Best movies like The Milky Way

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.

Heckling the Champ gets Bugs into the world championship fight as the challenger.

A sportswriter forms a ring triangle with a fight manager's daughter and her Mexican-American boxer.

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.

Shy milkman Burleigh Sullivan accidentally knocks out drunken Speed McFarlane, a champion boxer who was flirting with Burleigh's sister. The newspapers get hold of the story and photographers even catch Burleigh knock out Speed again. Speed's crooked manager decides to turn Burleigh into a fighter. Burleigh doesn't realize that all of his opponents have been asked to take a dive. Thinking he really is a great fighter, Burleigh develops a swelled head which puts a crimp in his relationship with pretty nightclub singer Polly Pringle. He may finally get his comeuppance when he challenges Speed for the title.

An intergalactic fighting competition between champions of various worlds has traditionally been won by a species much larger and stronger than humans. Entering the contest, a human finds he has to battle against not just his opponents and his self-doubts, but the corrupt system. Far in the future, on a distant space station, the legendary Arena is where the best fighters from every planet come to vie for the championship. But for over half a century, no Earthling has been good enough to be a contender. Until out of nowhere, comes an underdog: the great human hope, Steve Armstrong... and the best anyone's ever seen. He's been training all his life for a shot at the big time, but now he's up against some mighty big muscle: a ruthless extra-terrestrial crimelord who'll pull no punches to make sure he stops Steve dead. In the mood for hard-hitting sci-fi action? Arena will knock you out!

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 East Side Kids discover that one of their own, Danny, is torn between staying and school and becoming a boxer, and is getting mixed up with gangsters.

An unscrupulous boxer fights his way to the top, but eventually alienates all of the people who helped him on the way up.

Brick Bardo is on a mission to find out which one of the world's greatest kickboxers killed his brother. Five years ago, one of the four champs was fixing fights and set up his brother in the fight that took his life. Now Bardo must take on the gang in the ring for an all-out kickboxing fight to the finish.

Joe Palooka is a naive young man whose father Pete was a champion boxer, but his lifestyle caused Joe's mother Mayme to leave him and to take young Joe to the country to raise him.

After losing heavyweight contender Al Costa to mob boss Florini fight promoter Knobby Walsh recruits small town boy Joe Palooka to take his place. First in the series.

Jobless sportswriter Eddie Willis is hired by corrupt fight promoter Nick Benko to promote his current protégé, an unknown Argentinian boxer named Toro Moreno. Although Moreno is a hulking giant, his chances for success are hampered by a powder-puff punch and a glass jaw. Exploiting Willis' reputation for integrity and standing in the boxing community, Benko arranges a series of fixed fights that propel the unsophisticated Moreno to #1 contender for the championship. The reigning champ, the sadistic Buddy Brannen, harbors resentment at the publicity Toro has been receiving and vows to viciously punish him in the ring. Eddie must now decide whether or not to tell the naive Toro the truth.

Small-town boy Shawn MacArthur has come to New York City with nothing. Barely earning a living selling counterfeit goods on the streets, his luck changes when scam artist Harvey Boarden sees that he has a natural talent for streetfighting. When Harvey offers Shawn help at making the real cash, the two form an uneasy partnership.

Moe discovers Curley's unknown boxing talent when he knocks out the Champ at a restaurant when Larry plays "Pop Goes the Weasal" on the violin. Moe becomes Curly's manager, and they win every fight, with the help of Larry. At the championship game, though, Larry's violin breaks. Curly is getting beat down bad when Larry makes his unexpected entrance and helps Curly prevail.

Ray 'Harley' Davidson is a hustler. With flash clothes and a fast mouth, Harley lives life in the fast lane. With his passion for all things gambling, money runs like water through Harley's hands and as quickly as he makes a killing he takes a beating, normally at the poker table. Nominally an illegal prize-fight manager, Harley hasn't produced a live one in months, until Charles Buchinsky literally wanders into his life. Charles Buchinsky, street fighter extraordinaire. He's from out of town looking for a fight and the chance to tie up a few loose ends. Keeps himself to himself, lets his fists do the talking and his word is his bond. Victor Maitland, top illegal fight promoter and porn baron. Hates losing and loves the prestige of managing the best hitter in town. Harley dreams of bringing Maitland down and after seeing Buchinsky at work, engineers a fragile partnership. The duo soon becomes a hot ticket...

