Everton's supporting role in new movie 'Creed'

Oh yeah: spoiler alert.

Bastards.

Aware of the numerous "wardrobe mishaps" of unfortunate starlets at countless movie premiers, I have decided to wear my lucky boxies. They may have let me down countless times, but never once have I accidentally "popped out for the Postman".

Have not yet settled on a single choice of outfit for the occasion, best (I think) to await Sly & Bills notification of "costumerie allowance" (aka "Other Operating Costs"). Naturally, I shall select my outfit from the vast choices available via "Everton One" and "Everton Two". Sadly, it appears, that neither Bangkok Suvarnabhumi nor John Lennon International Airports offer the necessary items.

Failing that, I shall peruse the many and various market outfitters of Kirkby, Greatie and St Johns.

This spin off looks like it’s taking itself a bit seriously but it’s bound to have a heavy dose of bullshit in there, as all boxing films do. The only realistic one I’ve seen is Raging Bull.

Champion, a film made in the fifties, was a very good boxing film, it starred Kirk Douglas. Another was The Harder The Fall, the last film Humphrey Bogart made. It was the rumoured to have shown the career of Primo Carnera who was Heavyweight Champion of the World in the thirties. Most of his fights were fixed according to the film.

For realism I also liked Cinderella Man. Great job re-creating the Braddock/Baer fight.

Thanks, I’ll have a look at those films.

Mike (#10),

I forgot about Cinderella Man, it wasn’t bad to be honest. If you look at the actual footage of Braddock vs Baer it does look a lot like Crowe was in the ring. What wasn’t factually true, though, was portraying Baer as a bad guy, apparently he was a decent fella.

Well ok, there's probably very little chance the director sat in an edit suite with Thelma Schoonmaker and said...

"Wait go back three frames...THERE! THAT guy...the guy sidding in the upper Gwendoline stand, sucking on the e-cig, in the corner where it meets the upper Bullington - I wanna goddam close-up of him, he'll drive the girls muthafuckin' car-azy!"

..but as they're using my voice without paying me, surely that's worth a hot-dog or...something

Dave (7) - 'The Harder They Fall' is terrific and yes it was certainly based on the life/career of Primo 'Satchel Feet' Carnera (he was also known as 'The Ambling Alp').

Re Carnera's fights being fixed, I've no doubt they were, but to be fair to him, according the the superb book, 'Jacob's Beach', hundreds of big fights were fixed during boxing's 'golden era'

By the way, if you wanted to have a film night for mates and appear all..um.. 'film buffy', you could watch the Jimmy Cliff classic 'The Harder They Come', followed by 'The Harder They Fall.'

(does that Barry Norman - 'and why not!')

I tried watching Raging Bull once but couldn’t get in to it, maybe need another try. The Hurricane is a good one, as are most Denzel films, and Jake Gyllenhall’s new one, Southpaw, is a belter.

What a scrap.

Brian, I think I gotcha. I worked out a few times alongside James "Buster" Douglas... and Ali himself once asked me if I was crazy.

Great call on Jacob’s Beach, one of those books I read non-stop on holiday once.

As for boxing films (or more accurately films with boxing in them), you have to watch Punch Drunks by The Three Stooges. I must have seen it 50 times and it still makes me bellylaugh.

I disagree about Stallone. Granted he's been in some absolute terrible films. Stop! Or my mum will shoot is right up there with some of the worst films ever made.

But Rocky and First Blood are absolute stand out performances.

Mike, that is impressive.

Best I can manage is that I once threw a Dairylea triangle at Phil "Buster" Collins and then ducked out of sight when the tubby, tone-deaf, slaphead shouted "What the fuck?"

No-one would have lived with our Stanley on that form.

It’s Any Old Port. Quality!

Maybe before some of your time!

And a lot of them were women.

Another film about boxing and also the corrupt side of the game was Body and Soul starring a real actor John Garfield, who made Stallone look like a ten-cent extra.

