No need to recap the plot.
Frankly, the movie made me yearn for the days of John Garfield and his epic struggles to escape the slums, (Body and Soul {1947}, Humoresque (1946), for example. No Garfield-like shading here. Instead, Newman's Graziano acts like he's on super-charge the whole time, yelling his lines, rushing frantically to and fro, while mannerisms abound as though the shadow of James Dean still looms large. This may be the only time in his marvelous career that the usually restrained actor goes way over the top. I don't know what the real Graziano was like, but I doubt he was this antic version of the Energizer Bunny.
Then too, boxing movies have always been prone to falsifying the action. After all, staples of real matches such as jabbing, defense, and feeling out your opponent take up valuable screen time and are not very exciting. So even the best boxing films, such as The Set-Up (1949), are prone to substitute artless clubbing for artful punching. Here, the gap is in real evidence.
The movie itself is routine, at best. Clichés abound, but there are several notable performances—Stone as the fearsome father; Heckart as the long-suffering mom; and the always reliable Everitt Sloane. Also, the movie benefits from the many New York City locations, along with some well-done studio street scenes.
Though popularly received at the time (1956) when the name Graziano was still widely known, on second viewing the shortcomings are unfortunately all too apparent. Fortunately, however, actor Newman appears to have learned his lesson, which was after all, only his second feature-length film.