My wife and I were just finishing up the second season of the Netflix romcom series “Nobody Wants This” last week when my boxing-fan friend David Kushin (co-star of a couple of recent pay-per-view running diary columns) sent me a DM: “If May-Pac 2 happens and is on Netflix, it’ll be the second show on Netflix called ‘Nobody Wants This.’”
Solid line. Outstanding BoxingScene column idea.
I must apologize to the brilliant former Ring and KO columnist Jeff Ryan, as I’m adapting (OK, stealing) a recurring column idea of his: taking the titles of popular movies or TV shows and applying them to boxing subjects.
In this case, I’ll spin off of David’s DM and focus on titles of Netflix originals, past or present.
Hey, Netflix is a boxing network these days. So let’s make it into an all-boxing network.
In addition to the version of “Nobody Wants This” starring Floyd Mayweather Jnr and Manny Pacquiao, here’s some of what you’ll find if you scroll around your updated Netflix menu:
“Stranger Things”: A horror-nostalgia series telling the supernatural tale of referee Mills Lane’s 1997 campaign officiating heavyweight title fights. He has to stop Lennox Lewis vs Oliver McCall when the latter is in tears, disqualify Mike Tyson for biting both of Evander Holyfield’s ears and then DQ Henry Akinwande for refusing to release Lewis from his clutches – all of which paves the way for Lane to become a daytime-TV Wapner-style judge. Sometimes, it feels like all of boxing takes place in the Upside Down.
“Bloodline”: No, it’s not about the great Spinks, Mayweather or Marquez fighting families. This is a dramatic retelling of the first Sebastian Fundora-Tim Tszyu clash, told from the perspective of Tszyu’s cutman.
“Bridgerton”: The inside story of the WBC’s attempt to create a new weight class for boxers weighing 2,224lbs or less.
“Is It Cake?”: A look inside Buster Douglas’ training camp for the Holyfield fight. The content is compelling at first, but it eventually becomes predictable. Every episode features Douglas asking someone “Is it cake?” and when the answer comes back “Yes,” Buster proceeds to devour it.
“House of Guinness”: A fictional story about a man who lived near the Vegas Strip in 2007 when Ricky Hatton fought Mayweather and was kind enough to open up his stocked refrigerator to throngs of thirsty Brits after the MGM Grand ran out of beer.
“3 Body Problem”: An examination of all the damage the sanctioning groups did to boxing’s reputation and popularity – though the series ends abruptly in 1988, when the WBO is formed and boxing develops a 4 Body Problem.
“Seven Seconds”: A series about the July 2020 Seniesa Estrada-Miranda Adkins fight. The show did not get picked up for a second season. Or a second episode. Or a second minute.
“Bad Influencer”: This one is very meta. It’s on Netflix and also about Netflix, a streaming service that only took a chance on boxing because a social media “influencer” (I still can’t believe that’s a job title) decided to fight a 58-year-old ex-champ … leading all of boxing to lose its collective mind, with fighters from lightweight to heavyweight, active or retired, seeking to fight that influencer, while real fights – you know, the kind in which two prime fighters who are actually the same size square off – go nearly extinct.
“Forever”: The incredible true story of the wait for the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez-Sergey Kovalev fight to start.
“A Man on the Inside”: A touching Mike Schur comedy about an aging Henry Armstrong teaching fellow senior community residents about his fighting style.
“Outer Banks”: Compelling companion viewing to “A Man on the Inside,” this time with trainer Johnathon Banks imploring his fighters to box at distance.
“Somebody Feed Phil”: A docuseries spending time with 1940s featherweight champion Phil Terranova in the hours between his weigh-ins and his fights.
“Lady Dynamite”: Mike Tyson as you’ve never seen him before, starring in a modern update on “Bosom Buddies.”
“Tiger King”: Another show centered around Tyson, this one a reimagining of the horror/sci-fi classic “The Fly.” “Iron Mike” invents a teleportation pod and puts both his favorite pet and his least favorite former promoter inside, causing them to fuse into one being. The image on the thumbnail of a tiger with Don King’s hair is all it takes to make this show a massive hit.
“Unseen”: This one is based on a script I personally wrote about a boxing writer who, in 2010, learns that washed up Roy Jones Jnr, fresh off a first-round KO loss to Danny Green, is going to have a well-past-its-sell-by-date rematch with Bernard Hopkins – on pay-per-view, no less – and that boxing writer refuses to watch it. Ever. (That’s right, I still haven’t seen one second of this fight.) Glen Powell stars as the boxing journalist, though some expressed concerns during the casting process that he wasn’t quite handsome enough compared to the real-life figure he was portraying.
