From fleeing the Somali civil war to fighting at the Tokyo Olympics, Ali’s life has been remarkable – and now she is being played by Top Boy’s Jasmine Jobson in a new biopic. We hear from both on this ‘positive migrant story’

Boxer Ramla Ali sweeps into the green room of a West End cinema, tiny in a frothy dress with a huge skirt of cascading black feathers. It’s an absolute showstopper. She’s just introduced the premiere of a new film about her life. There are messages on her phone from Bear Grylls and Malala Yousafzai, who are in the audience watching.

But the person who matters most is her mum, who is seeing it for the fourth time. What does she think? “She loves it,” says Ali quietly. The film is In the Shadows, directed by Anthony Wonke and stars Top Boy actor Jasmine Jobson. It tells the story of Ali’s journey to the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.

WBO heavyweight champion targets big paydays against Hrgovic, Kabayel and Itauma after second round win

Thirty minutes after Daniel Dubois had dismantled Fabio Wardley in less than two rounds on Saturday night, his promoter Frank Warren shook his head in slight awe as he described the intensity before the annihilation: “I went in the dressing room beforehand like I normally do and I couldn’t have a conversation with Daniel because he was so zoned in and focused. It showed when he got in the ring. He went out there on a seek-and-destroy mission.”

Dubois resembled a much bigger and heavier version of a young Mike Tyson as, wearing black trunks and a black cape, he walked to the ring with intense purpose. There was not a flicker of emotion as he marched quickly towards Wardley for their WBO world title rematch.

• Dubois underlines status as Britain’s leading heavyweight

• Wardley’s corner throw in the towel in second round

Daniel Dubois overwhelmed Fabio Wardley in their WBO world title fight on Saturday night as he continued his quest to become the most authoritative heavyweight fighter on the planet with this crushing victory. This was the second time in five months that Dubois has defeated Wardley but, after their fight of the year contender in May, he unleashed a shockingly one-sided shellacking.

After two minutes and 21 seconds of round two, Wardley was rescued from the bludgeoning fists of Dubois by the referee, just as the fluttering white towel of his trainer, Ben Davison, sailed over the ropes in surrender. Davison had been on the brink of throwing in the towel at the very end of the opening round but the bell sounded to end a disastrous first three minutes for Wardley. He was dropped heavily after just 17 seconds as Dubois landed a left cross followed by a pulverising right hand.

• Updates from rematch at the O2 Arena in London

• Preview: Wardley predicts ‘crazy night’ | Email Alex

It was surreal watching the referee refuse to accept the white towel flung into the ring to save Dan Garber from shipping further punishment against Adam Olaniyan, the promising young Irish heavyweight. Garber is 41 and it was bizarre to watch Amy Pu shake her head and kick the towel away. The next time the old heavyweight went down his corner pleaded with him not to get back up and Pu finally waved it off. It seems pretty obvious that a referee should always listen to a trainer who wants to protect a clearly beaten fighter.

Luke Littler, meanwhile, has just turned up and lingered awhile next to our row of press seats close to the ring. I’ve interviewed Luke before and he is not the easiest interviewee in the world and so, like all my other respectful colleagues, we left him in peace and didn’t ask for his Dubois-Wardley prediction.

After losing his WBO heavyweight title in a brutal first bout in May, the Briton insists he can ‘right those wrongs’ on Saturday night

Five months ago, watching a likely Fight of the Year between Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley in Manchester, a ringside seat offered an initially thrilling insight into the raw brutality of heavyweight boxing. It was easy to be swept up in the drama as Wardley, defending his WBO title, dropped his more seasoned and favoured rival in the first and third rounds. But Dubois, whose courage had been questioned before, got up both times and fought back with admirable resolve.

