarterback….Claude Raines is excellent in the movie. As for Teen Wolf 2….I saw it on some boxing lists….but I could not remember the boxing part in the movie….for some reason I do not remember Teen Wolf 2 very well….so there is a Jason Bateman boxing movie….who would have thought.

      1. Alright Teen Wolf Too has been added to the hub….and it finishes dead last with a Movie Score of 10.53 and a critic/audience score of 21%…ouch

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