1. Underdogs Don’t Often Prevail
Any fan of boxing movies knows that Rocky Balboa is a great movie hero. The perpetual underdog who never stops fighting, Rocky is a cinematic icon. In real life, underdogs rarely win, and when they do, they stop being underdogs.
The real world is driven by statistics, and if a fighter pulls off a shocking upset, their stats (and their odds of winning their next fight) get much better. Real-life examples of similar underdog stories effectively disprove the entire trope, too: Chuck Wepner (whose story the first Rocky movie was loosely based on) didn’t win his big title shot against Muhammad Ali.
The truth is, underdogs are considered such for a reason. The movies would have you believe that any fighter can prevail over a much more seasoned opponent, and while this is technically true, it’s incredibly rare. In other words, the idea of the perpetual underdog is just another of those things that movies get wrong about boxing.
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