"The Hurricane"

A fine film, marked with good performances (Washington & Hedaya in particular), and certainly a worthy bit of lore for those interested in the background of one of the sport's more interesting characters...but some excessively glorifying artistic merit does seem to have been taken with Carter's career. The Griffith KO at the opening credits I have no problem with - they reenact the slaughter that was Rubin's best win dramatically but not inaccurately. The portrayal of the Giardello decision being an all-time robbery, and particularly of the 15th round (of which footage is widely available) as being a totally one-sided thrashing are a bit of a reach. Carter won the 15th 10-9 but it was not like he'd been that dominant over the course of the fight, and Joey had his moments in it, right up to the bell.

Also, they chose to recreate his knockout of the "undefeated" Joey Cooper as the third (and only other) one of his matches to demonstrate who he was in the ring. Unless the records are incomplete, Cooper was 1-0-1 and Carter himself in only his 2nd pro fight. This was not an especially important win of his. He had plenty of other knockouts later in his career. It also wasn't tied in to the plot (which featured many an anachronistic leap) in a way that it couldn't have been a fight from any other point in his career if the point was simply to show him at his peak ferocity.

It was based partly on his autobiography, "The Sixteenth Round" - presumably those aren't the only three of his battles that he deigned to write about? Has anybody here read it? Any other historical incongruities in the film/book?

 

Nobody has Netflix?

 

Wow, thanks for all the info.

All I'm in a position to comment on is the Giardello challenge (available online in its entirety), which to my eyes was definitely not a robbery. The sequence in the film has Joey throwing a few feeble body shots in the 15th and otherwise getting battered, with his face looking like it had been put through a meat grinder. That isn't what the tape of the actual real-life fight shows. Carter won the round with the cleaner harder blows overall, but he didn't "take the title". Were the media and boxing public at the time really as up in arms about it as portrayed?

 

And yeah, I explained to my gf after watching that it wasn't something like Ali being robbed of his prime - Rubin was already 29, not on a very hot streak, and boasted a pretty bad record even in the context of the times in which he fought and granting generous allowances for how many greats he stepped in with.

I also educated her a bit on the great Emile Griffith (showed her the 3rd Paret fight and some other footage) when she commented that it was "shocking someone could have become champion and be blown out so easily". I told her that this was Carter's best win but over a physically overmatched man who had little business above welterweight. I told her that Carter wasn't ever one of the best boxers but that he did have some of the heaviest hands of all time, so there was no shame in Emile getting caught cold and stopped by such a renowned puncher.

Whether the film's contents are 0% true or 100%, it doesn't change my opinion of the Hurricane as an exciting but limited fighter (or of The Hurricane as a very entertaining and engrossing if sentimental and slightly over-long movie).

 

I said little business, not none. He was at his personal best at welterweight despite picking up titles in higher divisions, you'd surely agree?

 

Fair enough - I don't mean to disparage his accomplishments at 154/160 (or to make it seem like Carter smashed a flyweight). He just seemed to wear 147 most comfortably and had he stayed there for the duration of his career as long as he was able to make it, would have avoided taking some major punishment and maybe improved his w/l ratio. Of course, yes, he would also have missed out on some of those key wins that further augment his all-time standing.

When you say a fluke - something akin to Curry-McCallum, where the better boxer (of two very good ones) takes the wrong punch from the bigger man, would you say?