Documentary review: ESPN's Fight Life (2024) & Netflix's Undisputed (2024)

The first Usyk-Fury fight has received two documentaries this year. One as the special debut of a 5-episode ESPN boxing anthology released in October, and the other as 60-minute Netflix special released 11 days before the rematch.

The Fight Life: Episode One - Tyson Fury

ESPN's press release for this series promised "the journeys of five of the sport’s elite boxers — Tyson Fury, Naoya Inoue, Seniesa Estrada, Teofimo Lopez, and Josh Taylor — alongside unprecedented and exclusive behind-the-scenes access with Top Rank’s executives". Essentially, The Fight Life is a Top Rank puff piece. Episodes two through five are 30 minutes each, but the heavyweight got 45 minutes of airtime. Though not all to himself.

The supporting character here is President of Top Rank Boxing, Todd duBoef, who gives us a brief tour and history lesson of Top Rank. He also reminds the viewer that he got the job because he's Bob Arum's stepson. On the one hand, I'm sure plenty of calls of nepotism have been thrown his way before so I can see why he'd feel compelled to push back. On the other hand, the average man on the street has no idea who Todd duBoef is, he probably could've gotten away with never mentioning it. It's not something I previously associated with him but it sure as sugar is now. After about 20 minutes of The Fight-Adjacent Life it's time to go to Saudi Arabia.

Turki Alalshikh makes a salient point that most people know nothing about Zaire besides Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's Rumble in The Jungle. It would've been good to see what question prompted that response. And I can't help myself, it has to be said that most people who know that that fight happened in Zaire (as opposed to just 'Africa') tend to know the name Mobutu and that he was a dictator whose name is often accompanied by the phrase "human rights record". It's rarely a phrase you hear because things are going swimmingly. There was a whole documentary about the fight and the context it took place in, they even gave it an Academy Award. The stronger point might be that Western media takes little interest in the human rights record of Western nations.

I digress. A few of the local Saudis unanimously voice their support for Fury. It's the kind of scene you take at face value until you remember that this is the Fury documentary. That said, there are still a few nice Usyk moments like a video call with his son where he mentions he's already prayed for his father and will do so again later. But things quickly return to bathos with Fury erratically cursing in all directions at a face-off. It wouldn't be surprising if the expression changes to 'swears like a boxer' one day.

The last segment is fairly standard fight montage. I enjoyed that there were attempts at cinematography and that a lot of the interviews catch people in casual moments rather getting them to speak directly into a camera in some studio. The music chosen works well. And, you gotta hand it to them, they didn't cut Sean Zittel bringing up that Fury is on the decline after losing. Could it be because the filmmakers know that it'll make it a more impressive comeback story if he wins the rematch? Whatever the reason, this is a well-made and competent documentary. It's Tyson Fury's personality that needs work.

Final Review Scores
In a word: Greener
In a sentence: Everyone knows which Ali fights Don King promoted but nobody can tell you which Ali fights Bob Arum promoted.
In a number: 7.47
In an emoji: 🗽
In a Pokémon: Camerupt

'The Fight Life' is available on ESPN+ (note: only available in US)
Directors: Louis Burgdorf and Oliver Anderson
Production companies: ESPN in association with Words + Pictures and Top Rank
Runtime: 00:44:03

Netflix's Undisputed

The fourth installment of Tom Day's Heavyweight Boxing Documentary Universe (following Battle of the Baddest, Day of Reckoning, and Knockout Chaos) has changed streaming services but not much else. The biggest differences are that the runtime is ~25% shorter, more talking heads take part, a few small recreation scenes, and round-by-round highlights of the fight are edited in throughout rather than shoehorned in at the end.

Like the previous two DAZN entries, it's still largely interviews recorded before the fight that are retrofitted around the event itself. There are thankfully a few more boxers this time, the previous roster now adds brief interjections by Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Wlad Klitschko, and even both Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury themselves. Because these were recorded so long ago, Ryan Garcia, who was removed from the 2024 video game 'Undisputed' after a litany of explicitly racist remarks in the summer, makes an appearance in the 2024 documentary 'Undisputed'.

The framing device here is not the zombies, video games, or a Ring of Fire. It's a young boy walking home at night when the CRT televisions in a retro electronics shop magically turn on, he decides to watch the proceedings, nodding dutifully until he's whisked away by a stranger in a taxi never to be seen again. The credits later list them as 'Boy' and 'Dad' but you'd have to wait quite a while to find that out.

That's really all there is to find out. I previously said that the target audience for these documentaries is a bit unclear and that is no longer the case. As someone familiar with boxing, this was not made for someone like me. If you've seen the first fight or the handful of social media moments and traditional media headlines about either Fury or Usyk, there's no real reason to watch this documentary. Unless you want to be mocked for remembering that Tyson Fury knows you can delay a fight with a cut, as half a dozen people smugly build a disingenuous strawman against a "fake cut" conspiracy. Or if you care for exclusive retellings of how The MMA Hour gets made.

Ukraine is at war. Fury has mental health problems. He almost lost to Ngannou. You could argue that this was all old news before the first fight. Recapping it with sentimental music in the background does not make it new and does not give it new meaning. There aren't even "scoops" like Fury's live reaction to seeing his dad bleeding from the head that we see in The Fight Life. The closest we get is fake Worldstar-esque footage of when Fury supposedly got cut in an obvious reenactment. With more access to both the Usyk and Fury camps, were there really so few interesting behind the scenes moments? On the strength of this documentary, you'd have to assume so.

