The 20 Best Combat Sports Movies of All Time

Where do classics like Rocky, Raging Bull, and Bloodsport land?

Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) in Creed
Via Warner Bros

Why do some people sign up to get punched in the face for a living? The most common answer is money although it’s not always the most compelling reason. Mark Kerr, the subject of the recent Dwayne Johnson biopic The Smashing Machine, is partially driven by the thrill of victory. Adonis Creed ditches a career in finance because he believes boxing is his best shot at forging his own legacy. In The Iron Claw, the Von Erich brothers don’t have a choice other than to enter the world of professional wrestling. It's the family business.

There’s something riveting about the kind of athletes willing to enter combat sports, which is why so many great movies have been made about them.

Combat sports movies share certain traits with traditional sports films like Varsity Blues and White Men Can’t Jump. There are heroes and villains and the films typically culminate with a big fight. But combat sports movies trend darker and focus heavier on the individual rather than the team. Greatness in the ring (or the Octagon) is a lonely, grinding pursuit and the scars accumulated are both the physical and emotional kind. Get ready for the 20 Best Combat Sports Movies of All Time. 

20.The Smashing Machine (2025)

The superlatives are flowing for Dwayne Johnsoncritics have described him as “superbly stripped-down” in a “career-changing performance” that’s his “most absorbing turn yet.” And they’d be right. In The Smashing Machine, the actor and longtime WWE wrestler completes a total and vulnerable transformation into MMA pioneer Mark Kerr. Laced with facial prosthetics and bulked out so that his traps look like boulders, Johnson relinquishes his typical Hollywood heroism for something more human, raw, and real—aided, in part, by director Benny Safdie’s documentary-style approach, which follows his beatdowns, interviews, and drugged-out detachment with lingering, unflinching surveillance.

There’s no UFC without guys like Kerr and Mark Coleman, wrestlers who battled across the globe for meager paychecks in small arenas to destigmatize the sport they loved. What makes Kerr a compelling figure are his contradictions—his mild-mannered sensitivity paired with his ruthless violence. It’s a juxtaposition that puts his daunting winning streak into greater relief, enough that he can’t even comprehend a journalist’s hypothetical of what it might feel like to lose a match. Celebrating victories in empty, silent dressing rooms thousands of miles from home is already painful enough.

19.Cinderella Man (2005)

You can hardly tell that Russell Crowe, the bulked-out Maximus in Gladiator, is the same actor who steps into the ring in Cinderella Man. As Jimmy Braddock, he trades in chiseled armor for a wiry, vulnerable frame, dropping about 50 pounds to embody the starving desperation of a Depression-era fighter whose goal was more about his family’s survival than personal glory. Re-teaming with director Ron Howard after A Beautiful Mind, Crowe leans into the ultimate underdog narrative with determined eyes and quick feet, taking on the weight of an entire community in need of a blue-collar hero.

There’s nothing better than the final round of Braddock’s heavyweight bout with Max Baer (Craig Bierko), the cocky defending champion who notoriously killed his opponents in the ring with his unrivaled right hook. Howard cuts with such propulsive momentum between the canvas, Braddock’s screaming manager (Paul Giamatti), and his wife (Renee Zellweger) and kids perched quietly around the narrating radio that it’s nearly impossible not to reach for the tissues when he inevitably takes the crown by unanimous decision.

18.The Iron Claw (2023)

Let’s immediately address the film’s glaring flaws: Jeremy Allen White (Carmie from The Bear) is too petite to play Kerry Von Erich, a 6-foot-2-inch 250-pound Adonis, and The Iron Claw features the worst Ric Flair impersonation in the history of Ric Flair impersonations. It also plays fast and loose with the facts, omitting the entire existence of Chris Von Erich, the baby of the wrestling clan, who died by suicide at the age of 21. “It was one more tragedy that the film couldn’t really withstand,” director Sean Durkin told the LA Times.

Holt McCallany, as the domineering patriarch Fritz Von Erich, anchors the film. He’s a frightening, severe man with a bottomless well of resentment fueling his destructive path. But not even Fritz’s presence can derail the most fun moment in the film (and the best): the montage set to Rush’s prog-rock masterpiece “Tom Sawyer.” The entire scene is thrilling, a piece of glorious nostalgia that depicts the rock star aura of the Von Erichs, while also signaling the dark narrative shift up ahead. 