Dubois soon took control of the contest and administered a punishing beating, round after round, as concern for Wardley intensified. It was a worrying sight as the reeling champion refused to go down amid the damage being done to him by the bludgeoning power by Dubois. A terrible gash opened up across the bridge of Wardley’s nose and his face looked swollen. The end was finally confirmed in the 11th round, after the referee rescued Wardley from his own bravery, but it was the kind of heavy loss which takes years off a fighter’s career.

The once heroic boxer showcases a frankness in this compelling new series but also an unwillingness to take accountability for his darkest moments

Mike Tyson never envisioned old age. And yet here he still is, having outlived his parents, Brooklynites of ill repute who died when he was a teenager, and the Brownsville tough guys who teased him for being scrawny and having a lisp. Here he is after doing hard time for rape in his prime, winning and losing great fortunes and battling addiction to drink, drugs and fame. Here he still is, 60 years old and a grandfather now, mixing it up with Jake Paul in the ring, opening up to manosphere-adjacent podcasters, bobbing into an impromptu White House press briefing – Māori face-tattoo unmistakably in the frame – while on a DC visit to buck up his old pal as his party faces a bleak midterm forecast. “I don’t have to exist,” the champ says in Tyson, the latest four-part vanity project on his turbulent life and times. “Some reason, something allowed me to exist.”

In his heyday, Tyson was a mesmerizing sporting event unto himself – the ruthless knockout machine who struck fear into opponents at first sight, felled them in seconds and looked back on the carnage with cool nonchalance. His darkest episodes – the combustive relationship with actor Robin Givens, the six-year prison sentence for rape, biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear – only deepened the public fascination with him, adding to the lore of boxing’s baddest man. In the winter of his life, Tyson’s self-reflection, so deep it tips into self-parody, is the enthralling spectacle now. And if generations of Black comedians have proved anything, it’s that the appetite for Mike Tyson impersonations is inexhaustible.

• Álvarez vows to fight in Riyadh despite deadly strikes

• Airport attacks leave at least 12 dead, hundreds hurt

• Mexican seeks redemption after Crawford defeat

Canelo Álvarez intends to go ahead with his world title fight in Saudi Arabia later this month despite a series of deadly attacks on airports and other infrastructure in the kingdom, according to Turki al-Sheikh, the Saudi official who has become one of boxing’s most influential power brokers.

The Mexican superstar is slated to challenge the unbeaten Christian Mbilli for the WBC super-middleweight title in Riyadh on 31 October, three weeks after Saturday’s missile strike on the Saudi capital’s main international airport killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300.

Jasmine Jobson goes the distance as the British-Somalian boxer battling pain from her past and her family’s disapproval in a heavyweight, tick-the-boxes production

The true-life success story of boxer Ramla Ali is confidently told in this capable picture from screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma and documentary director Anthony Wonke, in his feature-film debut. Ali is the British-Somali boxer who escaped to the UK from the Somali civil war with her family as a refugee, and in 2021 became the first person to box for Somalia at Olympic Games. The boxing significance of her last name is actually not mentioned in the film – and I never noticed it until it flashed up in a kind of “fight card” intertitle before her first competitive bout.

She is fiercely played by Jasmine Jobson, from TV’s Top Boy; her supportive white Muslim-convert husband Richard – a hugely important figure in enabling Ramla to break away from her disapproving family and do as she wants – is played by Finn Cole, and her abusive trainer Clinton is Gershwyn Eustache Jr. This is a film that takes you through the classic boxing-movie scenes fluently enough: the nervous first appearance in the gym, the overbearing quasi-parental coach, the heartstopping fight debut. It was good to see the traditional closeup of post-fight sore fists in the ice-bucket. All in all, the film works better than Giant, the recent biopic of British-Yemeni boxer Prince Naseem, who is in fact briefly mentioned here.

