Micky Ward: “The Guru of Toughness”

There’s an Op-Ed in today’s Globe by Carlo Rotella, a professor of American Studies at Boston College, that uses Lowell’s Micky Ward as the prime example of how popular culture, mostly in the form of movies, has embraced Massachusetts as a place where “traditional forms of masculine virtue still thrive.” In the latest example of this phenomenon, Mariusz “Dominator” Pudzianowski, a rising star in Mixed Martial Arts who flubbed up one of his earliest matches, is coming to Lowell to train with Micky Ward to gain an infusion of “old-school tough-guy virtue.” This type of attention will only grow over the next five months leading up to the December 10 premiere of “The Fighter.”