If you’re not a fan of boxing, you might never even consider listening to Irish Thunder, the nonfiction account of boxer Micky Ward that inspired the Academy Award-nominated film The Fighter. And that would be a mistake, because even for listeners who’ve never watched a match in their lives the volatile history of Ward, his family, and his career is a timeless and entertaining sports story brought to life by narrator Bronson Pinchot.

Ward known to his fans as “Irish Micky Ward” grew up boxing in Lowell, Massachusetts, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks town that claimed many of its youth (including Ward’s brother, Dicky Ecklund) for drugs, alcohol, and jail time. For nearly two decades, Ward’s career was a roller coaster of incredible wins and crushing defeats, culminating in a sport-changing trio of matches against Arturo Gatti in 2002 and 2003. Author Bob Halloran, a Boston-based sports anchor, addresses every detail of the influences and events that shaped Micky’s career, from the number of punches thrown and landed in each match and the color of the trim on the fighters’ uniforms to the interpersonal conflicts that plagued Ward’s team and family and the driving emotional forces that kept him entering the ring round after round.

Actor Bronson Pinchot may be best-known for his role as Balki Bartokomous on the sitcom Perfect Strangers, but there’s no trace of his Mypos accent here: He brings Micky, Dicky, and their families and friends to life with a rich tone and neat inflection. Micky is tough, determined, and resolute and, in his lowest moments, Pinchot lets through just enough emotion to show the cracks in that resolve. The narrator handily navigates 10 hours of boxing talk, reading the fight scenes’ punches, jabs, cuts, and yells at a pace that expresses the intensity of the situation without losing the listener. The end result: You don’t have to like or even understand the sport to be taken in by the highs and lows of life in the ring with Micky Ward. BlytheCopeland