Graciano Rocchigiani fought his way to the top and fell all the way to the bottom. He was not a sports favorite of the Germans, and he never got rid of the image of the wicked scandal fighter. More than five years after Rocchigiani’s death, a documentary produced by Til Schweiger pays tribute to the boxing icon. A review.
“Graciano Rocchigiani’s face embodies the history of boxing,” an attentive fistfighting expert once said. One might add: Life itself manifested itself in “Rocky’s” face. A wild life. Wounds and scars, but also gentle features – the beautiful sides of being.
Before (boxer) life left its mark on skin, heart and bones, Graciano Rocchigiani was of course just a boy with a milky face. Brother Ralf calls him an “asparagus tarzan” in the documentary “Graciano Rocchigiani – The Heart of a Boxer”, which can be seen exclusively on RTL+ from Sunday, January 28th.
Produced by Til Schweiger, director Christin Freitag takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride. Because this was the life of Graciano Rocchigiani. In addition to brother Ralf, friends and companions from Berlin as well as Rocchigiani’s ex-wife Christine also have their say.
The result is a two-hour documentary that flies by. The “classic” underdog story of the boxer from the street who makes it to the top, falls deeply, gets up, climbs new peaks, and falls again.
Boxing: Rocky heir Gualtieri as a reference to the present
Freitag lets her protagonists tell the “Rocky” story without making any major ramifications or taking side paths. The story only digresses a few times to focus on Rocchigiani’s boxing legacy with Vincenzo Gualtieri.
The Berliner turned him into a professional boxer in his fifties as a friend and mentor. Until Rocchigiani’s sudden death in October 2018, the families of the pugilists shared a deep friendship. Gualtieri serves the director as a bracket, as a reference to the present. The middleweight allows Rocky’s spirit to awaken when, after his surprising world championship triumph in July 2023 – overcome with emotion – he thanks a “strength from above”: “Graciano.” It’s the end of the film. Before that, “Round by Round” the core character of Graciano Rocchigiani is peeled out from lush images.
The bottom line is a man who always said what he thought. A Berlin snout that quickly got to the point. And was possibly the most talented German boxer in history. The brother was “a machine” in the ring, says Ralf Rocchigiani, who himself had a similar talent. Double coverage, speed, juicy punches from the shoulder. Rocky boxed “like he was from another planet,” remembers his Berlin friend Kalle “Bomber” Heistermann.
Graciano Rocchigiani’s life between world title, excesses and prison
Because Rocchigiani was so good at boxing, he put everything on one card early on, gave up his apprenticeship as a building cleaner and became a professional. The goal: become world champion and win ashes. “Coal, a nice car, the world looks completely different,” says Rocky at one point. The documentary traces his path to becoming the third German boxing world champion in a straightforward manner, providing the viewer with the expected insights into the demi-world and underworld that characterized German boxing at the end of the 1980s. And takes you into the wild Berlin of that time. Excesses.
“It wasn’t necessary, but when it was necessary, we did it – with a heavy heart,” says Ralf Rocchigiani, wonderfully smugly, describing the day-long drinking sprees of the Rocky clique, on which a few meters from one establishment to the other was enough to have a lovely night to overthrow (police) chaos.
Rocchigiani is portrayed as a “highly sensitive boy,” as his promoter Wilfried Sauerland’s former matchmaker describes him. Someone who felt “out of line,” according to his ex-wife Christine. Someone who somehow always remained a child, who lived a life between the boxing ring, alcohol, sex, weed and playing “Mario Brothers” for hours.
In addition to the sporting highlights, the documentation also shows the eyesores in Rocchigiani’s life. The conflicts with the law. The serious allegations such as human trafficking. Mayhem. Court cases. Convictions, acquittals.
Unforgotten scandals against Mask and Michalczewski
The passages with ex-wife Christine are particularly emotional, as she tearfully tells how her husband cheated on her at a New Year’s Eve party – and was cheated on in boxing himself. The film is only three quarters of an hour old before Rocchigiani’s World Championship fight against the legendary Brit Chris Eubank in Berlin 1994 is played again. The first, extremely controversial point defeat of his career.
This was followed by the still controversial defeat against Germany’s boxing favorite Henry Maske in 1995 and the scandalous fight against “Tiger” Dariusz Michalczewski in St. Pauli in 1996. Then the revocation of the world championship belt by the WBC association in 1998 and the legal fight against the corrupt three-letter organization in the USA.
Rocchigiani’s life – a constant battle. A self-fulfilling prophecy of the many stereotypes that media and society gave Rocky.
As a treat, the viewer (unfamiliar with boxing) learns from insider Nartz how the often scandalous judgments of the judges in prize boxing came about (spoiler: it has to do with prostitution).
Appreciation of something eternally misunderstood
Rocchigiani’s companions make it clear how badly the blows in the neck from the boxing powers affected “Grace”. How they wore him down. And how misunderstood Rocchigiani felt throughout his life. The film raises the question, what’s so wrong with being an honest skin? What’s wrong with owning up to your mistakes, not hiding, not looking for someone to blame? Why Rocchigiani was only popular with the “lower ten thousand”? “Because he’s like us,” replies a Berlin woman when the film portrays Rocchigiani as the mask antipole of the 1990s.
Graciano Rocchigiani’s punches have hit many people – in and out of the ring. But his heartbeats also touched many people. With the Schweiger production, Rocky, who died in a traffic accident in Sicily in 2018 at the age of 54, receives a tribute that was denied him during his lifetime. “I think we’ve already managed to show Graciano as he was: and he was really a really great person,” said Til Schweiger in an RTL interview on the occasion of the film’s premiere in Berlin.
The portrait of Graciano Rocchigiani is a success. The documentary is a must for boxing fans. But perhaps also for all those who long for genuine humanity in the age of Homo Economicus and life-determining algorithms. By heart. And authenticity.
“Boxing is the most humane of all sports,” famous American boxing journalist Jim Lampley once said. Graciano Rocchigiani had the heart of a boxer.
Martin Armbruster