Boxing films

1976 · Directed by John G. Avildsen

A Philadelphia club fighter gets one impossible shot at the heavyweight championship of the world.

1979 · Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Rocky hangs up the gloves, but the pull of the ring and Apollo Creed bring him back for one more war.

1982 · Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Champion Rocky is humbled by Clubber Lang and turns to Apollo Creed to win back the hunger he lost.

1985 · Directed by Sylvester Stallone

After Drago kills Apollo in the ring, Rocky travels to Moscow to avenge his friend on Christmas Day.

1990 · Directed by John G. Avildsen

Broke and retired, Rocky trains a young contender whose ambition threatens the family he fought for.

2006 · Directed by Sylvester Stallone

An ageing Rocky, still haunted by loss, steps back through the ropes for one final exhibition.

2015 · Directed by Ryan Coogler

Adonis Johnson seeks out Rocky Balboa and builds a fighting legacy of his own.

2018 · Directed by Steven Caple Jr.

Adonis Creed faces Viktor Drago, son of the man who killed his father in the ring decades earlier.

2023 · Directed by Michael B. Jordan

Adonis's reign is threatened when a childhood friend returns from prison demanding his shot.

2024 · Directed by Rachel Morrison

Ryan Destiny plays Claressa Shields, the Flint teenager who taught herself to fight and became the first American woman to win Olympic boxing gold.

2023 · Directed by Colman Domingo

A Golden Gloves featherweight takes a factory shift to keep his marriage and his pride intact, in Colman Domingo's quietly devastating debut behind the camera.

2023 · Directed by George Tillman Jr.

John Boyega plays the two-time heavyweight champion whose road ran from the streets of Houston to the most unlikely comeback in the division.

2022 · Directed by Daniel Graham

The story of Jem Belcher, the one-eyed bare-knuckle champion who fought his way to the top of Georgian England's prize ring.

2021 · Directed by Barry Levinson

Ben Foster plays Harry Haft, a Jewish boxer who fought inside the camps and carried those years into every round of his professional career.

2019 · Directed by Max Winkler

Jack O'Connell and Charlie Hunnam play brothers who run a fixed bout out of a West Virginia gym and quickly lose control of it.

2017 · Directed by Sean Penn

Liev Schreiber is a former heavyweight champion returning after a stroke, in a film that asks what a fighter owes his family and himself.

2016 · Directed by Philip Guzman

The story of Chuck Wepner, the club fighter who knocked Ali down and lasted nearly fifteen rounds, then became the accidental inspiration for Rocky.

2016 · Directed by Ben Younger

Vin Diesel plays Vinny Pazienza, the Providence fighter who was told he would never walk, let alone fight, after breaking his neck.

2016 · Directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz

Edgar Ramirez plays Roberto Duran under the care of trainer Ray Arcel, played by Robert De Niro, through the rise and the knockout that changed everything.

2015 · Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Jake Gyllenhaal is a champion who has lost everything and has to rebuild himself before he can win anything back.

2014 · Directed by Omung Kumar

Priyanka Chopra plays the Manipur boxer who won five world championships and an Olympic bronze while raising a family.

2013 · Directed by Peter Segal

Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone play retired rivals coaxed back for one final bout, in a comedy that enjoys every debt it owes the genre.

2010 · Directed by David O. Russell

Micky Ward fights through family chaos and long odds for one last run at a world title.

2008 · Directed by Robert Townsend

A fractured retelling of Sonny Liston's career, with Dennis Quaid as Don King, moving between the fights and the accusations that followed them.

2007 · Directed by Rod Lurie

A sports reporter's comeback piece on a forgotten heavyweight slowly turns into a search for his own father.

2007 · Directed by Christian De Reamer

The road from an abusive childhood and a crippling stutter to the MMA cage, told by the fighter who lived it.

2005 · Directed by Ron Howard

James J. Braddock returns from the breadline to become boxing's most unlikely heavyweight hero.

2004 · Directed by Clint Eastwood

A determined fighter and a guarded trainer form a bond that carries them far beyond the gym.

2004

A dependable light-heavyweight is hired to spar with a rising prospect and has to reckon with what his own record has come to mean.

2004 · Directed by Charles S. Dutton

Meg Ryan plays Jackie Kallen, the Detroit manager who fought the old boys' club and became one of the sport's most powerful figures.

2003

The true story of Parinya 'Nong Toom' Rojrasameesuk, a transgender Muay Thai fighter who kept winning while living openly as herself.

2002 · Directed by Menahem Golan

A drama built around the Joe Louis and Max Schmeling rematch in Yankee Stadium, and the propaganda that wrapped itself around the fight.

