Movies about boxers and their efforts to be the lords of the ring follow a typical arc of self-discovery, struggle and glory. Exhibit A: the Rocky spinoff Creed, featuring the son of the fictional boxer’s early rival and good friend, and featuring Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan.
In Bollywood, as in Hollywood, the boxing picture provides leading men the opportunity to prove their fitness levels and reinforce their general machoness. Dara Singh, Mithun Chakraborty, Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol have all played pugilists, and even the scrawny Anil Kapoor hoofed around the ring for a bit in Chameli Ki Shaadi.
New Bollywood prefers trendier fighting styles derived from mixed martial arts (Ranbir Kapoor in Bombay Velvet and Sidharth Malhotra and Akshay Kumar in Brothers)¸ but the old-fashioned sport has its faithful followers. Boxing was the provenance of B-movies before it became a respectable genre. Dara Singh, the wrestler and stunt film star, appeared in the self-explanatory Boxer (1965). Videos of its songs survive on YouTube as proof of the ability of Hindi filmmakers to insert music and dance into a movie about a gut-busting sport. Why not? This is India, where multi-tasking is the name of the game.
The second Boxer came in 1984, and was directed by reliable 1980s entertainer Raj N Sippy. The filmmaker dedicated the Mithun Chakraborty starrer to “all sportsmen of India, who stood their ground against all the odds and brought glory to our country”. This Rocky-style legacy movie features Danny Denzongpa, looking most fetching in boxing gear, as the father of future champion Shankar (Chakraborty), while Parikshit Sahni plays Tony, one in a long line of Christian coaches. But before the final triumphant knock-out, there are songs, proving that this fighter can jive as well as he can jab.
While screen boxing is not everybody’s cup of tea, the burly actor Dharmendra seemed born for the part. But by the time Main Intequaam Loonga (1982) arrived, he had already spread in all directions. Watch Dharmendra strain to demolish the love handles in this training montage video.
Main Intequaam Loonga is a remake of the Kannada hit Thayige Thakka Maga (1976), in which Kannada superstar Rajkumar avenges his father’s death at the hands of a crooked sport promoter by defeating the villain’s candidate in a match. Rajkumar goes down, but gets back into the game when he sees his mother. Only in India.
Emotions flow with the strength of an avalanche in Anil Sharma’s melodrama Apne, featuring Dharmendra and his real-life sons Sunny and Bobby. Sunny Deol protects his family’s name while hanging on to his hairpiece in this fight to the finish.
Priyanka Chopra joined the small but respectable list of movie boxers in 2014 with the biopic Mary Kom, about the gutsy Manipuri pugilist. Sporting a dodgy accent and enthusiasm in capital letters, Chopra gives it all she has got.
It might appear that Salman Khan is a natural to play a boxer – he did his share of street fighting in Karan Arjun. Rumours that the brawny superstar is playing a pugilist in the 2016 release Sultan will assure Khan’s fan base that the 50-year-old actor still has what it takes. The confirmed boxing movie is Irudhi Suttru, being made in Tamil and Hindi (as Saala Khadoos) and starring Madhavan as a grouchy coach to two young female boxers. Sudha Kongura Prasad’s movie opens on January 29, 2016.
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