***DISCLAIMER***

This is Scrap's "monologue" throughout the whole movie, as compiled from Drew's Script-o-rama, a website devoted to movie scripts. In order to illustrate an idea, we've only erased some passages to show how this monologue can actually be conceived as a letter, from Scrap to Frankie's daughter.

So the whole story is told from this single perspective of the old fighter. He's such a wise, experienced man that he sees a lot. He does not completely reveal the characters' thoughts, so he is not quite the omniscient narrator, but he is very close to that, a chorus of sorts, really, his words both a comment on boxing and a comment on life.

** This means the passage was deliberately moved for easier reading.

I've only ever met one man I wouldn't want to fight. When I met him he was already the best cutman* in the business. He started training and managing in the sixties, never lost his gift.

Sometimes there's just nothing you can do. Cut’s too wide, too close to the bone, maybe you got a severed vein, or you just cant get the coagulant deep enough. There all kinds of combinations you come up against down in the different layers of meat and Frankie knew how to work every one.

Frankie liked to say that boxing was an unnatural act, that everything in boxing is backwards. Sometimes best way to deliver punches is step back. But step back too far, you ain’t fighting at all.

Some people say the most important thing a fighter can have is heart. Frankie would say, show me a fighter who's nothing but heart, and I'll show you a man waiting for a beating.

Boxing is about respect, getting it for yourself, and taking it away from the other guy.

Frankie bought the Hit Pit from Bobby Malone seventeen years ago. Bobby wanted to move to Florida and Frankie wanted some security.

She came from Southwestern Missouri, the hills outside Theodosia, set in the cedars and oak trees somewhere between nowhere and goodbye. She grew up knowing one thing : she was trash. She'd come three hundred miles but Theodosia was still just over the hill.

Boxing is an unnatural act, ‘cause everything in it is backwards. You wanna move to the left, you don’t step left, you push on the right toe, to move right you use your left toe, instead of running from the pain like a sane person would do, you step into it. Everything in boxing is backwards.

To make a fighter, you gotta strip them down to bare wood. You can't just tell them to forget everything you know, you gotta make them forget it in their bones. make them so tired they only listen to you, only hear your voice, only do what you say and nothing else. All fighters are pig headed someway or another, some part of them always thinks they know better than you about something. Truth is, even if they're wrong, even if that one thing is gonna be the ruin of them, if you can beat that last bet out of them, then they ain’t fighters at all.

Frankie made her fight one more round, just to let her know who was boss.

Maggie left no doubt about it.

The first rounder didn't go quite as smooth. Maggie didn't knock her out til the end of the first round, after that no manager wanted to put his fighter in with Maggie.

Frankie had to go into his pocket to get decent fights, sweeting the purse by paying managers on the side. That only worked for so long, then Frankie did something he hated doing, he took a chance. He moved her up in class, that could have been a mistake.

After a straight knock out, Frankie got a couple of real good offers. The first was to fight Billy the Blue Bear Osterman for the WBA welter weight title. Billy was a former prostitute out of east Berlin, had a reputation for being the dirtiest fighter in the ranks. Didn't seem to matter to her that something like that could kill a person and the crowds loved her. He turned her down without even telling her. The next was to fight the British champ, the Jamaican girl Billy just beat.

Maggie always did like taking them out in the first round. She wasn't the main attraction, she was only under card to the middle weight title fight. But ask someone who was there, and they couldn't tell you who else fought that night.

Whatever it meant, the name stuck. Maggie fought in Edinburgh, in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

It was always Mocushle. Seems there's Irish people everywhere or people that want to be. By the time they came back to the States, Maggie was in a whole new league.

If there's magic in boxing, it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.**

Frankie must have called every hospital in America looking for somebody who would tell him they could fix her, came close twice, til they checked her over said there was nothing to be done, took six months till she was stable enough to move.

The rehab center Frankie found was a nice place, they took good care of Maggie, she would have complained if they hadn't. Took her several hours everyday to get her ready for the wheel chair. Since she couldn't breathe on her own, the respirators were always on, oxygen was pumped in her 24 hours a day.

In the middle of the night, Maggie had found the wrong solution… She’d bit her tongue.

Nearly bled to death before they stitched her up, she came around and ripped them out before Frankie even got there, they stitched her up again, padded the tongue so she couldn't bite.

There’re some things people just don’t wanna hear.**

He gave her a single shot, it was enough adrenaline to do the job a few times over, he didn't want her going through this again. Then he walked out, I don’t think he had anything left. I went back to the gym, waited, figuring he'd turn up sooner or later and that's when a ghost came through the door.

Frankie never came back at all, Frankie didn't leave a note, and nobody knew where he went. I'd hope he'd gone to find you, to ask you one more time to forgive him, but maybe he didn't have anything left in his heart. I'd just hope he found some place where he could find a little peace, a place set in the cedars and oak trees, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye. But that's probably wishful thinking. No matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man your father really was.

* cutman: the man who is able to repair a fighter's skin cut by a bad blow.

contributed by Elisa Chellé and David Diaz, December 2005