I think they put a couple of pounds of nuts and bolts in his glove as well, still cry with laughter when I watch it.

Mike, I’m not going to disagree with you again. That Tim Howard is great.

Does anyone remember the old black and white British film The Square Ring with Jack Warner? I haven’t seen it for I while but it has plenty of qualities.

If we can just rattle on about boxing movies in general then Raging Bull is clearly out there on it's own as a masterpiece, but as with most vintage De Niro performances, I now find my enjoyment of it tainted by the last twenty years of excruciating, going through the motions, gurning he's habitually churned out. Seriously, since the same year double whammy of Casino and Heat, he's done nothing but disgrace his previous reputation as a committed character actor in a trade off for easy dollars to keep TriBeCa ticking over.

Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront (whilst not strictly speaking a fight film) is a portrayal of an ex-pugulist I've always had a soft spot for ever since I was a kid. In recent years, Christian Bale in The Fighter had Dickie Eklund's character and mannerisms down to a tee. There's also Korean film called Crying Fist that's well worth a watch if you like your boxing movies served with a nice slice of sentimentality and can overlook the fact that the guy playing an Olympic Silver Medalist looks like your gran could give him a good schooling in the ring.

Of course, all of those pale into insignificance compared to the most beloved boxing movie of all time: Teen Wolf Too.

I'm glad to see Tony Bellew is flying the flag for our great club in such a global manner. But there is a potential problem if our most famous thespian's career progresses. Hopefully he will insist on the Everton crest on his costume while playing the male lead on stage in the West End in, say, A Christmas Carol or To Kill A Mockingbird.

Regarding boxing books worth a shout: Sting Like A Bee by Jose Torres (1973) and The Greatest: My Own Story by Mohammed Ali (1977). My View from the Corner by Angelo Dundee also makes interesting reading. These and other boxing books are next to my EFC ones on the shelf. Might get the Hagler book for Christmas (still think the Leonard fight was a draw).

Re: DVDs, Champions Forever is a brilliant documentary and Tyson- the Movie also an interesting insight. I also started the D'Agostini collection Boxers some years but started to fear for my bank balance after about 25 installments. I also have all of Ali's fights on DVD except for the first 6 (to be honest, the commercial breaks on 1970s US TV is more interesting than a few of those).

My recommendation may not mean much as you clearly know more about the sweet science than myself, but the best boxing documentary I’ve ever seen would have to be Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise & Fall Of Jack Johnson. A great story, about four hours long, but absolutely riveting for every minute of that running time. If you haven’t seen it and you can track it down, it’s well worth investing your time in.

For me, the golden age were the superb middleweights. Duran, Leonard, Hearns...

I once remember watching a bout with my dad and he stated before the start that the "fella in the red corner was a Mexican road sweeper".

It turned out to be Hector Comacho in one of his early fights and he slaughtered his opponent; I’ve never let him forget that one.

If you are an aficionado of boxing literature you have probably read Mailer’s The Fight.

If you haven’t, it’s worth a read. I mean Mailer is one of the few journalists to have an ego to compare with Ali but his writing is superb.

Jack Johnson, a very, very interesting character, one of my all time boxing heroes, although I obviously never saw him. He believed in himself as a boxer, more importantly as a man, knew he was as good as any other person, no matter what colour they were, and it was much harder to be a black man in his day.

Dave #38 - you should check out 'The Fabulous 4' DVD with Hagler, Duran, Hearns, Leonard.

Dave #39 - thanks - will check that out.

Graham #40 - yes, I have 'The Fight'. Mailer's style sometimes gets in the way but a good read nevertheless.

One is Nigel Benn (a tough guy but I never really rated him as a boxer).

And the other two are forever linked.

One is Ken Buchanan who I saw fight live but (sadly) right at the end of his career.

And Duran (who took the title from Buchanan by kneeing him in the ball-bag... allegedly).

