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Smith may not be as big as Ali but, sitting in his trailer, wearing a white singlet and olive trousers tied loosely at his waist, the usually slim and lanky actor looks imposing. His shoulders are huge and his biceps flex whenever he moves his arms. "I'm sharp," he says, boxing the air in front of him. Smith began training for the role in February 2000 when he first met Darrell Foster, a former middleweight boxer and longtime trainer of former champion Sugar Ray Leonard. "He was out of shape," says Foster. Foster put Smith through a professional training camp: a three mile run every morning, boxing practice for a couple of hours, a high protein low carbohydrate lunch, then watching fight films together before going off to the weight room. "We went to Miami so he could get used to the humidity in Africa," says Foster. At first, Smith dropped 10 pounds to around 190, then he started beefing up, peaking at 224 lbs. "He's great," says Foster, who helped Mann choreograph the fight scenes. "He could fight for real. His hand speed's real good." In the ring in Maputo, Smith floats like Ali. He backs into the ropes, practicing his now famous rope-a-dope. Punches slam into his thick torso and off his protector-covered head. "He's made himself into a boxer," says Mann. "We box. We don't do stuntmen. We don't do false punches. |
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I wish the whole steroid thing would just go away. Give the retard media something better to go after for god's sake please. We have real problems that need to be addressed.
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