"A harsh, violent exposé of the boxing world: a world where a fall in the ring can be bought, but also where repeated blows to one's conscience can be fatal. Rod Steiger plays the crass head of a fight promotion syndicate who hires ex-sportswriter Eddie Willis (Bogart) to 'create' a heavyweight boxing champion. Through fixed fights and publicity hype his raw material, Toro Moreno, an uncoordinated, untalented Argentinian, becomes a contender. Moreno naively believes the hype and when one of his opponents dies after they fight, decides to give up boxing. Willis, using a logic twisted by the lure of big money, convinces Moreno to fight the championship match by showing him that his fights have been fixed: he convinces a man who can't box to fight the heavyweight champion in an unfixed match. It isn't until the bloody, violent conclusion to the film that Willis realizes that another human being, not a media creation, is taking the blows. Budd Schulberg's novel was loosely based on the actual build-up of Primo Carnera to heavyweight boxing champion in the thirties." Kathy Geritz