I'm fairly sure the pic of me with Duran is the greatest thing I own (a Simpsons script signed by Mike Scully comes close).

As for boxing books, AJ Liebling's 'The Sweet Science' is a terrific read.

John (37) - I saw most of that (incredibly long) JJ documentary about a year ago on some unknown channel.

It just kept going and going and going, but as you say, never flagged.

One depressing note (for me) was discovering how racist (one of my heroes) Jack London appeared to be, even setting up the search for 'the great white hope.'

I remember seeing Tyson with Harry Carpenter, both looking at old fighters on a movieola. Tyson's opinion on Johnson's very careful hit-but-don't-get-hit style was 'he stunk the joint out.'

By no means an expert (or even much of a fan) but Jack London seems a weird one to pin down.

On the one hand he warns about the dangers of "the yellow peril" and conjures up some futuristic fantasy in which the dastardly Chinese colonise and forcefully seek control over the entire planet. On the other, he writes 'The Chinago'!

His writings on Jack Johnson seem to contain equally conflicting emotions, in that he clearly expresses endless admiration for Johnson as this beautiful fighting machine, but then proceeds to position him as almost some sort of ultimate Boogie Man that absolutely must be put down at all costs.

Inner struggle with his dedication to Social Darwinism maybe?

-------------

Now, about that Simpsons script... Which episode? I may happen to think the show started down the slow, slippery, slope to eventual shiteness when Scully took over as show runner, but he did pen the lyrics to the sensational 'See My Vest'. Not quite up there with 'A Fish Called Selma' and Troy Mclure in Planet Of The Apes: The Musical ("I hate every ape I see. From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z"), but a classic none the less.

David Bedford, the great distance runner, sat there disgusted at her winning, while Henry Cooper was clapping wildly at her winning, I was never interested in that award after that year.

Whatever happened to that actor? I remember seeing him in another sad film where he was beaten by his dad, played by Burt Young (Paulie from Rocky) who was often cast as someone with a temper or maybe the few films I saw him in, not least one which I shouldn’t have seen at a young age... Amityville 2 The Possession.

Kevin #37... first I've heard of that (no pun intended). Where did you read that he was deaf?

A word of warning, do not go and see Southpaw. Utter shite.

Thank you, Mark Kermode.

By the way, another mistake a lot of people make is believing that Carry On Camping is a complex Vietnam analogy, equating Sid James, Bernard Breslaw and their girlfriends going unprepared into the unknown, with the US military's engaging of the Viet Cong in unfamiliar terrain.

But... it's just a load of nobs, knockers and arse gags and a quick blimp of one of Babs '5 abortions' Windsor's incredibly flabby (and incredibly overrated) tits.

The film also gave the great line when Spike turned up 3 months late and was asked, "I suppose, you know you are three months late arriving?"

"I'll make up for it sir, I'll fight nights as well!"

That 1970s Danish Classic Kiss my Whip is similarly misunderstood. It actually focuses on the sociology of knowledge, and deals with epistemological questions at the heart of human existence whilst touching on early Marxist theory.

I continue to be surprised that so many people seem unaware of this.

http://www.amazon.com.au/Hands-Stone-Legend-Roberto-Duran-ebook/dp/B004YE7ACO

He should have been disqualified for a low blow against Buchanan but he was miles ahead on points at the end of the 13th round.

Eugene(52), yes titles can be misleading, a mate of mine bought a DVD. Three In A Bed... it was about Darts!!!

You are both wrong. "Hands off Stones" was the correct title, and it was by Roberto Martinez.

I haven’t read that one but I bet it is a cracker!!!!!.

Apparently these days he suffers with a cauliflower arse (although he did beat our very own Noel "dat is all I ’ave to say!" Quarless).

That bet was the culmination of years of madness and when Sibson was despatched, I went down with him. I have been waiting on a thread like this for years for the chance of cathartic confession.

Although I'm not sure how long it would be considering he knocked them out first punch! :)

Creed walks out to Allez Allez Oh!