He’s been struggling to keep his weight below 140 pounds so he can fight as a junior welterweight, but it hasn’t done much good: He just keeps losing. The Rhode Islander with a thick accent is famous more for his bluster than his record. When the two meet, Vinny seems like a lost cause too. He stumbles into redemption, however, thanks to boxer Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller), now known legally as Vinny Paz.
#ROAD FIGHTER VINNY MOVIE#
“Bleed for This” has all of that and not much more, save for a stellar performance by Aaron Eckhart as Kevin Rooney, the paunchy, balding boxing coach who once trained Mike Tyson but, by the early 1990s, when the movie is set, was a washed-up alcoholic. You know the formula: the underdog hero the “Rocky”-esque training montage the setback on the way to victory. “Bleed for This” is just the latest in the conveyor belt of boxing movies that continues to pass through theaters, despite a waning interest in the sport. Yet he believes the benefits of this to his movie career went far beyond making him more believable in this one role.īefore his breakthrough in 2014's Whiplash, in which he played a young drummer studying under an abusive teacher, he was best known for supporting turns in Rabbit Hole and Footloose, and memorably playing himself in Project X – although he did get to play the romantic lead opposite Shailene Woodley in 2013's The Spectacular Now.A down-on-his-luck trainer (Aaron Eckhart), left, takes on the challenge of working with a similarly struggling fighter, Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller), in the real-life boxing movie “Bleed for This.” (Seacia Pavao/Open Road Films) Just trying to cut weight – all these things are so unnatural.” The 29-year-old actor lost 9 kilograms for the role and proudly boasts that his body-fat ratio fell to 6 per cent. “It’s unparalleled, except for maybe an Olympic athlete. “In order to pretend to be a boxer, you have to go through a training camp, which gives you some experience of what fighters put their bodies through,” he says.
Teller went to great lengths to look the part for the role. The boxer keeps the training secret from his family and partner – the first person to discover what he is up to is his trainer, Kevin Rooney, played by Aaron Eckhart. Pazienza is seen training in the basement of his parent's home wearing a medical device called a halo, a contraption that was screwed to his skull to protect his neck from further injury. The film, written and directed by Ben Younger ( Boiler Room, Prime), focuses on this incredible comeback. “He started working out five days after breaking his neck, knowing that if he messed up, even in a small way, then he would be paralysed from the neck down.” Pazienza refused to accept this diagnosis and embarked on a remarkable – and risky – journey back to the ring. Weeks after his 1991 win, he was involved in a near-fatal car crash that turned his life story from one of sporting excellence into a triumph of human spirit.ĭoctors told the fighter, whose neck was broken, that his boxing career was over and he would probably never walk again. The American, born in Rhode Island, also won the World Light Middleweight title four years later, making him only the second boxer, after Roberto Durán, to be champion at both Lightweight and Light Middleweight world titles.
In 1987, 24-year-old Vinny Pazienza became the International Boxing Federation World Lightweight Champion. "So you just want to be truthful to that." "A lot of people don't know Vinny and they are going to watch this movie and associate Vinny Paz with this portrayal of him," says Whiplash star Miles Teller, who portrays the boxer in the biopic Bleed For This.
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