From acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua (TRAINING DAY) comes the underdog movie of the year SouthPaw.

A champion boxer (Jake Gyllenhaal) Billy Hope loses everything after his life tragically unravels and falls apart. The once great champ is humbled as he tumbles from the pinnacle of his career into obscurity. Billy must fight back in order to save not only his career but his family.
As Billy loses everything he discovers, like many do who his real friends are. His manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) and friends leave him behind as soon as he has nothing to offer. Billy finally hits rock bottom when he loses his house, cars and everything in it including his daughter.

Seeking redemption he seeks out the trainer of the only fighter that had ever beat him. He finds Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker) is a rundown gym teaching inner city youth how to box.

From the orphanage in hell’s kitchen to a professional career fighting in Madison Square Garden is a distance of only a few blocks.

With Tick in Billy’s corner he begins the biggest fight of his career. He fights his own demons and past as he begins the journey back to redemption. Tick becomes Billy’s mentor and trainer, exposing his greatest weakness, his temper, and instructs him how to fight with his brain, rather than his usual method of “stopping punches with your face.”
The scenes in the movie are perfectly sculptured by Fugua as the grit and drama is felt with every punch. It has been awhile that a movie has the whole audience ducking and jiving as the fights proceed.

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According to science and research people can usually only have about 100 to 150 real friends. If that were the case then why do we spend so much time ‘friending’ people we will never be friends with. It is not like the hundreds if not thousands of friends have a personal relationship with us. Better yet even the number of 150 sounds intimidating and well virtually impossible. Most men have a few friends every guy needs and nothing more. Working with the number 150, realistically that is not obtainable even counting all your friends and family. Could you imagine trying to develop real relationships with that many? Many of us struggle with social anxiety when the room fills with more than a handful of people, much less hundreds. This number has been researched for years and has been narrowed down to a bit less than 150 real friends. Take the classmates from school that you no longer talk to out of the equation. That alone should eliminate at least a third of your friends. Now lets take away those co-workers that you would never hang out with outside of work or confide in. If you remove the distant cousins and even local family that you only talk to at family reunions. Finally if you take away the friends that never have time for you. So what is your real number now? … not counting your spouse and kids. I would guess you are probably sitting at right about four or five. As men we can […]

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  When A Church Sends You Running for Cover Many people who are raised in the Church, end up wandering astray. We are filled with the stories we don’t understand. Threatened with hell and damnation for our unavoidable sin, why would anyone want to stay for that. We go to church to please our parents, fighting to keep our eyes open, and our minds shut. With all the pretentious and better-than-though mockery, we turn up noses on our appearances. No longer does it only matter that you are there, it also matters what you wear. Your mind wanders on this man, they call Christ, if he loved the least of these, why not these that follow him. Starting to question the need for the Church, where is this faith when the world is full of pain and hurt. Just as many do, I began to make excuses. Whether I stayed out late, or just didn’t feel like going. I would rather sleep in than go to Church. Beginning to think that all these scriptures were meant for the real sinners, not me. I quit, quit going to church, quit praying, quit believing. The world was my oyster, I had my Sunday mornings free. I woke up to headaches and hangovers and not preachers or Bible thumper. My life was mine to live, no one was going to tell me what I could or could not do. The new-found freedom was the beginning of my fall. I wrecked myself into my apocalypse of spirit where no Church could reach. Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted […]

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