The New England Patriots tight end has hinted he may consider retiring at the age of 28 – and there are plenty of reasons for swapping the NFL for HollywoodFollowing his team’s Super Bowl loss this month, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski hinted he is contemplating retirement. It’s not entirely certain how seriously the 28-year-old is taking his decision – many believe this is merely a contract negotiation stunt – but if he does retire, the NFL’s loss could become Hollywood’s gain.Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who himself made the leap from wrestling to Hollywood, have been trying to convince Gronkowski to try his hand at acting, while David Arquette, who apparently is still in the...
Billie-Jean King’s match against the 1939 men’s Wimbledon champion in 1973 provides the main thrust of a new film but like other sporting movies the facts are often massaged to augment the storyAfter the credits finished rolling at the end of the Battle of the Sexes, the new cinematic re-creation of the events surrounding the famous tennis match in 1973 between Billie Jean King, the world’s No1 female player, and Bobby Riggs, the Wimbledon men’s singles champion of 1939, I asked myself if the staging of the event could really have been as preposterously over the top as it is depicted in the film.The answer, after consulting an eyewitness, was that, for once, Hollywood might have underplayed the reality. Related:...
The fine details of his brief reign as world middleweight champion are not always absorbed in recollections of his career, mainly because one of the greatest films of all time painted him in classically Shakespearean modeJake LaMotta should have been in Las Vegas to watch Gennady Golovkin and Saul “Canelo” Álvarez, two distinguished middleweights pitched together to echo the deeds of the division’s glorious past, a fight reckoned to restore boxing’s faltering image. LaMotta, who knew a lot about the game’s sullied reputation, would have given it a wry smile.The fight did not quite do its job. It was a terrific rather than a truly great contest and dreadful misjudgment by one of the officials overwhelmingly in favour of Álvarez returned a...