“Long Story Short”: Also based on one of my scripts, about a narcoleptic East Coast boxing writer who can’t seem to stay awake for Saturday night DAZN fights, so he watches the edited highlight versions on Sunday morning and BS-es his way through columns and podcasts. They cast Jacob Elorde in the lead role for this one.
“Unorthodox”: The Naseem Hamed story. (Too easy? Just wait …)
“Boots”: The Jaron Ennis story. (Told ya.)
“Hit & Run”: The William Scull story. (The writers’ room took liberties with its lightly fictionalized version of Scull to make the “Hit” part of the title applicable.)
“The Sandman”: Alternate title for the William Scull series.
“Bet”: A gripping story about Dan Canobbio sharing with podcast listeners and social media followers his 500-to-1 eight-leg DraftKings parlay that promises a massive, life-changing score, only to go seven-for-eight and be forced to continue grinding out a living in podcasting and social media.
“The Four Seasons”: A totally unrealistic fantasy story about a modern-day professional boxer who fights in the winter, spring, summer and fall, all in the same year.
“Love is Blind”: A sports sci-fi adventure, in which J’Leon Love travels back in time to 1964 and replaces Muhammad Ali in the first Sonny Liston fight, only to find himself unable to see during the fifth round due to a foreign substance getting in his eyes.
“Virgin River”: The heartbreaking tale of an aging boxing writer who continues, well into his adult life, to live in his mother’s basement. Not based on a real person. At all. Definitely not.
“Tires”: A hilarious blue-collar workplace comedy starring a shirtless Tyson Fury.
“Our Planet”: A nature docuseries made for the sole purpose of having something to show to former super middleweight champ Carl Froch to try to convince him that Earth is spherical.
“Big Mouth”: A raunchy animated comedy about a boxer who can’t find a gumshield that fits him.
“The Queen’s Gambit”: Having run out of halfway viable opponents to face at 154, 160, 168 and 175lbs in boxing, and feeling like she’s gone as far as she could in MMA, a bored Claressa Shields decides to try her hand at chess.
“Baby Reindeer”: The disturbing tale of Zab Judah trying to walk after Kostya Tszyu lands a right hand on his chin.
“Quarterback”: A documentary series following the minutia of DAZN raising its prices without warning, one customer accidentally being undercharged by 25 cents and the DAZN legal team going scorched earth to recover that missing money.
“Orange is the New Black”: Showing signs of losing his marbles as he hits his mid-90s, Bob Arum goes on a rant about how difficult it is to successfully promote an orange American fighter.
“A Series of Unfortunate Events”: A dramatic retelling of Triller Fight Club’s time in the boxing sphere. Featuring Neil Patrick Harris, unrecognizable in heavy makeup, as Snoop Dogg.
“Beef”: A black comedy about the Marco Antonio Barrera-Erik Morales feud, in which the Mexican boxers torture each other with pranks and mind games before ultimately realizing they have a lot in common and become friends.
“Russian Doll”: A trippy, mind-bending show in which Nikolai Valuev is living the same day over and over, until someone unscrews Valuev and separates his top from his bottom to reveal Oleg Maskaev inside, and then someone unscrews him to reveal Sergey Kovalev, and so on and so on, until we work our way down to former flyweight champ Yuri Arbachakov. All the dialogue is in Russian, but you can watch with the subtitles on. We don’t advise selecting the English overdub version, because every character is voiced by Natasha Lyonne and she does it all in her unbearable New York accent.
“Santa Clarita Diet”: Tyler James Williams (“Abbott Elementary”) stars as Fernando Guerrero, a former middleweight contender who retires and opens a gym in Valencia, California, just outside Santa Clarita. Guerrero is a good trainer but an even better nutritionist, getting his fighters to perform at their peak by feeding them a mystery meat that “tastes like chicken.”
“The Diplomat”: A political thriller about the go-between who persuaded Turki Alalshikh and Dana White to pretend not to hate each other just long enough to get the Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez fight finalized.
“Never Have I Ever”: The late, great Arturo Gatti details his philosophy on ducking punches.
“Fuller House”: An old-school laugh-track sitcom centered around Hall of Fame boxing great Evander Holyfield, who decides to move his 11 children and their six mothers under one roof. He also invites a friend, played by Dave Coulier, and a brother-in-law, played by John Stamos, to live in the house. And you won’t want to miss the episode in which his sister-in-law, played by Lori Loughlin, decides to help some of Evander’s kids get into college.
“Master of None”: The true story of [name of talentless hack boxing writer I can’t stand redacted].
“13 Reasons Why”: A must-watch series penned by my editors at BoxingScene explaining that they’ve read all the lame jokes they can possibly handle in one sitting and imploring me to wrap up this column.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
