On Thursday at 7:30 p.m., a day before its scheduled national release, Mark Wahlberg?s long-awaited film, ?The Fighter,? ostensibly based on the life and career of Micky Ward, will be screened during a special black-tie charity premiere at the Marriott Courtyard in Irish Micky?s hometown of Lowell. One hopes that the Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau has arranged for extra security that night, because unless they have mellowed somewhat in the years since Micky hung up his gloves, the extended Ward-Ecklund clan may rip the place apart when they get a look at the movie.
Although it was shot on location in a record 33 days, ?The Fighter? has been more than five years in the making, and has gone through so many changes (remember when Brad Pitt was going to play Dicky Ecklund?) that no fewer than 13 producers and five screenwriters are listed among the credits. The final product has the trappings of a reality TV show ? say, a particularly gnarly episode of ?Intervention? ? which relies for dramatic tension on the relationship between its protagonist and a family portrayed as so unflatteringly dysfunctional that the Mayweathers seem absolutely normal by comparison.
Ecklund, Micky?s half-brother and sometime trainer, comes off in Christian Bale?s portrayal as a bug-eyed, drug-addled nitwit, a characterization unaffected even by stretches of prison-enforced sobriety. Matriarch Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) is depicted as a scheming, atavistic, and controlling female version of Fagin, surrounded by an inseparable gaggle of moronic bimbos representing Micky and Dicky?s sisters.
Besides Ward (Wahlberg) and his girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams), just about the only member of the inner circle to emerge unscathed is Mickey O?Keefe, the Lowell police sergeant who trained Micky when Ecklund was either otherwise occupied at the crack-house or in prison, and that?s because Sgt. O?Keefe managed to land a role portraying himself. (The only other character to play himself is Ecklund?s one-time nemesis Sugar Ray Leonard, who has a cameo role.)
Having gone to extreme lengths to surround itself with this grim version of reality, ?The Fighter? goes wildly off the rails by doctoring facts and history to produce a redemptive Hollywood denouement. Micky Ward?s place in boxing history is secure precisely because of the courage he displayed in a blue-collar career in which he never won a world title. In director David Russell?s representation, Ward?s surprise 1996 KO of unbeaten Alfonso Sanchez earns him ?the shot of a lifetime,? an immediate title fight vs. (get this) Shea Neary in London. With Ecklund, fresh out of the bucket, joining O?Keefe in the corner, Micky is inspired to win, and as ?champion of the world? rides off into the sunset.
In actuality, the Sanchez win did get Micky an immediate title shot. He was stopped on cuts by Vince Phillips at the Roxy in his 1997 challenge for the WBA junior welterweight title. The Neary fight came three years, eight fights, and one protracted Ecklund stay in Billerica later, but the dubious title in question ? the World Boxing Union 140-pound belt ? was of so little consequence that Micky never even bothered defending that title. (Ward-Neary, in fact, received third billing on the 2000 card at the Kensington Olympia.) For some unfathomable reason, the movie makes Ward and Neary full-blown welterweights (both are announced at 146 pounds), and even Ward?s won-lost record at the time of the fight is misstated.
How much do you suppose they had to pay Jim Lampley to say (in his voiceover) ?Shea Neary is the welterweight champion of the world!??
Ward?s career-defining trilogy against the late Arturo Gatti isn?t included in the film, which only barely alludes to it in a scripted crawl just before the credits roll. (Perhaps Marky-Mark is saving the Gatti fights for ?The Fighter, Part II.?)
Hollywood rewrites history all the time, of course, but here?s the nagging question: If they were determined to create an alternative version of his life story, why pretend that this is about Micky Ward at all? Had the film been presented as fiction ? which, when all is said and done, it is ? it might have spared the Ward-Ecklund clan the humiliation its release is bound to produce.
Seating for Thursday?s premiere is limited to 300 patrons at $75 a pop, and sold out in 45 minutes. If you?re one of the lucky ones to procure tickets, you might want to wear a hard hat. Dicky and Alice aren?t going to like it much at all.
Skeets? sound advice
The essential dramatic conflict presented in ?The Fighter? derives from the moment a well-heeled promoter tries to salvage Ward?s career by offering him a chance to move to Las Vegas to train, year-round, all expenses paid, on the condition he free himself from the clutches of a family and environment that are inhibiting his boxing career. (Although the promoter is plainly based on Bob Arum, he is prudently given a different name in the film.)
Arum, whose matchmaker Teddy Brenner had labeled Ward ?the best prospect to come out of New England since Marvin Hagler,? did make such an offer, but he wasn?t the first to urge Ward to seek a more wholesome environment. ?Irish Thunder,? Bob Halloran?s 2006 book on Ward, recounts an episode when the young Micky is contemplating a professional career:
?I says ?Look, get the hell out of Lowell. This town is getting buried with the drugs. If you want to be a decent fighter, get out. Get the hell out of Lowell.? ?
The presenter of that advice was Charles ?Skeets? Scioli, who was buried yesterday after his death at age 97 in Cambridge last week. As president of New England AAU boxing for more than 40 years, Skeets mentored several generations of fighters going back to the days of Rocky Marciano, and was still serving as the glove man for amateur tournaments well into his 80s. A universally beloved figure, Scioli devoted eight decades to the sport, and there are old-timers in rest homes today who will tell you that Skeets laced on the first pair of gloves they ever wore.
It is the rare man who could so profoundly affect the lives of so many young men over such a long period of time. He will be missed.
Trouble for Martins
Just to show that Lowell doesn?t own a monopoly on dysfunctional boxing families, Christy Martin, whose 1996 bloodbath with Ireland?s Deirdre Gogarty made her the face of women?s boxing, was admitted to a Florida hospital last week, having been shot and stabbed multiple times by her 66-year-old husband, trainer, and manager Jim Martin, who has been charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery with a weapon. …
Travis and Tarvis Simms have only two losses between them, but the Norwalk (Conn.) twins never quite achieved the stardom that seemed their destiny when they stepped from highly decorated amateur careers to enter the pro ranks more than a dozen years ago. (At the time, the Simms brothers? future looked so rosy that their advisers tried to keep them out of the clutches of the big-time promoters who were waving money in their faces.) Travis eventually won the WBA junior middleweight title, but lost it to Joachim Alcine in Bridgeport, Conn., three years ago and has fought only twice since.
Tarvis, the incrementally larger brother, intermittently campaigned as a super middleweight, and was 38 years old by the time he actually lost a fight. (To Allen Green, in Oklahoma last year.) Thirteen years after he made his pro debut on a Main Events card (Lennox Lewis-Andrew Golota
Gatti-Gabriel Ruelas) in Atlantic City, the ?elder? Simms signed a promotional contract with the New Jersey company last month, and will fight under Kathy Duva?s colors when he faces Willis Lockett on Thursday night?s Tomas Adamek-Vinny Maddalone card at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. …
Happy birthday, Willie Gibbs.
