havent seen the movie yet, this video comparison was very well done... from what I saw in that clip I definitely want to go see the fighter now. you can never expect a movie to be anywhere approaching accurate, thats what documentaries are for.
It has been beating some names of guys he never even fought....has him making a total turn around when in fact he still lost fights here and their...it portrays the WBU belt as a real world title...during some fights it first has Roy Jones commenting...the George Foreman...all on the same fight which of course never happened... But much of the fight chorography they tried to mimic as close as they could...ward was as Rocky Balboa fighter as your ever get in real life...but even at that certain fights they showed as more one sided then the fights actually where...all in all though a pretty good film.
These are my thoughts on the film from a thread about the book it partly drew from: http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=270115
ward himself said it was 80% accurate...MUCH more so than the book irish thunder. as johnstown pointed out, they took liberties in terms of the fights and commentary. for instance, they inserted gatti/ward 1 commentary over the neary fight. and the neary fight was FAR better than portrayed in the movie...hardly one sided, it was a brilliant brawl that deserved FOTY consideration. again the most glaring boxing error was that the WBU was considered "legit" which it isn't still it's pretty accurate from i've read in terms of his life and his brother's bull****. and dickie really did apparently spend 10 years telling ppl he knocked down SRL...
I have no intention of using a ticket to go see it (and if I ever do, it will be when there's no admission fee, as with every movie I watch), but my father and sister just did, and my sister (a non sports fan) asked me about some of the story behind it. I was watching the live broadcast of SRL-Eklund, and was impressed by Ray's power and leverage for the first time. (You could hear the impact of the knockdown combinations even if not looking at the picture.) The crowd went berserk when the dominant participant suddenly fell down, but it was clear on screen that it wasn't caused by a punch. I understand Eklund was portrayed as backing off his claim of a knockdown when pressed in the movie. (As it's been on youtube for everybody to see, and was viewed through much of New England when it happened, he should have known better than to tell false stories about it.)
A couple of inaccuracies in the fight scenes themselves... Despite the fact that he was giving up weight to his opponent, Ward did have some moments later on in the fight against Machine Gun Mungin. Not enough to win the fight, of course, but enough so that it wasn't a case of him getting pummeled relentlessly throughout the entire 10 rounds. Ward was only dropped to one knee, I believe, in is fight against Sanchez, and the kd took place in the first round- not dropped onto his back as if shot in the fifth as depicted in the movie. As IB stated already, the Neary fight was quite a bit closer through seven rounds than it was made out to be in the film, and I don't believe Ward was knocked down at any point in the fight. The funny thing is that the filmmakers do a reasonably accurate job of depicting the way Ward took out Sanchez and Neary. So, even allowing for artistic liscense, you'd think that they would have portrayed the other portion of these fights with the same type of accuracy. It might not have been quite as dramatic, but by the same token, those fights were already pretty accurate in their own right. I think everyone on here rolled their eyes at the idea of the WBU title being portrayed as legitimate, too. But that's already been covered. Anyway, having stated all that, I really enjoyed the movie. I thought Bale and Wahlberg both gave stellar performances, and wouldn't be at all surprised if they both get nominations for Oscars to honor the work they did.
