De Niro Could have fought Professionaly?

He also said that Mickey Rourke almost broke his ribs while filming Get Carter. So that puts things into perspective.

 

Dolph Lundgren actually did bust his ribs, bad. Dolph wasn't a boxer, but a martial artist (karate) at a high level.

 

Yes, and some fighters have beaten 20 of them and boast a 10-0 or 20-0 record and even have a local fanbase and can draw a decent crowd on a small local bill.
Which is my point.
And not everyone calls these 10-0 or 20-0 types "bogus pros". In fact, they make up a sizeable chunk of the pool of "professional fighters".

 

I know nothing about the case you allude to. And it's all a bit irrelevant when it comes to what he says boxing-related.

All he said about DeNiro was that after going through training for the film DeNiro could have fought professionally.
I dont see why that's been dismissed as an outrageous bull**** comment, since the qualifications for fighting professional are very low.

 

World class martial artist, 6'5 and 220 some odd pounds. Bit different from De Niro.

Also, why is it even worth discussing if De Niro could have fought and beat (Under tight control and careful management) the types of stiffs Sean O' Grady used feast on?

That's obviously not what's being implied here, about actors potentially becoming successfully become boxers.

 

Jake was doing a promotional interview for Raging Bull, I think on NBC's Today Show (possibly ABC's Good Morning America), when he suggested that De Niro might have become good enough to be a top 20 middleweight. At the time, I interpreted that to mean top 20 contender in 1979. Some accounts I've read since then claim LaMotta actually meant top 20 of ALL-TIME. I somehow doubt Jake might go so far as to even place De Niro among his top 20 professional opponents, let alone the top 20 in active competition during his career (what with Zale, Graziano and the Black Murderer's Row also being around at the time and all).

Getting himself into the kind of condition De Niro did was a remarkable achievement for a man who was already in his late 30s, but I remember thinking that maybe he and Tony Danza ought to square off.

 

Similar comments are made about a lot of actors who train for boxing roles (inc. Stallone, Day Lewis), I take them all with a pinch of salt.

 

Don't really know if you objected to anything in my post or why. I just continued with examples of how Stallone fared against real fighters (which Lundgren qualifies as), which obviously wasn't too well.

 

Yeah, but concerning Day Lewis the praise was a bit more grounded. The guy who trained him basically said that Day Lewis could have gone places in boxing if he had started in his teens, if I remember correctly.

 

IIRC it was Barry McGuigan who trained Lewis for that film. I remember they did a little piece on it for Sky Sports, went back to the studio and put McGuigans comments about Day Lewis to Glen McCrory who just smirked as if to say "Sure...." and mentioned something about Lewis' nose being too big for a boxer!

 

Ok, if he said that, sure I'd take that as pure hyperbole.

But I've heard Angelo Dundee and Lou Duva come out with some crazy hype about just about every prospect they've ever trained/managed, so it's par for the course in boxing.

I still contend that DeNiro may well have been trained well enough to "box professionally" and win some fights, which doesn't mean an awful lot as I've explain.

 

I just reveiwed the deniro fight scenes. (dont wory i do have a life!)

some sequences often panned across to the crowd to soak up atmosphetre and the angles and sound changed dramaticly which is all great cinima but basicly more smoke and mirors than actual fighting.

many of the shots were close ups of deniro "shadow boxing" into the camara and then cutting to the other guys head spinning all over the place. Often the angles used did not show deniros actual footing and the "punches" often delivered from out of shot so you couldnt study any technique. There was a moment where he runs in bringing his back foot forward and crossing his legs in the way a boxer would not but mostly he is shot above the waist since he is clearly standing compleatly square on.

aside from well choriographed sequences where he roled far too deliberatly under a rehearsed jab to swing a wide swiping hook nothing looked remotly like boxing. basicly, nothing you could not coach your wife to do.

 

There are some pretty savvy boxing guys on this thread, but to give even a moment’s credibility to some boxing legend, shilling a film, saying some actor would make a good pro is an affront to good pros.

Freddy Roach, after training many great actors for roles, said it best to a reporter when asked if any of 'em could make good pros. “They’re actors,” ‘n went back to wrapping hands.

 

There aren't any great American heavyweights left because they're all acting instead

 

:good