Sent to the Ward

After The Fighter’s glorious triumphs at the Golden Globes yesterday and with a general release on Thursday, I figured what better time to hunt down someone who has actually met Micky Ward. Local boxer Paul Briggs fits that category and I chatted him about the Ward legend. It was pretty darn insightful. If the big screen adaptation of Jake La Motta's life story in Raging Bull taught us anything, it's that the best boxing stories come from fact, not fiction. That is proving to be the case with The Fighter, the real life story of boxer `Irish' Micky Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg) and his brother Dicky who helped train him. The film picked up two out of the six Golden Globes it was nominated for yesterday, with Christian Bale winning best supporting actor for his portrayal of the drug-addicted Dicky and Melissa Leo for best supporting actress as the brothers mother.

The Fighter has special significance for Gold Coast boxer Paul Briggs (above), who had the opportunity to meet Micky and Dicky at a boxing match several years ago.
"It was at a Kostya Tszyu fight in Las Vegas in 2002,'' he recalls.
"I was fighting in San Francisco the next weekend and he heard my accent and we started chatting from there.
"He was curious to what I was doing in the US as there weren't too many Aussies over there at the time.
"He was interested and curious as to what the scene was like over here.
"He was just a dude.
"It's funny when two boxers get together, the stuff you talk about.
"I sat there and watched a fight and we were just chatting away about the technique.
"It doesn't matter how big a superstar you are, when you get down to the nitty gritty it's just talk between two warriors.''Briggs met Ward just after the first of three fights with Arturo Gatti, which went on to become one the great boxing trilogies (Ward and Gatti are pictured above). Briggs said chatting with Ward "between fights and rounds'' he was struck by how ``down to Earth'' he was. Sitting next to Ward at the fight was his older brother Dicky who Briggs said was ``a bit of a lunatic''. Christian Bale's erratic portrayal of Dicky in The Fighter is tipped to win him an Oscar and Briggs said it seems authentic.
"He (Dicky) was pretty taken up with the fight and we actually ended up swapping places so Micky was just talking to me,'' he said.
"I've met some lunatics in my time, but he's up there.
"He's bananas.''

Although The Fighter lost out in major categories at the Globes, including best film, best actor for Wahlberg and best director for David O'Russell, it's tipped to go well when the Oscar nominations are announced next Thursday. Many critics who questioned the necessity of yet another underdog boxing film have been won over by The Fighter, which is one of the best reviewed films of the season. Briggs too thought the genre "had been stretched beyond its capabilities''.
"The genre has been flogged beyond belief,'' he said.
"I thought there's a real story there in their life story, I just didn't know if anyone could pull it off.
"Then I heard Mark Wahlberg was doing it and pushing the film and I thought `it's going to be bigger than Ben Hur."Wahlberg was a driving force behind the film, taking it from early development stages as an executive producer and hand-picking everyone from directors and trainers, to actors and producers. Bale had this to say about Wahlberg in his acceptance speech “Mark, really got to give a shout out to Mark as he really drove this whole movie. You can only give a loud performance like the one I gave when you have a quiet anchor and a stoic character. I’ve played that character many times and it never gets any notice. But the HPFA have nominated Mark for tonight so that’s fantastic, but thank you buddy. Kudos to you for that, otherwise I wouldn’t have got away with it.”

Melissa Leo also gave Wahlberg a shout-out in her acceptance speech “Mark Wahlberg you are a prince, you are amazing. It was so beautiful to play your mother, it was so beautiful to see you and your team work. Thank you so much for working with the Ward-Eckland’s so long and so hard so that Micky Ward’s legacy, and Dicky’s as well, will live on so much longer and so much brighter.” Now I can’t wait for those Oscar nominations next Wednesday, hopefully The Fighter gets the nods it deserves.

The Fighter is out on Thursday, January 20. You can read my full review here.