Paste's The 50 Best Boxing Movies of All Time

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By Christina Newland | April 9, 2024 | 1:15am

Boxing and the cinema have been inseparable from the earliest days of movie-making. The propulsive excitement and fierce elegance of the sport were perfectly suited to the screen, and some of the earliest surviving motion pictures are filmed boxing matches. As the sport grew in popularity throughout the 20th century, so too did the movie genre.

It’s no surprise filmmakers return to it frequently. With the sport’s mythic, violent clashes and long history of social eruption, it can be an allegory for nearly whatever you want it to be. They can be simple fight yarns, but more often they’re other things—explorations of greedy commercial exploitation, poverty, violence, race. They prod at class divisions, and at what it means to be a ‘man’ in the world. But they can also be brooding meditations on what may have been or could never be. They speak of the long dark night of the soul, a damned-if-you-do existentialism where you rise from the gutter only to be chewed up and spat out again by the fierce internal cogs of the sport. Then again, there are light-hearted celebratory biopics and slapstick parodies to choose from, too.

You’ll find all of the above in our list of the 50 best boxing movies:

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  1. 1 new

    Body and Soul

    1947, in 6 top lists Check
  2. 2 new

    Raging Bull

    1980, in 34 top lists Check
  3. 3 new

    Rocky

    1976, in 20 top lists Check
  4. 4 new

    Fat City

    1972, in 9 top lists Check
  5. 5 new

    The Set-Up

    1949, in 10 top lists Check
  6. 6 new

    Requiem for a Heavyweight

    1962, in 1 top list Check
  7. 7 new

    The Harder They Fall

    1956, in 3 top lists Check
  8. 8 new

    Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of...

    2004, in 0 top lists Check
  9. 9 new

    When We Were Kings

    1996, in 7 top lists Check
  10. 10 new

    Tyson

    2008, in 0 top lists Check
  11. 11 new

    30 for 30: Muhammad and Larry

    2009, in 0 top lists Check
  12. 12 new

    The Greatest

    1977, in 0 top lists Check
  13. 13 new

    Champion

    1949, in 2 top lists Check
  14. 14 new

    Million Dollar Baby

    2004, in 12 top lists Check
  15. 15 new

    Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story

    2005, in 0 top lists Check
  16. 16 new

    Rocco e i suoi fratelli

    1960 — a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers, in 19 top lists Check
  17. 17 new

    Somebody Up There Likes Me

    1956, in 3 top lists Check
  18. 18 new

    Day of the Fight

    1951, in 0 top lists Check
  19. 19 new

    The Fighter

    2010, in 2 top lists Check
  20. 20 new

    Girlfight

    2000, in 3 top lists Check
  21. 21 new

    TwentyFourSeven

    1997, in 0 top lists Check
  22. 22 new

    Creed

    2015, in 4 top lists Check
  23. 23 new

    Ali

    2001, in 0 top lists Check
  24. 24 new

    The Great White Hype

    1996, in 0 top lists Check
  25. 25 new

    Rocky Balboa

    2006, in 0 top lists Check
  26. 26 new

    Bleed for This

    2016, in 0 top lists Check
  27. 27 new

    The Prizefighter and the Lady

    1933 — a.k.a. Every Woman's Man, in 1 top list Check
  28. 28 new

    Night and the City

    1992, in 1 top list Check
  29. 29 new

    Boxeadora

    2015, in 0 top lists
    Check
  30. 30 new

    Undisputed

    2002, in 0 top lists Check
  31. 31 new

    Don King: Only in America

    1997, in 0 top lists Check
  32. 32 new

    Kid Galahad

    1937, in 0 top lists Check
  33. 33 new

    The Notorious Elinor Lee

    1940, in 0 top lists Check
  34. 34 new

    Golden Boy

    1939, in 0 top lists Check
  35. 35 new

    The Champ

    1931, in 3 top lists Check
  36. 36 new

    Golden Girl

    2016, in 0 top lists
    Check
  37. 37 new

    Gentleman Jim

    1942, in 3 top lists Check
  38. 38 new

    The Ring

    1927, in 1 top list Check
  39. 39 new

    Knuckle

    2011, in 0 top lists Check
  40. 40 new

    The Bleeder

    2016 — a.k.a. Chuck, in 0 top lists Check
  41. 41 new

    Cinderella Man

    2005, in 2 top lists Check
  42. 42 new

    The Hurricane

    1999, in 1 top list Check
  43. 43 new

    The Boxer

    1997, in 0 top lists Check
  44. 44 new

    Resurrecting the Champ

    2007, in 0 top lists Check
  45. 45 new

    The Kid from Brooklyn

    1946, in 0 top lists Check
  46. 46 new

    Iron Man

    1931, in 0 top lists Check
  47. 47 new

    Battling Butler

    1926, in 3 top lists Check
  48. 48 new

    Sons of Cuba

    2009, in 0 top lists Check
  49. 49 new

    The Joe Louis Story

    1953, in 0 top lists Check
  50. 50 new

    The Gordon Sisters Boxing

    1901, in 0 top lists Check
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Last updated on Apr 11, 2024; source