YOU MIGHT BE A FIGHTER if you know that... It is nonsense when every time some boxing movie comes out someone involved with the making of the film insists that the actor in the lead role could have fought as a pro had he chose to. I heard that when Deniro played LaMotta in the Raging Bull back in 1980, John Voight played the lead in The Champ (with little Ricky Shroeder as his son) and most recently they made the claim that Will Smith could have done so after filming Ali a few years ago. Deniro at age 37 could have started boxing and successfully turned pro? Voight and Smith could have too and they say this because of what they showed in choreographed and highly supervised boxing in preparation for a movie?? Hype the movie all you want, OK? But dont expect people that know better to buy it. Let me begin by saying that I like Will Smith and I have liked him as far back as when he was just a kid singing Parents Just Dont Understand and Just One Of Those Days in the mid to late 1980s and I liked him a lot in Independence Day and Enemy Of The State, as well. He is a good rapper, too, despite what the hard core kids say, and I love most of his music. Some people think for some reason that because he doesnt swear in his songs or disrespect most of the population in rhyme that he isnt real. But he is real. Real good, I think, and I will even bet that there are some gangsta rappers out there listening to his CDs in the back room when they think nobody is around. I also know, though, that when they hype upcoming movies the publicists have to really lay it on thick sometimes to sell the film in question. They tell you how This great actor put on a performance that will surely bring him an Academy Award and This movie will make you laugh until it hurts, etc. But in the reviews of the ALI movie, and in the on-line articles where they hyped its impending arrival, there were stories about how Smith looked so good in the gym that if he wanted to become a professional fighter he could do it, and stuff like that. They said similar things about Voight, Deniro and, most recently, Russell Crowe in The Cinderella Man. I was watching a special where they showed a behind the scenes look at the making of The Cinderella Man and there were people who were playing audience members during some of the fight scenes and they were shown saying that if they didnt know better than they would have thought it was a real fight. They couldnt tell that, A, the punches being thrown were missing their targets and, B, that the punches being thrown were far from professional quality blows?? In other words the people interviewed were not veterans at ringside for professional boxing. Now Smith was even in on the act when talking about himself in the role of Ali, talking about how he was sparring with pros for the movie like James Toney, even insinuating that he was holding his own in gym sessions with the former three time world champion. I mean, people on the set were even quoted as saying that he really went at it with James a few times in the gym and that he showed some real skills, too. Now, You would have to assume that out of all the footage that they shot on the set that they would only use the best and most realistic results for the final cut of the movie, no? With that said, it was OBVIOUS to me watching that movie that James was taking it VERY easy on Smith. I can only imagine how weak the scenes were that they didnt use in the final cut of the movie. When Smith was against the ropes James was tossing out weak arm punches without even bending his knees for any kind of leverage. If that was sparring in a gym I would be yelling at James to stop fooling around and babying this guy! A fighter knows when a guy is not trying very hard and, trust me, James was not trying very hard at all. Not that it is something shocking and it certainly isnt a knock on Will Smith to say that James Toney was toying with him. The knock is on people who would try to make it seem like a guy like Will Smith could do anything to James that James didnt allow him do. Sometimes its a thing where a guy that doesnt have that much experience in the ring will see even the tamest of sparring seem torrid to him and I have to assume that is what happened here because there is no way whatsoever that Will Smith or anyone else will begin boxing in their mid-thirties and soon afterwards be trading any meaningful punches whatsoever with James Lights Out Toney or any other good professional fighter on that level. Forget about it.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 15:03:54 +0000
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