17.Bloodsport (1988)

Bloodsport oozes all the qualities of an ‘80s B-movie. That includes cheesy dubs, dancing pectorals, cartoonish villains, permed hair, and lots of synth music. Most crucially, though, it’s got Belgian martial arts superstar Jean Claude Van Damme, the Muscle of Brussels, whose Hollywood breakthrough wouldn’t have been possible if not for director Newt Arnold’s kickboxing, arm-smashing celebration of Kumite, the illegal, and yes, fictional, (despite being based on real events) underground martial arts tournament.

But it’s spectacular, nonetheless, a small Hong Kong arena featuring the world’s best martial artists looking to knock out—and in some cases, kill—their opponents in front of gamblers and businessmen flapping dollar bills at the fighters. As Frank Dux, a French-born American and ninjutsu expert, who escapes the army to compete in the tournament, Van Damme glistens on the mat and in mid-air between chairs, where he casually meditates doing the splits. While the movie spends a few scenes with the military investigators hunting him down, the vast majority of its runtime is devoted to its violent, skilled competitors—most notably, Bolo Yeung, who steals the show as the villainous Chong Li, and makes Van Damme’s final showdown more dramatic and entertaining than it should be.

16.The Boxer (1997)

Set during The Troubles of Northern Ireland, Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer ironically depicts the sport like an escape from violence. When Danny (Daniel Day-Lewis), a former member of the Provisional IRA, returns to his Belfast neighborhood after 14 years in prison, he’s determined to rebuild his life, court an old flame (Emily Watson), and take up his old passion in the ring. But opening a non-sectarian boxing gym (welcome to Catholics and Protestants alike) in the hopes of courting peace turns old friends into foes and instigates a string of tragedy—killings and bombings that give the terror organization its name.

One of the best actors of his generation, Day-Lewis might not seem like a natural fit as a fighter, but, like every role, he commits completely, embodying an inspiring yet controlled pugilist trying to come to terms with his past and present. As Sheriden deftly displays in one televised, dinner-side match, boxing is both a way of channeling aggression and knowing when to pull back before it’s too late.

15.Foxcatcher (2014)

Foxcatcher is a movie about Olympic wrestling that could double as a horror film. From the moment we meet John du Pont, the creepy failson heir of the billionaire du Pont fortune, (Steve Careell in a distracting fake schnozz) and Olympic gold medalist Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo in his wheelhouse doing quiet and empathetic), we sense something terrible will happen. It’s an uncomfortable film about obsession, mental illness, and privileged men unaccustomed to hearing, ‘No.’ Based on a true story, it slowly builds to its inevitable, horrifying conclusion.

The three leads (Carell, Ruffalo, and Channing Tatum as Dave’s brother, the Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz), are all terrific, and director Bennett Miller sets a chilly tone — opting for long takes shot from a distance and a palate of wintery, moody grays. But he also knows how to direct a great scene, none better than the one in which the Schultz brothers warm up and spar. Watching Dave and his little brother Mark grapple on the mat, Miller reveals all we need to know about their characters and the siblings' relationship to one another.

14.Fat City (1972)

If boxing is the ultimate gladiator sport, it’s also just a violent excuse to make a few bucks in the hopes of seeing another day. At least, that’s the guiding philosophy behind Fat City, John Huston’s existential, depressive and dual portrait of low-level pugilists trying to make something of themselves. Against the arid, economically-starved backdrop of Stockton, California, a city of deadbeats, strivers, and immigrant farmers, Huston charts the return of one boxer (Stacey Keach) and the rise of a younger one (a fresh-faced Jeff Bridges) into the minor-league fight game—both a last chance and first step to reclaiming their masculinity and purpose.

Based on the eponymous 1969 novel by Leonard Gardner, the movie doesn’t follow the typical mentor-mentee trajectory. The two men may share a gym, but they’re on different paths with different women and different dreams. Their outlet and chance for redemption exists in the ring, where Huston never shies from the sport’s brutality and the toll of an ill-timed punch. Bridges busts his nose. Keach gushes blood. There’s no soaring, triumphant music or jittery camerawork—just focused frames and the grunts of bruised men slugging for small-town spectacle.

