The award-winning biopic of Jake LaMotta was released 40 years ago. With these exclusive images, Jay Glennie, who interviewed the cast and crew for a new book, reveals secrets of the film’s shoot
In an acclaimed new film, the story of a night between four major figures – Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali – is brought to life
One thing is certain: vanilla ice cream was eaten. The rest? If only we knew.
The year is 1964 and activist Malcolm X, singer-songwriter Sam Cooke and American football player Jim Brown gather in Miami, Florida, to cheer boxer Muhammad Ali – then Cassius Clay – to his first world heavyweight championship. No celebration is planned because he was not expected to win, so the four repair to Malcolm’s hotel room in the segregated African American part of town.
Continue reading...‘I gambled on Ali getting a knockout, fastening my camera to the lights way above the ring. And Williams landed flat on his back in a good spot’
Everyone assumes the picture I took of Ali v Liston in 1965 is my favourite – it has even been called the greatest sports photograph of all time. But my favourite photograph I ever took is Ali v Williams, no question about it. It’s the only one of my photographs hanging in my home. I’ve shot everything in my career, from Charles Manson to the pope, but I’ve never taken a better photograph than this.
I shot 35 of Ali’s fights. I was ringside for Sports Illustrated when he won the world title in Miami in 1964 and my photo for that made the cover, so by the time of the Cleveland Williams fight I was pretty well established. Williams was a very promising heavyweight but the underdog; the main thing I remember from that night was how excited I was about how I was going to shoot it. Putting a camera over the ring goes way back, maybe to Joe Louis’ days, certainly Sugar Ray Robinson. But the lights that lit up those fights were always 20-25ft over the ring and there was no lens wide enough to capture the whole scene; photographers used fisheye lenses so the ring never quite looked square.
Continue reading...After being abused as a boy in Nigeria and trafficked to London at 14, boxing and piano playing gave him hope and at 32 Bilal Fawaz is finally able to fight professionally
“There is beauty in darkness,” Bilal Fawaz says with a poetic flourish as we sit on an old bench outside the Cricklewood Boxing Gym in this stark corner of north-west London. “I became best friends with darkness and pain a long time ago.”
The sky is sombre, with black clouds rolling in, and Fawaz talks with electrifying force. He is a newly professional boxer but his past is haunting and his future uncertain. Fawaz was abused as a boy in Nigeria and then trafficked to London.
Continue reading...Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who was trafficked as a child and has won right to stay in UK, signs with top promoter
The former England amateur boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who won his 16-year legal battle with the Home Office for the right to remain in the UK, is launching his professional career after being signed by MTK Global, one of the world’s largest boxing management agencies.
Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has spent his adult life struggling to establish his nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Fawaz, who was trafficked to the UK from Nigeria as a child, won his Home Office appeal last week
The former England boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz has won his 16-year legal battle to live and work in the UK after the Home Office granted him leave to remain for 30 months.
Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has been struggling to establish his adult nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.
Continue reading...Tyson Fury completed one of the greatest comebacks in modern sports history on Saturday night when he knocked out Deontay Wilder in the seventh round to add the WBC’s version of the world heavyweight championship to his own lineal claim to the title, delivering the definitive outcome their first encounter failed to produce.
The Gypsy King, whose career appeared finished when he left the sport for more than two years amid public battles with addiction and mental illness, made good on his promise to press for a knockout in the hotly anticipated rematch against a man regarded as boxing’s most dangerous puncher. As promised, he came forward from the opening bell, dropped the champion for the first time in a decade with a right hand to the temple in the third round, then again with a clubbing left to the body in the fifth.
Continue reading...Eddie Hearn, the boxer’s promoter, said fight ‘almost certainly’ broke UK pay-per-view record
Criticism of Anthony Joshua for boxing in Saudi Arabia does not appear to have affected his popularity with the British public, with more than a million people paying at least £24.95 to watch the heavyweight regain his world titles on Saturday – a figure that is likely to be a UK record.
Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, said: “We are waiting on the final number but it has almost certainly broken the UK pay-per-view record.”
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Ruiz has said he expects Joshua to go for it in the opening rounds, so I wouldn’t take too much from the Briton edging the first two. “I think he will box around nicely for four or five rounds until I take the pressure to him, start hitting his body and mixing it up,” said Ruiz this week.
The stats say, Joshua has landed 18 punches to Ruiz’s nine. Joshua looks almost skinny and he’s able to leap back from Ruiz’s jabs. Joshua gets a hook to Ruiz’s body at the end of the round. Not as emphatic from the Briton, but he edged that round.
The vaseline goes on Ruiz’s cut. He doesn’t look too worried, but even though Joshua won that first round, the Briton was a lot more cautious than he was in the first fight when his aggression got him in trouble. Two nice jabs from Ruiz, his best shots of the fight. Joshua focusing on that area with the cut and it’s reopened early in the round. And then a right from Joshua from close range, but Joshua is bleeding now too.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Joshua 10-9 Ruiz (Joshua 20-18 Ruiz)
Continue reading...Briton wins six-round cruiserweight bout in LA against fellow YouTube personality
Britain’s KSI has won his six-round cruiserweight boxing fight against fellow YouTube personality, the American Logan Paul, in Los Angeles.
The fight at the Staples Centre was won by the Watford man in a split decision by 55-56, 57-54, 56-55. The pair first fought last year in Manchester but a “majority draw” was declared after six rounds.
Continue reading...Former professional football player and amateur boxer Miguel Angel Ramirez has set up a small gym under a vehicular bridge in Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico, in order to keep children away from drugs, teach them a sport and prevent them enlisting in the ranks of organised crime
Continue reading...A former French boxing champion who was filmed punching police officers during a gilets jaunes protest has said in a video that he had 'boiled over' after being teargassed alongside his wife on his eighth Saturday protest
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