Which boxer has been portrayed the most times in film?

I saw a scene in “American Gangster” where Joe Louis was in a club — practically a cameo, played by an obscure actor named Bari K. Willerford — and it got me thinking.

Which boxer has been portrayed the most times on film? I played with IMDB’s search and Google but couldn’t come up with a way that has ‘characters’ show up when searching their names (particularly if they have acting credits, which the real Joe did) so I figured I’d bring it here and see if someone has a better way to look or a bank of knowledge of such things.

Figure we need some parameters: this is NOT how many times a boxer has appeared on film — as in the boxer/former boxer with the most credits to their name. This is how many times they’ve been portrayed … either by themselves or by someone else.

For example, if someone made a movie about the Duk Koo Kim and some actor played Ray Mancini, that would could. If Ray Mancini had a role in a movie where he appeared as himself, even if just in a small scene or being introduced at a fight, that would count. But if Ray played a mob enforcer or a boxer named Joe Blow or whatever, that would not count.

Let’s say TV movies count too, but not TV series. So someone who shows up in an episode of whatever show playing themselves, that doesn’t count. Nor someone else portraying them in a TV episode.

I think if real film of a guy fighting (or at a weigh-in or whatever) is playing during a movie (like there’s a scene in American Gangster where Ali is on TV before the Fight of the Century) … I don’t think archived film should count. But if someone played Ali in the movie (including himself in any film), again, that would count — and Ali did show up in American gangster played by an actor at the FOTC, so that would be one for him.

I’m guessing it’s either Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis, but who knows? I’m hoping you guys will, or can hep us figure it out.

 

Also, forgot to mention no documentaries.