For me anyway, other sports just seem a bit trivial in comparison. All successful athletes are dedicated without doubt but preparing yourself to take punishment, where there's a chance you may even die is another level. Its often said that sacrifice and struggle are the heart and soul of what boxing is all about and when you can put that to film, people will identify with it.

Raging Bull is widely regarded as one of the best films of all time and I think a large part of why so many boxing fans love it is because it doesn't try to romanticise anything, it focuses on the violence both inside and outside the ring and shows this man Lamotta for what he was back then. a violent, paranoid animal who's life only made sense when fighting.

The last Rocky in particular too i think was successful for different reasons. It did romanticise the sport, but at the same time focused on this character who was working class, likeable and struggling with life . People could identify with him and relate to what he was going through. Stallone often gets criticised for being inducted into the boxing hall of fame, but theres no doubt his films inspired a few generations of kids to take up boxing and achieve something.

What pretty much all these boxing films have in common is that they are all about overcoming adversity, and even people who don't box can appreciate that.

There are far more boxing films than there are movies about any other sport. This is because of two major reasons:

1) Boxing is an INDIVIDUAL sport; football/baseball/basketball are team sports...studios need to higher a lot more actors to film movies about team sports than they do boxing (which increases production costs)

2) Boxing's narrative is that of "man-vs.-man" ... the plot is simple and easy to follow. Because boxing is a tough, physical sport that pits two individuals against each other, it makes for compelling viewing.

Boxing has it all; action movies, dramas, comedies, time period pieces, historical, documentaries, you name it. Other sports usually fall into one or two categories so i would definitely say that boxing is the most varied of all and most successful at the box office.

I would agree boxing is the biggest in cinema. Maybe because of the rich history of the sport

Not really.

I mean rocky was huge, and there are a lot of them, but there are other sports with dozens of films based on them as well.

American football has loads, as does basketball and baseball.

Martial arts?

There are more kung fu and ninja movies than there are boxing.

There is the Rocky Trillogy-Raging Bull-On the Waterfront-Cinderella Man-Million Dollar Baby-The Hurricane along with many others.

It's clear to see that boxing films do much better than any other sports in the genre