13.The Harder They Fall (1956)

In August 2009, Paulie Malignaggi, a slick boxer with little power but a precise jab faced Juan Diaz, a pressure fighter nicknamed “Baby Bull,” in Diaz’s hometown of Houston, Texas. Malignaggi outlanded and outworked Diaz and HBO’s Howard Lederman scored the fight 115-113 for the Italian-American light-welterweight. But there was uncertainty in the arena as the judges’ scorecards were revealed. This is boxing, after all. The result was 115-113, 116-112, and 118-110 all for Diaz. “Boxing is full of s**t man,” Malignaggi vented during a post-match interview. “I used to love this sport. I cannot stand doing this. The only reason I do this is because it gives me a good payday.”

Boxing is a dirty game and no film depicted this reality as well as The Harder They Fall. Based on Budd Schulberg’s 1947 novel, Mark Robson’s film noir tells the story of Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart in his final role), a broke newspaperman turned boxing publicist tasked with pushing an Argentinean giant named Toro Moreno onto the public. The goal: to set up a big money showdown with Buddy Brannen. The catch: Toro can’t really fight. As Toro runs through a series of tomato cans, he remains clueless that the fix is in. Predictably, Brannen maims him in the ring, which makes it genuinely heartbreaking when we learn that Toro’s purse for the beatdown is a paltry $49. Boxing is, without question, full of s**t, man.

12.HItman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998)

The documentary Wrestling with Shadows captures the final months of Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s 13-year run with the WWE. Having recently turned from a babyface into a bitter, fallen hero on the screen, he’s in the midst of a huge transition. His contract is also coming to an end and he’s deep in negotiations with WWE founder Vince McMahon for an extension. This sets the stage for one of the most shocking betrayals ever captured on film: the Montreal Screwjob.

Hart grants incredible access to filmmaker Paul Jay, inviting him into his home and his home away from home: the WWE locker room. We meet Hart’s co-workers and peers, most of whom revere him (although not as much as Hart does), while learning the ins and outs of the wrestling business. And that’s the most stunning thing about Wrestling with Shadows. It's Hart, an old school traditionalist driving a stake into the heart of kayfabe. Backstage in Montreal, he legitimately knocks out McMahon. Then he goes off to sign a big contract with rival promotion WCW, signaling not just the death of the Hitman character, but the birth of Mr. McMahon, and, subsequently, the Attitude Era, and the biggest boom period in pro wrestling history.

11.Girlfight (2000)

If there’s one indelible image in Karyn Kusama’s directorial debut, it’s of Michelle Rodriguez’s determined face, her head tilted slightly down, her chin tucked, her glaring eyes fixed on the camera as though it were a mortal enemy. She reveals it first in the movie’s title card sequence, then multiple times in the boxing ring, channeling all the angst and aggression of a teenager without anything to lose. Introducing her as a salty-sweet, expressive, and physical force, Girlfight leans on the coming-of-age blueprint: it follows a young woman navigating a traditionally masculine arena—one she hides from her father, then reckons with when it means competing against the boy she’s fallen for.

Kusama, in her own breakout effort, approaches the action with a blunt but meditative touch, letting Rodriguez carry the movie’s complicated emotional beats and power dynamics. It’s a raw, mature performance of contradictions—violence and tenderness, defensiveness and vulnerability—that announced her as a star before she ever got behind the wheel of the Fast & Furious franchise. Kusama knew what we’d all soon find out: Rodriguez could hang with the boys and run circles around them, too.

10.The Hurricane (1999)

The Hurricane tells the story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a gifted boxer with middleweight championship dreams—until he was framed for three murders in Paterson, N.J., by a corrupt, racially-motivated prosecutor, landing him inside a prison for 19 years. It’s a devastating blow in Carter’s lifelong battle of attrition, but it doesn’t bring him to his knees. That’s partly due to years of resiliency—from a previous stint in prison, then in the ring, absorbing hits and still winning fights with his whip-like mechanics that earned him his signature nickname.

As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, this is “one of Denzel Washington’s great performances, on par with his work in Malcolm X,” a conclusion that considers his radical transformation from renowned celebrity to detached inmate to renewed believer. Norman Jewison’s movie is indeed a combat movie—one that starts in the ring, proceeds to a jail cell, and ends in a court room.

9.Warrior (2011)

One of the early sports dramas to depict MMA, Warrior is both an unflinching look at life inside the Octagon and a fractured family trying to heal. Co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, the movie toggles between two brothers, Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan (Joel Edgerton), each affected differently by their father Paddy’s (Nick Nolte) alcoholism and domestic abuse as kids. Now grown up and licking their own financial and traumatic wounds, the pair enter an MMA tournament with a $5 million payout, an opportunity to reclaim their life that gets complicated by Paddy’s return to their lives.

