To promote the Battle of The Baddest on the world stage, “Rumble” took the decades old boxing promo and reimagined it to create a big, cinematic and finely crafted hype film as big as the fight itself. Add to that great cinematography, simple storytelling and a mandarin-language cover of the Nancy Sinatra classic Bang Bang, and it’s easy to see why UK media outlets called it “the greatest boxing promo in history”.

Riyadh Season is the entertainment destination in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, that runs for 6 months (October - March), and has something for everyone. From restaurants, to concerts, to sporting events, and more.

While Riyadh Season has been around for several years, it has historically been a popular destination for mostly locals and visitors from other Middle Eastern countries.

The result was “Rumble”, a 90-second film based on the old boxing saying of “living rent free in your opponent’s head”; something that happens in the lead up to any big fight. As we watch Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou train for the biggest fight of their careers, they don’t just sense their opponent training—they feel it—each sending psychological shockwaves back and forth between their two hometowns, and making the whole world rumble in the process. This was all set to a mandarin-language cover of the Nancy Sinatra classic Bang Bang, performed by Betty Chung.

To kick off this year’s Riyadh Season, The Battle of The Baddest brought together two of the world’s biggest fighters from two different codes in one big event—World Heavyweight Champion Tyson Fury and UFC Champion Francis Ngannou—for the biggest crossover fight in history. This was bigger than the boxing and MMA communities; we needed to get the whole world excited, so we set out to reimagine the tired old boxing promo and create a cinematic hype film as big and spectacular as the fight itself.

We smashed vases, blew out car windows, rained sparks on Tyson Fury, had Ngannou punch the stuffing out of heavy bags and blew out an ice bath on set. They wouldn’t let us topple the Hollywood sign in real life so the brilliant editing team helped us out with that.

The cinematographer brought our gritty and realistic vision to life. Shooting in Tyson’s original boxing gym and actually letting our two boxing stars train as hard as they could in front of the camera gave us the authentic performances we needed.