[Requiem for a Heavyweight] combines sportswriter's sentimentality with "common-man" portentousness (the heroic concealed in what you and I are silly enough to think is small-scale or vapid). The plot is incredible: a top-rank boxer is desperate for a job a week after he quits boxing, and a mousy State Employment Agency woman changes character and chases him after one meeting. When Serling's dialogue is not trying for dumb-brute poetry, it slips into scriptwriter's hand-me-downs. ("I love that guy like a brother." "Now you listen and listen good.") (p. 27)

Stanley Kauffmann, "The Rise of Jane Fonda," in The New Republic, Vol. 147, No. 21, November 24, 1962, pp. 26-7.∗