This long-awaited fight is happening exactly as intended: at the sweet spot where commercial potential meets a genuine absence of jeopardy

The 1912 Olympic marathon was held in a brutal Scandinavian heatwave, and before long Shizo Kanakuri of Japan was flagging. His journey to Stockholm had been debilitating; he had barely trained and struggled to sleep. At around the 16-mile mark he finally gave in. Exhausted and disoriented, he stumbled off the road and into a garden party, where – according to his bemused hosts – he sat and drank orange juice for an hour.

The next day, deeply ashamed at his failure to complete the race, he quietly took a boat back to Japan. In Sweden the mystery of the “disappearing runner” took on almost mythical proportions. Kanakuri’s name was on the country’s missing persons list for more than 50 years.

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Fighters have always provided rich material for stories on stage and screen and the appeal to audiences has not wavered

Three of my greatest joys in life are watching sport, going to the theatre and playing violin. So it felt almost embarrassing to discover a classic play that combined all three, yet I’d never heard of it before. To be fair, Golden Boy has not been performed in the UK in more than 40 years and its curious premise may be one of the reasons.

Written in 1937, it’s about a gifted young violinist in Depression-era America who also has a talent for boxing and is lured away from music by the pursuit of fame and money in the ring. In the current London production he is played by Josh O’Connor, who Knives Out fans have seen with his fists up as a boxer turned priest in Wake Up Dead Man. O’Connor is no less convincing on stage than on film, attacking a heavy bag with the kind of power that does indeed make you worry for his precious hands. Nor is that ab definition entirely the work of a makeup artist.

• Joshua reveals he is speaking to Peter Fury on training

• Fury vows to ‘blast him out’ at London press conference

Anthony Joshua has revealed that he is in contact with Tyson Fury’s uncle Peter, in a surprise twist to the buildup between the two former world champion heavyweights who will finally meet in the ring in Cardiff in December.

Peter Fury trained Tyson when he shocked Wladimir Klitschko to win his first world heavyweight title, in 2015. The uncle and nephew fell out soon afterwards, apparently over a financial dispute, and have not spoken in many years.

• Tyson Fury says Anthony Joshua is ‘trying to pull out’

• Promotional tension blamed for late jeopardy

Frank Warren believes the proposed fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will still take place in Cardiff in December despite widespread concern on Saturday that the bout could be on the brink of collapse yet again. Warren, who has promoted Fury for years, told the Guardian: “It will still happen because the Saudis will sue the arses off them if it doesn’t. The Saudis are putting up the money. They’re the paymasters and so I think it will happen.”

On Saturday morning, Fury had suggested that the fight was in serious jeopardy: “Breaking news. Anthony Joshua and Eddie Hearn are trying to pull out of this fight. They’re saying they’re not gonna fight now. It’s mainly to do with Eddie Hearn’s ego. He’s making up a million different things and threatening ‘we’re not gonna fight, we’re not gonna fight, we’re not gonna fight’. He’s cost us the biggest fight in boxing history. Clown.”

• Fight on 11 December announced by Turki Alalshikh

• Fury v Joshua to be streamed globally on Netflix

The Battle of Britain is officially fixed for Wales. Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will stage their long-awaited heavyweight clash at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 11 December after an eleventh-hour standoff over the site that threatened to derail the encounter.

The agreement ends years of false starts between the former world champions and clears the way for one of the biggest all-British fights in boxing history. The card will take place on a Friday night, with the main-event ringwalks expected in the small hours of Saturday morning to accommodate a prime-time US audience for Netflix, which will broadcast it globally after its preferred plan to stage it at New York’s Madison Square Garden was ultimately scuppered.

• ‘I didn’t celebrate. I went home to rest. It was a hard fight’

• Hrgovic stopped Briton to win the IBF heavyweight title

Filip Hrgovic, the new IBF world heavyweight champion, has offered a candid insight into the ordeal he endured before beating Moses Itauma in a shock stoppage victory last month, revealing he absorbed so many heavy punches in the first eight rounds that he felt headaches for a number of days afterwards.

