In They Fight, the Greatest Victory Is Getting Back Up

There could hardly have been a more fitting place to experience They Fight than inside Manifest.

Before the projector illuminated the screen, guests gathered over cocktails and conversation as barbers worked nearby, offering haircuts ahead of the evening’s screening. It was an unconventional opening for a film event, but an intentional one. The evening was designed to feel less like a premiere and more like a gathering of community.

That spirit is embedded in Manifest itself. The Black-owned Washington concept reimagines the traditional barbershop as a larger cultural and social experience, bringing grooming, hospitality, retail and fellowship together under one roof. In a city where the Black barbershop has historically served as far more than a place for a haircut, the setting carried particular significance.

As guests settled in for the film, the atmosphere became even more intimate. There were no rows of traditional theater seats or imposing cinema screen. They Fight played from a projector in a relaxed room filled with people who, by the time the opening credits rolled, felt less like an audience and more like an extended family settling in for movie night.

For Bryan Pierce, founder of 1964 Agency — which co-hosted the evening with Black Menswear — creating that feeling of community was central to bringing the screening to Washington. Though Pierce is based in New York City, They Fight belongs unmistakably to the District. The film is rooted in Southeast Washington and the real-life story of boxing coach and mentor Walt Manigan. Bringing the film back to Washington meant creating an experience that connected the story on screen with the community reflected in it.

And, as Pierce explained before the screening began, at its heart, They Fight is a story about second chances—particularly Black men receiving the opportunity to persevere beyond the circumstances that might otherwise define them.

That idea becomes apparent almost immediately.

When audiences first meet Walt Manigan, played by André Holland, he is sitting before a parole board. He is asked whether he feels contrition for the crimes that led to his incarceration. But behind the formal questions is a man carrying something much heavier — a personal loss endured while he was away. Now, he desperately wants an opportunity to return home and be present for his family.

Freedom, however, does not immediately mean belonging.

After years behind bars, Walt returns to a Washington that has continued moving without him. He must navigate the realities of reentry while confronting the pieces of himself that seemingly disappeared during his incarceration. Once a boxer, Walt tells the parole board that he has fallen out of love with the sport. When asked whether he would consider returning to it, his answer suggests that chapter of his life is closed.

The film spends the next hour and a half proving otherwise.

Walt eventually finds himself at the Congress Park Recreation Center, where his former mentor Slim, played by Wendell Pierce, pushes him toward helping train a group of young boxers. When Walt steps in to protect one of the boys, Slim recognizes something in him that Walt has yet to recognize again in himself.

The reluctant former boxer becomes a reluctant coach.

Initially, Walt keeps the boys at a distance. His hesitation is understandable; the grief and guilt he carries from his own family’s story make caring for another group of young Black boys feel like an invitation to be hurt again.

But They Fight continually surrounds Walt with people willing to believe that a person’s worst decisions do not have to become the final definition of his life.

Slim gives him somewhere to stay and an opportunity to coach. His friend Turk tries to help him find work. Even someone from the neighborhood whom Walt negatively affected as a child is willing to offer him employment.

The film never suggests that redemption is easy. Walt still has to confront addiction, grief, relationships and the practical difficulties of rebuilding a life after incarceration. What it does suggest is that transformation becomes possible when accountability meets opportunity.

And gradually, Walt begins to fight for himself again.

The young boxers become an unexpected part of that transformation.

After finally sharing his past with them, Walt stops merely occupying the role of coach and begins embracing it. His investment in the boys deepens, and their investment in one another does too.

Peanut and Quincey emerge at the center of that brotherhood.

Both are carrying battles far beyond anything happening inside a boxing ring — the kind of circumstances that would test grown men. Still, they fight.

“Even if you lose, you gotta fight back,” Walt tells them.

Later, the message becomes even simpler: “Always fight back.”

Perhaps the clearest articulation of Walt’s transformation comes when he realizes what the gym has restored in him.

“I think God gave me my purpose back in this gym,” he says.

When someone jokingly asks whether he found Jesus overnight, Walt’s answer gets to the heart of the film:

“I found my fight back.”

That distinction matters.

Walt isn’t fighting to become the man he was before prison. That man no longer exists. Throughout They Fight, he seems caught between resurrecting pieces of his former identity and accepting that redemption may require discovering an entirely new one.

His return to boxing, then, is not really about boxing.

It is about purpose.

It is about fatherhood.

It is about being useful to someone again.

It is about finding somewhere to belong.

That idea reaches its emotional peak inside the ring, where the bonds the film has spent its runtime building are put to the test — and winning or losing starts to feel almost beside the point. By the time it matters most, the fight is less about whose hand gets raised than about what it took for each of them just to be standing there.

They fought. They got back up.

The same can be said for Walt. By the film’s final act, the man who sat before a parole board searching for a way to rebuild has begun to rediscover purpose through the young people who need him — and to reach for the relationships he once left behind. His life isn’t restored because everything that happened before has somehow disappeared. His victory comes from learning that his past does not have to disqualify him from a future.

That makes They Fight considerably more than a boxing movie.

Writer-director Sheldon Candis adapted the film from the 2018 documentary of the same name, drawing from the real Walt Manigan and the young fighters whose lives were shaped by his mentorship in Washington. The feature stars André Holland as Walt alongside Samira Wiley as Ketta, Wendell Pierce as Slim and a young cast bringing the gym’s fighters to life.

But beneath the boxing gloves, tournaments and training sessions is a much larger question: What can happen when someone is given another chance?

For Walt, it means discovering that he can still be a father, mentor and partner.

For Peanut and Quincey, it means having an adult willing to see possibility in them before circumstances convince them otherwise.

And for the audience gathered inside Manifest that evening, it meant watching a distinctly Washington story in a Black-owned space built around many of the same principles the film celebrates — community, conversation and connection.

The temptation to quit, the film reminds us, can be greatest just before the breakthrough.

They Fight offers a compelling response.

Keep fighting.

They Fight is now available to stream on Hulu, from Andscape, on Disney+.