2001 · Directed by Michael Mann

Will Smith takes on Muhammad Ali's turbulent years from the Liston upset to the Rumble in the Jungle.

2000 · Directed by Karyn Kusama

A Brooklyn teenager discovers discipline, purpose and her own power inside a boxing gym.

2000

A fighter and his manager brother pull apart over the business end of the New York fight game.

1999 · Directed by Norman Jewison

The story of Rubin Carter, the middleweight contender who fought for freedom after a wrongful conviction.

1999 · Directed by Ron Shelton

Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson are ageing fighters on the same Atlantic City card, waiting on a phone call that never comes.

1997 · Directed by Jim Sheridan

Daniel Day-Lewis is a boxer released from prison into a Belfast still at war with itself, determined to build a gym instead of a grudge.

1996 · Directed by Leon Gast

The Oscar-winning ringside account of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and an unforgettable night in Zaire.

1995

Home footage and interviews assembled while Mike Tyson was still at the centre of the sport, years before the films that came after.

1992

A retired boxer returns to the gym in this lesser-known fight picture, made years before the Roman epic that borrowed its title.

1992 · Directed by Michael Ritchie

James Woods runs a con on a Rhode Island country club by entering an unknown fighter against whichever of the club's men it will back.

1989 · Directed by Robert M. Young

Willem Dafoe plays Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Jewish champion forced to box inside Auschwitz, who kept winning to stay alive.

1988 · Directed by David Drury

Nicolas Cage is a rising fighter whose father, a former boxer turned referee, cannot stay out of his corner.

1988 · Directed by Michael Seresin

Mickey Rourke plays a boxer who returns to his New Jersey hometown and finds work with a carnival promoter played by Christopher Walken.

1986 · Directed by Joe Roth

Two brothers from a Los Angeles barrio take different roads towards the same championship fight.

1980 · Directed by Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro gives a bruising, unforgettable performance as middleweight champion Jake LaMotta.

1972 · Directed by John Huston

Two fighters at opposite ends of their careers chase fragile hopes through the gyms of Stockton.

1970 · Directed by Ivan Passer

James Earl Jones repeats his stage performance as Jack Johnson, the heavyweight whose refusal to lose made him a national problem.

1962 · Directed by Ralph Nelson

An ageing heavyweight searches for dignity after the fight business abruptly casts him aside.

1962 · Directed by Phil Karlson

Elvis Presley is a garage mechanic turned prizefighter, caught between a promoter's daughter and the mob that believes it owns him.

1956 · Directed by Mark Robson

A cynical sportswriter discovers the corruption behind the manufactured rise of a giant heavyweight.

1956 · Directed by Robert Wise

Paul Newman plays the middleweight who went from military prison to the world title, in the biopic that rebuilt the genre.

1955 · Directed by Stanley Kubrick

A down-on-his-luck boxer is dragged into a violent New York noir after defending a dancer.

1955 · Directed by Jerry Hopper

Tony Curtis is a young boxer who marries his manager's mother and learns what the fight business charges for a mistake.

1953

A hurried biopic of Joe Louis's rise, made while the man himself was still fighting, and a document of how the sport told its own stories.

1950 · Directed by John Sturges

Dick Powell plays a champion boxer whose right hand is failing while his marriage comes apart.

1949 · Directed by Robert Wise

A lean film-noir classic unfolding in real time around an ageing fighter who refuses to take a dive.

1949 · Directed by Mark Robson

Kirk Douglas's rise from hobo to champion, and the corruption that follows him into the ring, in the film that announced him.

1947 · Directed by Robert Rossen

A gifted boxer’s rise is poisoned by easy money, crooked management and the price of success.

1942 · Directed by Raoul Walsh

Errol Flynn plays Jim Corbett, the schoolteacher who dethroned John L Sullivan and helped drag the prize ring into the modern age.

1939 · Directed by Rouben Mamoulian

Gary Cooper is a dockside fighter torn between the violin he loves and the title fight he is being pushed towards.

1937 · Directed by Michael Curtiz

Edward G Robinson runs a gangster-promoted middleweight while Bette Davis waits in the wings, in the version that started the franchise.

1933 · Directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Heavyweight Max Baer stars as a fireman turned fighter, with Myrna Loy as the manager who builds him up and nearly breaks him.

1931 · Directed by King Vidor

A washed-up fighter tries to reclaim his pride and provide a better life for his devoted son.

1927 · Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

A silent melodrama set in a boxing booth at London's Earls Court, where two men fall for the same girl between rounds.