O’Connor has three committed actors at his disposal—Hardy has the menace and physicality of a professional, Edgerton embodies the look and pain of real hunger, and Nolte balances years of regret with a lingering mania. It’s a Molotov cocktail that builds to an inevitable fiery showdown, in which the outlandish physical toll of this ruthless sport offers both brothers a chance to reconcile their longtime rift and begin again.

8.Rocky IV (1985)

Perhaps the most 80s movie ever made, Rocky IV is peak Reagan-era entertainment that doubles as Cold War propaganda. Heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is the embodiment of the American dream. A rags to riches story, he now lives with his wife and kid in an Italian-style mansion in Los Angeles, drives a black Lambo, and has a robot maid serving his drunk brother-in-law brewskis. Enter the ultimate communist funcrusher: a mammoth PED-assisted Soviet boxer named Ivan Drago. After Drago (Dolph Lundgren) kills Rocky’s best friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) during an exhibition match, Rocky seeks revenge in a Christmas Day grudge match in Moscow.

Though critics tarred Rocky IV as cheesy, predictable, and jingoistic (and it is) it’s also a classic combat sport film with a tragic victim (Creed, the old fighter missing the spotlight), messianic hero (Balboa, a glutton for punishment), and an indelible villain. The training sequences and soundtrack are iconic and the final fight is brutal and absurd. But Rocky earning a standing ovation from a Gorbachev lookalike and the entire Russian politburo, while literally wrapped in the American flag, is the perfect ending to a movie that, legend has it, singlehandedly ended the Cold War.

7.Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Million-Dollar Baby follows the classic boxing-movie blueprint: a reluctant mentor coaches a talented up-and-comer for her shot at the title. But the movie’s Oscar success—it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor—isn’t predicated on its reliable narrative and emotional devices or its immersive and jolting camerawork. No, Clint Eastwood’s blunt and brutal depiction of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and her rise into the top ranks of women’s boxing cuts deep precisely because of its lack of spectacle.

Based on stories from the 2000 collection Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole, this is a matter-of-fact movie—narrated by Morgan Freeman—that oozes the grit and gravel that comes from Eastwood’s mouth as Maggie’s trainer Frankie, a boxing lifer who runs a dodgy Los Angeles gym. Alongside cinematographer Tom Stern, Eastwood covers the movie in menacing shadow and bright beams of heavenly white light, both eclipsing and spotlighting Swank’s fierce performance as someone striving to stop starving. The movie doesn’t take its cues from Rocky’s pyrrhic ending, though—it goes somewhere even darker, capturing the grim reality of a sport that never relents, even when it feels like it’s supposed to.

6.The Fighter (2010)

The titular protagonist of The Fighter might technically be “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), the real-life Lowell, Massachusetts boxer who makes an unprecedented transformation from washed-up palooka to light-welterweight champion. But it’s Ward’s family that also deserves top billing. There’s his older half-brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a motormouth crackhead and former boxer who went the distance with Sugar Ray Leonard; his overly protective mother and manager Alice (Melissa Leo); and his seven sisters with varying levels of harsh New England accents. Together, they make a noisy ensemble that Mickey learns to navigate with his girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) as he trains and fights his way up the ranks.

Marking the beginning of David O. Russell’s prolific run of Oscar-nominated movies, The Fighter goes for full verisimilitude when Wahlberg gets in the ring, using the same HBO director and videographers from Ward's actual fights to implement replays and other authentic broadcast angles. The movie—and Wahlberg—looks the part, but it’s Bale’s unpredictable, Oscar-winning performance that makes this standard biopic crackle.

5.Creed (2015)

It’s already been 10 years since Ryan Coogler reinvigorated the Rocky franchise with Creed, one of the most exciting and successful “legacy sequels” of the 21st century. In one corner, Michael B. Jordan, Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son, trying to carve his own path. In the other corner, Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, his reluctant mentor and boxing coach. And in the middle, a movie filled with exhilarating matches (sometimes filmed in one continuous shot), elemental themes (about fatherhood and regret), and game actors (Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris, and Phylicia Rashad).

The fall blockbuster, which solidified Coogler and Jordan as two of their generation’s most important figures, is littered with compelling and authentic moments. But more than any of the Oakland director’s dynamically filmed bouts, it’s his remake of Rocky’s running montage set to Meek Mill’s “Lord Knows” that remains the movie’s signature moment. It’s both a modern and nostalgic flourish that every other reboot and remake has kept chasing in the IP mining era.