“I felt fucked up,” said the 34-year-old Croat. “I received a lot of shots and I was bruised. I had a bit of a headache for a few days. On the Wednesday after the fight I was back in the gym, working out already, but for a few days I felt really tired and bruised, with some headaches.”

Toronto film festival: There’s a knockout central performance from Anthony Ippolito in this otherwise rather lightweight making-of comedy drama

We first see Anthony Ippolito sauntering into a harsh spotlight in I Play Rocky’s opening frames. He’s squirrelling around an audition space, physicalizing the battle between his nerves and the stubborn self-confidence that gets him into those rooms, knowing casting agents typically count him out. He collects his wits, puts his chest out to perform as “Thug #2”, and bellows out the lines, in that deep slow growl as though he’s speaking while chewing through a New York striploin. We don’t find out if his character got the “Thug #2” gig, but in those opening moments, Ippolito nails his part as Sylvester Stallone.

Ippolito is a casting coup for I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s lightweight comedy about the making of Rocky, which leans hard on easy nostalgia for the 50-year-old Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser. His looks, physicality and performance are so on point and uncanny that I never broke away from seeing Stallone, not even when he’s recreating scenes so firmly lodged in mine and pop culture’s memory. The movie’s title says more than it lets on, because Ippolito doesn’t just play Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky Balboa. His performance, perhaps intentionally, blurs the line between Stallone and Rocky. When Ippolito’s Stallone is flirting with his soon to be wife Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb, soulful) or sitting in an office sparring with producers Irwin Winkler (PJ Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell), trying to convince them he’s worthy of a shot, I saw Rocky.

• Garcia stops Benn 1min 25sec into second round

• Champion floors challenger with concussive right

• López, Haney, Stevenson among possible fights

Ryan Garcia needed less than four minutes to blow away Conor Benn before turning his sights on the rest of the welterweight division.

The 28-year-old American demolished Benn inside two rounds on Saturday night to retain his World Boxing Council championship at 147lb, dropping the British challenger with a concussive right hand before the referee stepped in moments later at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The sensational finish ignited the mostly pro-Garcia crowd of 18,855 on Mexican Independence Day weekend. Then, with Teófimo López taunting him from ringside and threatening to storm the ring, Garcia made it clear he was ready to take on all comers.

• Garcia retains 147lb title with second-round TKO

• Teófimo López confronts Garcia afterward in ring

• Opetaia retains cruiserweight title on undercard

Zuffa/Paramount paused for a commercial break with Garcia and Benn in the ring before the fighter announcements. Which is a choice! Anyway, the waiting is over. The final instructions have been given by referee Tom Taylor, the seconds are out and we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here!

And here comes Ryan Garcia! The champion makes his way through the bowels of T-Mobile Arena and on to the floor as Vicente Fernández’s El Rey plays over the sound system, an obvious hit with a febrile crowd on Mexican Independence Day weekend.

Fight offers revealing snapshot of boxers once facing uncertain futures after positive drug tests now vying for a welterweight world championship

Four years ago Conor Benn’s career was thrown into limbo after two positive drug tests scuppered his blockbuster fight with Chris Eubank Jr. Two years ago Ryan Garcia was serving a one-year suspension after testing positive for ostarine at the time of his greatest victory.

On Saturday night they will each be rewarded with an eight-figure payday when they meet at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for Garcia’s WBC welterweight championship. The purses have not been disclosed, although reports have put the combined pot at around $30m (£22m) with each fighter expected to haul in roughly $15m.

• Bout on Katie Taylor’s final undercard ends abruptly

• Dave Allen baffled as opponent receives oxygen ringside

Dave Allen’s heavyweight clash with Thomas Carty at Croke Park ended in a bizarre no-contest after the Irish favourite fell out of the ring in the first round.

The chief support for Katie Taylor’s final fight before her retirement was over after just one minute and 22 seconds with Carty – seeking the biggest win of his 12-bout career – unable to continue.