An up-and-coming heavyweight fighter, George Wilson, arrives in Vulcan City, a small mid-western town over-run by racketeers, to fight a heavily-favored Frankie Sebastian. George arrives but his manager Dolan is nowhere to be found. But Ma and Pa Karlsen, owners of Karlsen's Kozy Kottages motel and restaurant take him under their wing. He meets Miss Gormley who is also there to meet the no-show manager who is blackmailing her brother. Dolan still hasn't arrived by the date of the fight but, to the surprise of sports-promoters Tom Healy and Dominic Guido, George shows up and wins the fight. This wins him the friendship of trainer Al Muntz and the enmity of Willie Foltis, a punchy ex-fighter and a Healy henchman. This leads George to a fight with "Soldier" Freeman, whose manager Scotty Cameron has made arrangements for the favored-Freeman to take a dive, so he and Healy and Guido can clean up betting on the underdog. But Honest George has other plans.

This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.

A crusading sportswriter exposes racketeers involved in paying off fighters to throw their matches.

Overcoming the seemingly insurmountable odds that life threw his way, Liston became heavyweight champion of the world when he knocked out Floyd Patterson in 1962. Eight years later, he died but friends questioned the cause of his death.

The boys are working at the local boxing arena where their friend, Jimmy Higgins, is boxing. During a crooked match Jimmy is killed. The boys seek out his older brother, Johnny, a former boxer who gave up the sport rather than go crooked, and help train him to get back in the ring. They try to get him a shot at the title, and when they do the same crooked gangsters that were behind Jimmy's death try to get Johnny to take a dive.

Based on the David Belasco stage production of the Max Marcin play in which heavyweight-champion Jack Dempsey played the role of the fighter, Tiger: This "behind-the-scenes look of a heavyweight-championship fight" looks much like all of the other boxing films in which the Champ gets involved in a frame-up and is asked to take a dive.

Prizefighter Bob Neal (Ray Walker) is in debt to gangster Vic Santell (Hooper Atchley) for training expenses. Santell orders Bob to take a dive in the fourth round so Santell can recoup prior gambling losses. Taunted by his ring opponent, Bob wins the fight. Realizing that his profession and underworld characters connected to it are causing him problems, Bob decides to join the police force. After taking nurse Mary Prentiss (Geneva Mitchell) to a drive-in restaurant where the total bill is a depression-era cheap eighty-two cents, Bob and his fellow officers round-up a gang of fur thieves in a warehouse shoot-out.

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.

A lumberjack knocks out a champion boxer in a brawl, gets drawn into the boxing world where he is unknowingly set up for a fixed fight.

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 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.

When call girl Cindy gets busted under the new 36 Strikes Law she receives the maximum sentence. Desperate to beat the rap Cindy agrees to become a Special Agent for the Feds and infiltrates an illegal Female Fight Club.

"Bags" the boxer (funnyman Tim Conway) and his manager, Shake (Don Knotts), are quite a pair: One is a dim bulb, and the other has a mean streak. Times are tough and they must save their gym, so they line up some moneymaking fights. But when Bags and Shake discover that the bouts have been rigged, they end up with their backs to the wall and must fight back -- literally.

A young woman who has faded to the point of becoming invisible must find her way back with the help of the one man who can see her.

Boxing drama following the lives of 5 different fighters and their reasons for becoming boxers.

A boxer desperate for money falls in with a shady promoter.

A young prizefighter finds himself being squeezed on all sides to throw a fight.

Mickey, is a prizefighter whose bright career hits the skids when he comes under the guidance of Ginger, a female fight promoter, when he becomes involved with June Prentice and her high-society crowd.

An arrogant boxer (Pat O'Brien) discovers his wife (Glenda Farrell) had a hand in his success.