Fighting Words

In 1980, boxer Johnny Owen traveled from the small mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, to Los Angeles to challenge Lupe Pintor for the world bantamweight championship. Forty men from the town accompanied Owen to watch the fight at ringside. Fighting Words focuses on sisters Peg and Nia, and their landlady Mrs. Davies. It is the story of the women who watched the fight on television back in Wales. As they bake cake, readying for the gathering of women at the gym, Peg, Nia and Mrs. Davies support and ridicule each other as they reveal their secrets and dreams. Nia has been giving Johnny speech lessons so that he will be less shy in front of the American press. She longs to get a radio job so that she can move away from her confining life. Peg is crazy about boxing. No one will spar with her but Johnny, and she believes he will marry her. Mrs. Davies, the midwife who delivered Johnny, frets that her husband can't live without her for a few days in America, but it becomes clear she can't live without him. As the cake rises in the kitchen so do the tempers as the women fight about who knows Johnny best, then about which one of them he loves more. Anger and jealousy split the women and by fight night, Peg is sitting at ringside in Los Angeles with the men. Suddenly Johnny is down and their dreams are shattered! Weeks later, Peg sits at the kitchen table as if in a coma, as Nia delivers the heartbreaking news of Johnny's death from his injuries. Mrs. Davies then bravely, vacantly, chatters on, pretending that the world is as it has always been—a place for us to endure life's pain.