4.Rocky (1976)

Has there ever been a movie that better captured the heart, grit, and passion of Philadelphia than Rocky? Sylvester Stallone’s script and John G. Avildsen’s street-level direction didn’t just win the boxing flick Best Picture—it hardwired it into the city’s scrappy, underdog identity. The bond is undeniable, an almost-mythic blue-collar and resilient symbiosis between character and location. Look no further than the movie’s training montage, in which Stallone runs through the Italian Market, along the Schuylkill River, and up the art museum steps.

Set to Bill Conti’s iconic score, Rocky’s lung-busting fight prep isn’t just an inspirational test of endurance—it’s become a celebratory rite of passage, for locals and visitors alike. That Stallone banged out the script with just $106 in his bank account—and that Rocky ultimately loses his climactic bout with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) by split decision—only enhanced the movie’s legacy and its foundational never-say-die spirit. No matter the obstacles, Rocky’s real victory is that he will keep getting off the canvas, keep moving forward, and keep going the distance.

3.The Wrestler (2008)

For Randy Ramzinski, civilian life is nothing. “The only place I get hurt is out there,” he says, referring to the world outside of the wrestling ring. Life was so much easier for him in the 1980s, back when Ratt’s “Round and Round” wasn’t an oldie and Randy “The Ram” Robinson was selling out Madison Square Garden. But now he’s just a wrestler on the wrong side of 50 with a damaged ticker, who lives in a trailer park. He’s estranged from his daughter. The stripper he shares sparks with is just as damaged as him. And he has zero monetizable skills, which is why he slings egg salad at a deli counter somewhere in New Jersey. So it’s no surprise that he defies doctor’s orders and returns to the ring for a 20th anniversary grudge match with his old rival, The Ayatollah.

Partially shot backstage at two Ring of Honor shows, The Wrestler pulls back the curtain on the insular world of indie wrestling and reveals both trade secrets (Randy the Ram hiding a razor in his wrist tape; the wrestlers calling the match in the locker room) and the camaraderie that the boys in the back share. But the film works because Mickey Rourke gives it his all in an Oscar-worthy performance as a man willing to die just so long as it’s doing the thing he loves the most.

2.When We Were Kings (1996)

How do you accurately depict two of the most iconic and formidable boxers in the world squaring off in one of the biggest fights of the century? Leon Gast does his best with When We Were Kings, his Oscar-winning documentary about the “Rumble in the Jungle” between world heavyweight champion George Foreman and Muhammed Ali, mixing loads of intimate archival footage ahead of the 1974 fight in Zaire with commentary from Norman Mailer, Thomas Hauser, and B.B. King and plenty of others.

Styles make fights, and the two fighters couldn’t have been more different. Foreman was like a “physical guru,” but used his memorable, forceful words carefully and sparingly. Ali, on the other hand, was a talker and a gloater, self-mythologizing and never shy in front of a camera—attributes that, at this point in his career, many believed had become a defense mechanism. Gast sets the stage, provides all the context, and then lets his literary interview subjects break down every aspect of this clash of titans. In just 88 minutes, he gives you a history lesson, but most importantly, the feeling of what it was like to be in the presence of greatness.

1.Raging Bull (1980)

A movie about violence, self-destruction, and irredeemable insecurity, Raging Bull reignited Martin Scorsese’s career as a masterful portraitist of troubled, angry, broken men. Using the ring as an allegory for his own filmmaking, Scorsese centers a semi-biographical movie (with a screenplay from Paul Schrader) around Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro), a small-minded, quick-tempered kid from the Bronx who acquires legendary status.

Uninterested in sports and their familiar narrative beats, the auteur makes the ring a stage and LaMotta a ballet dancer, turning slugfests into black-and-white, operatic dreams full of sweat, saliva, and blood. LaMotta’s fights are less about technique than they are windows into his fractured emotional states—the extreme possessiveness over his wife Vicki (Cathy Moriarty) and the rageful jealousy he harbors toward his brother (Joe Pesci). When LaMotta stares at his reflection at the end of the movie, thinking of all the people he abused and banished from his life, he struggles to take accountability. This is a lonely, pitiful man that only Scorsese, climbing back from his own personal rock bottom, could fully understand and depict.

Stay ahead on Exclusives

Download the Complex App