There is a new film starring two of Hollywood’s most famous fighters called Grudge Match coming to our screens and in this latest celluloid fistic caper, Robert De Niro, aka Jake La Motta, fights Sylvester Stallone, aka Rocky Balboa, for revenge 30 years after their last fight.
Both have Oscars, both have deep scars from their sacrifices inside the boxing ring in pursuit of acting glory and both, it would appear, have a grudge to settle; it all sounds perfectly and brilliantly Hollywood and the trailer has its moments.
In 1980s Raging Bull, De Niro (pictured) portrayed the brilliant and often psychotic world champion Jake La Motta so perfectly that the real Jake, a man whose company you never forget, became a little concerned when De Niro allegedly took his legendary research a bit far with one of the fighter’s six wives.
Stallone has built a career on playing the Philadelphia fighting legend Rocky, a man he first created from his days as a bum loser and then took through to his days as a brain-damaged millionaire, struggling with the death of his baby turtles and Mickey, his cornerman. What else could these two do but fight?
In theory, the return to the ring of Sly could get him into trouble with the Boxing Hall of Fame, which convenes each summer in Canastota, New York, to induct the living and the dead from boxing’s finest nights in a surprisingly joyless few days of solemn recognition.
However, to prove that the men behind the hall have a sense of humour, they included Sylvester Stallone a couple of years ago, which is funny until you look at the men they reject every 12 months. Stallone, or his alter ego Rocky Balboa, is meant to stay retired and not end his exile to fight 70-year-old De Niro.
Away from Hollywood, an equally bizarre fight is moving closer and closer to becoming reality and I can’t help thinking that it has probably done the rounds a bit, like the original script for Grudge Match.
In one corner is boxing’s youthful, unbeaten and insanely rich Floyd Mayweather and in the other corner is the old man, felon and self-confessed alien Bernard Hopkins.
Mayweather has not lost in 45 fights and competes with majesty in a weight division more than 12kg below the one that Hopkins, at 48 years of age, is still dominating in style. Hopkins has offered to drop weight to make the fight happen; it’s a fight that on paper is only slightly less ridiculous than De Niro v Stallone, and a fight that Hollywood’s boxing writers would love to have invented. – The Independent
- Grudge Match opens in South Africa on January 24.