Best movies like Tennessee Champ
It's fun and thrills when Bombshell Shelley takes on a guy with a Sunday punch!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Tennessee Champ Starring Shelley Winters, Keenan Wynn, Dewey Martin, Earl Holliman, and more. If you liked Tennessee Champ then you may also like: When We Were Kings, Whiplash, World in My Corner, The Opponent, Requiem for a Heavyweight and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A boxer desperate for money falls in with a shady promoter.
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World in My Corner
A scrappy fighter from Jersey City named Tommy Shea -- "born in a dump, educated in an alley" -- catches the eye of wealthy businessman, Robert Mallinson, who allows him to train at his Long Island estate. Shea soon falls for Mallinson's daughter, Dorothy, but fears he doesn't have the money to support her in proper style. To get this money, Shea decides to work with crooked fight-promoter Harry Cram, even though this means dropping his honest manager, Dave Bernstein. As the big fight approaches, however, Shea begins to have second thoughts.
The Opponent
Patty Sullivan (Erica Eleniak) is a battered woman who decides to take charge of her life by taking boxing lessons to better protect herself when her boyfriend becomes violent. Patty soon learns she has some talent for boxing and sets her sights on competing in a professional fight. More is on the line than just the woman's title.
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Mountain Rivera is a veteran heavyweight and near-champion who suddenly finds himself washed up in the only trade he knows—prizefighting. Yet, threatened by gangsters for welshing on a gambling debt, Mountain’s opportunistic manager, Maish Rennick, schemes to get the ex-boxer into a phony wrestling match to make some quick money. Although he and his loyal trainer, Army, oppose the degrading proposition, the disillusioned Mountain begins to wonder if he has any options left.
Right Cross
A sportswriter forms a ring triangle with a fight manager's daughter and her Mexican-American boxer.
Jawbone
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.
Body and Soul
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
The Fighter
A boxer, in Mexico, sets out to avenge the murder of his family by using the money from his winnings to purchase weapons.
Hard Times
In the depression, Chaney, a strong silent streetfighter, joins with Speed, a promoter of no-holds-barred street boxing bouts. They go to New Orleans where Speed borrows money to set up fights for Chaney, but Speed gambles away any winnings.
Iron Man
In Coaltown, Pennsylvania, miner Coke Mason hopes to better himself, buy a radio store, and marry Rose Warren. His gambler brother George thinks Coke can be more successful as a boxer, knowing that when he fights he's consumed with a murderous rage that makes him an "iron man." Seeing dollar signs in Rose's eyes, Coke reluctantly agrees, though he's fearful of the "killer instinct" that makes him a knockout success in the ring...and brings him the booing hatred of the fans. Will Coke throw off his personal demon before he kills someone?
The Main Event
Hillary Kramer, a successful Perfume magnate, awakes one morning to find that her accountant has robbed her blind and left for South America. Going through all of her remaining assets she finds a boxer, purchased as a tax write-off. She decides to take Kid Natural, Eddie Scanlon, who is much more at home giving driving lessons, into the ring and use him as her key to riches. Eddie thinks this will only get him killed and resists.
The Prizefighter and the Lady
An ex-sailor turned boxer finds romance and gets a shot at the heavyweight title.
Tyson
The story of Mike Tyson. From his early days as a 12 year old amateur with a powerful punch, to the undisputed title of "Heavyweight Champion of the World", and ultimately to his conviction for rape. The story of his turbulent life moves quickly, never focusing for long on anything in particular.
The Big Timer
Loud-mouth hamburger flipper, Cooky, thinks he can box. His big chance comes when everyone else quits the gym when it is inherited by a dame.
Woman-Wise
A crusading sportswriter exposes racketeers involved in paying off fighters to throw their matches.
Navy Bound
A sailor who is a champion boxer in the Navy is forced to leave the service because his family's business, a tuna fishing operation, is in financial trouble. He becomes a prizefighter and one day signs up for a winner-take-all boxing match, which could make him a lot of money but could also result in the end of his boxing career.
Don King: Only in America
A cinematic portrait of the famous fight promoter and boxing manager.
Two-Fisted
A fast-talking boxing manager and the somewhat hapless fighter he manages happen to run into a young man who was a good prizefighter in his day but is now out of the sport and has a drinking problem. They decide to train him for a big match, and in the process find themselves involved in romance, shady characters and a possible kidnapping.
The Duke Comes Back
After winning the heavyweight championship, boxer Duke Foster (Allan Lane) quits the ring to marry socialite Susan Corbin (Heather Angel). When his businessman father-in-law Arnold (Frederick Burton) loses his fortune, Duke returns to the ring to raise money for him. Susan is furious that Duke is breaking his promise never to box again, and the stakes get even higher when a crooked promoter orders him to take a dive ... or else.
Winner Take All
When a waiter makes a lucky hit and wins a benefit prizefight, gamblers rig some fights for him; but a reporter arranges for a real boxer to put him in his place.
Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson
Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson is a 1993 film made by acclaimed American documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple. Though Tyson was in jail serving a sentence for rape, Kopple used existing interviews with the boxer, as well as her own extensive interviews with those closest to Tyson, to explore the man's history. The film traces Tyson's story from his troubled and tumultuous upbringing, through his rapid ascendancy in the ranks of the boxing world and his subsequent struggle with the trappings of fame. Fallen Champ earned Barbara Kopple a Directors Guild of America award as Best Documentary Director of 1993.
And the Same to You
Dickie Dreadnought is the boxing-mad nephew of pious clergyman Reverend Sydney Mullet. To mollify his disapproving uncle, Dickie embarks on an elaborate plan to keep his budding boxing career a secret, with he and his tough-talking promoter Wally Burton both pretending to be devout 'men of the cloth'.
The Hillsdale Adoption Scam
Desperate for a child, a couple welcome a surrogate mother into their lives, only to discover she's a con artist who's out to steal their money.
Honeyboy
Rico 'Honeyboy' Ramirez is a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx who finds fame and fortune as a middleweight boxer. But he soon learns that it's not all it's cracked up to be when he loses sight of his goals. He becomes romantically involved with his attractive publicist, and then he has to prove himself in the ring after learning that his biggest victory was rigged by his shady, mob-connected, promoters.
Leather Gloves
A fallen prizefighter must choose between two women from vastly different walks of life.
Manny
From abject poverty to becoming a ten-time boxing world champion, congressman, and international icon, Manny Pacquiao is the true definition of a Cinderella story. In the Philippines, he first entered the ring as a sixteen-year-old weighing ninety-eight pounds with the goal of earning money to feed his family. Now, almost twenty years later, when he fights, the country of 100 million people comes to a complete standstill to watch. Regarded for his ability to bring people together, Pacquiao entered the political arena in 2010. As history’s first boxing congressman, Pacquiao now fights for his people both inside and outside of the ring. Now at the height of his career, he is faced with maneuvering an unscrupulous sport while maintaining his political duties. The question now is, what bridge is too far for Manny Pacquiao to cross?
When We Were Kings
It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.