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Deford To Hollywood: Ban Boxing Movies

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal stars in <em>Southpaw</em>, a new movie about a junior middleweight boxing champion who faces adversity.
Scott Garfield
/
The Weinstein Company
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Southpaw, a new movie about a junior middleweight boxing champion who faces adversity.

Some people wanna ban boxing. I just wanna ban boxing movies.

You get the feeling sometimes that Hollywood still thinks Joe Louis is heavyweight champion and boxing is still top-tier popular? Yes, there's yet another boxing movie out, this one entitled Southpaw.

Oh, please, please. Making boxing movies when boxing is so passé would be like if Hollywood kept making showbiz movies about vaudeville.

Click the audio above to hear Frank Deford's take on movies about boxing.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Frank Deford died on Sunday, May 28, at his home in Florida. Remembrances of Frank's life and work can be found in All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and on NPR.org.