It’s 1937 in New York City. While reigning Light Heavyweight Champion Eddie "Bare Knuckles" McSorley prepares to retire from boxing, his old friend and rival in the ring, "Gentleman" Joe Sullivan, returns to Hell’s Kitchen and Delaney’s Gym, where he and Eddie trained together as boys. Joe has been gone for a decade, having abandoned boxing after blinding an opponent in his first professional fight. Jean Barker, an ambitious reporter who wants off the “ladies’ page” to cover sports, strikes a bargain with her editor at the World Chronicle: if she can convince Joe to challenge Eddie in the champ’s last bout before retiring, she will get the story. Joe and Eddie both fall in love with her. Although she is attracted to each of them and confused about her feelings, she lets ambition come first and manipulates Joe into agreeing to fight Eddie.
Doc Mulligan, a racketeer who owns a piece of Eddie, is the landlord of Delaney’s Gym, Charlie Delaney’s business and home. Doc threatens to shut down Delaney’s if Eddie retires. Despite this, Charlie tries to persuade Eddie that if he beats Joe he should use the prize money to square his debts with Doc and leave boxing. Meanwhile, Eddie confides in Joe that he cares for Jean, unaware that Joe feels the same way. In the ring, challenger Joe starts slow but wins the fight in a fourth-round knock-out, with help from his signature right hook. Following the fight, Jean at last realizes she’s in love with Eddie, not Joe. During a party celebrating Joe’s victory, Charlie reveals an unexpected gift that allows him to save the gym, and newly minted sports writer Jean proposes to Eddie.

When Tim, a tattooed cartoonist, discovers he and his grandparents are going to lose their South Jersey home to foreclosure, he invites a “shoobie” (tourist) to be a summer tenant. The shoobie, Chantelle, a Black lawyer from Philly who has just been laid off, is on the first vacation of her life. Though it’s not exactly a holiday living with Tim’s grandparents – Lou, a bigoted dry-drunk, and Marge, his enabling wife – Chantelle falls for Tim, who at 21, already has two kids he is struggling to support with his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Caitlin.

While Chantelle encourages Tim to pursue his art, Lou barely conceals his hostility towards Chantelle, and it escalates until one night he assaults her. She leaves and secretly buys the family home.

When Tim discovers that Chantelle has bought the house, which has been in his family since the Civil War, he confronts his grandparents and finally discusses the truth of his mother’s death.