Maybe the problem is giving equal consideration to both fighters when one of them is a loser? Usyk, the reigning champion, still feels like an enigma. Though after watching the two documentaries the obvious emotional hook for a solo Usyk documentary seems like it would be exploring his relationship with his father and his relationship with his son. Fury, who already has his own Netflix reality TV show, continues to take up airtime. It makes sense to treat the two sides even-handedly before a fight, like in HBO's 24/7 and its various off-shoots. But what will it take for someone in a position of authority to pick a side after someone's hand is raised?

Final Review Scores
In a word: Schlockumentary
In a sentence: I like that Edward Hearn was almost non-exist but I still never want to see or hear from Dev Sahni, Ade Oladipo, Gareth A. Davies, Ariel Helwani, or John Fury ever again.
In a number: 3.01
In an emoji: 📦
In a Simpsons season: 26

'Undisputed' is available on Netflix (note: only in UK and Ukraine)
Director/Producer: Tom Day (We Go Again Studios)
Production companies: Saudi General Entertainment Authority, Sela, BigTime Creative Shop, and We Go Again.
Runtime: 01:04:01

BONUS! - Petty nitpicks and pontifications

The Fight Life:

• Even for this American production, there was no escaping Gareth A. Davies. I think it's because his name comes up on the front page of Google when you search 'boxing journalist'.
• It annoyed me that Fury's antics were described as reminiscent of Ali, while they showed clips of Fury wearing an all-American outfit more reminiscent of Apollo Creed.
• There's a very funny scene where Tyson Fury flexes his new-and-improved physique and shouts "I've got abs!" to the amusement of people around him because he does not have abs, the soft subtitles very slyly transcribe him as saying "let's go lads!"
• Pretty cheap of them to use the reverse angle of Fury's knockout win over Chisora because it disguises that he pushed him over after landing the uppercut
• I'm not sure if it's the case in America, but Tyson Fury is much more closely associated with Frank Warren and Queensberry than Bob Arum and Top Rank.

Undisputed:

• Why was 'Fortunate Son' the opening song? Is it because we're supposed to be reminded of the Vietnam War in this documentary about fighting? Neither of the fighters are American. The fight wasn't even held in America.
  • The closing song was AC🗲DC so I thought this was mainly for the benefit of American audiences but apparently this isn't even available to watch in America.
• Since this is a documentary for paid Netflix subscribers, I wonder if it'll get uploaded to Turki Alalshikh's YouTube channel or if Netflix hold exclusive rights?
• The part where Michael Buffer says "this will be for the undisputed heavyweight championship" and then it cuts to Usyk in his hotel room quietly saying "of the world" was the best edit I've seen in over 3 hours of these documentaries.
• The gold phone that Anthony Joshua bought for Turki Alalshikh can be seen in the comic where he's talking with Ariel Helwani, it's a nice little attention to detail.
• Ade Oladipo saying (about Fury attempting to play mindgames with Usyk) "how can you have mental warfare with someone that his country's going through its biggest war in the history of the country?" is a level of historical illiteracy so bad that it could only have been left in the final cut to embarrass him.
• Being on Netflix instead of DAZN, this one did include subtitles (in English, Arabic, and Ukrainian)
• According to the filmmakers, who included their own round-by-round scoring recap, Usyk won rounds 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, & 11, and Fury won rounds 2, 4, 5, 6, & 7. All three judges gave Fury round 12, I suspect some of his harshest critics would do the same.
  • This would mean a 6-6 on the rounds but a 114-113 win for Usyk because of the knockdown. It is almost identical to Craig Metcalfe's scorecard, the difference being he was the only judge who scored Round 11 for Fury.
• I don't know why they didn't use Ukrainian commentary when the Ukrainian family is watching the fight. The Megogo stream was not region-restricted.
• Teddy Atlas is captioned as a "Legendary Boxing Coach", no comment on that but he is one of the better storytellers in boxing today.

The Other Documentaries

Also doing their part to hype up next week's rematch were DAZN, TNT Sports, and Sky Sports - who all put out YouTube videos that each have around 150k-250k views after about a week. A mixed bag overall but the Sky one starts strong before dropping off with a very lazy second half. The problem across broadcasters is that it is once again the illusion of choice. For the most part, the folks in charge of ancillary boxing media will default to giving a platform to the same 5 or 6 voices above all. I'm personally not a fan of Radio Rahim and his radio voice, but the Netflix doc at least gave one boxing's foremost digital media personalities a chance to reach a wider audience, as does ESPN with the occasional sportswriter.

If the usual suspects were capable of keeping boxing on the forefront of the public's consciousness, the sport would've never fallen into such disarray in the first place. This only makes it more worrisome that the people who have injected new life into the sport seem reticent to clear out the cobwebs. Nobody can say with any certainty when this golden age of attention and money will begin to wane. But if the approach continues to be 'leave well enough alone' when things are clearly unwell, then it will wane sooner rather than later.

Liberty Media managed to relaunch Formula One since acquiring it in 2017 and attracted a new audience to the old sport, a younger and more global audience than before. And they did it by correctly identifying that the old way of engaging with fans was not good enough. I would argue that boxing must do the same. But there are plenty of people who get paid regardless and will never even consider that it could do the same. Say what you will about the influencer generation and their foothold in boxing; you cannot deny that they are, if nothing else, ambitious.