Champion is a 1949 American sports drama film noir directed by Mark Robson with a screenplay written by Carl Foreman based on a short story by Ring Lardner.

[6] The film stars Kirk Douglas, Marilyn Maxwell, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman and Lola Albright.

The story recounts the struggles of boxer "Midge" Kelly fighting his own demons while working to achieve success in the ring.

Michael "Midge" Kelly is a boxer who pushes himself to the top of his game by felling opponents, backstabbing his friends and manipulating women.

Organized crime figures pressure Midge to throw the match, guaranteeing him a legitimate shot at the title the following year if he complies.

Grace attaches herself to Midge and persuades him to abandon Haley and become managed by Jerome Harris, a wealthy and influential figure in the fight game with criminal ties.

Midge realizes that he needs to train in order to win, so he rehires Haley as his manager, and Connie and Emma return to his camp.

After seeing Grace in the audience, Midge, now enraged, rallies in the final round and defeats Dunne, but he is seriously injured and dies in his locker room of a cerebral hemorrhage.

RKO asked Kramer to reshoot the scene in which Midge fights honestly instead of throwing the match, but he denied any similarities and refused to alter Champion.

[9] In early May, a judge recommended that specific scenes be removed and that the resulting film should then be reviewed by the court to confirm that Champion was not significantly weakened by the deleted sequences.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:[W]e should be grateful that the makers of the film have sweetened the character just a little from the way he was in the tale, for Mr. Lardner's Midge Kelly was as cruel and contemptible as they come.

However, Director Mark Robson has covered up story weaknesses with a wealth of pictorial interests and exciting action of a graphic, colorful sort.

His scenes in training gymnasiums, managers' offices and, of course, the big fight rings are strongly atmospheric and physically intense.

[6]Variety magazine wrote: "Adapted from a Ring Lardner short story of the same title, Champion is a stark, realistic study of the boxing rackets and the degeneracy of a prizefighter.