Rocky’s fights borrowed their movement from real boxing

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 26:25

   training do you have to do before the rocky films in terms of in a ring boxing sparring pads to do the kind of choreography we would do it'd be months but the one that took the most was with Dolph Lundgren, because there's hundreds and hundreds of punches, and he's so formidable. The height, so you have to really work on the mat. This is going to work. This visually is going to work. You need to have...

2. 26:54

   I liked it, but it's a choreographed dance with misses, because they're so... Oh, yeah. He put me in the hospital. You mentioned in Rocky I that you and Apollo Creed, sometimes you actually caught each other. Yeah, we did. Because that was one of the first, Rocky, that was the first boxing film where it really did look like it was happening. Oh, thank you. Progressively, it got better, but we didn't want, we literally, the guy quit.

3. 27:20

   Right. What choreographer quit? Yeah, the stunt coordinator was, I want you to come out and jab, jab, you punch, punch. I go, that's exactly the mathematics I've seen in every fight film. It's like this. And as you know, no pro does the shoeshine. It's just it's a thing you do to warm up on the bag. It's kind of flassy It's definitely not something you would implement to knock someone out because there's no power to it and You guys just do this to Apollo come out and I hit me with four right hands He's Apollo. That's the point. He's not your normal guy. And I had met Muhammad Ali. He goes, yeah, yeah, I used to come out and say, wham, wham, wham, wham, and it completely unorthodox and send a message.

4. 28:09

   And then I back off, you know, because now the other guy knows, oh boy, he can unload on me anytime. Again, failure, rejection, setbacks, the guy quits. He goes, you don't know what you're doing. I'm at this goddamn place. Oh, drop dead. The producers were going to fire me. And that's when I said, wow, why don't we start to study the greatest fights of all time, borrow that segment, borrow, fuse them all together, and now you have a really exciting concept because it's all taken from reality.

5. 28:46

   Reality, yeah. So who was the fight? Was Muhammad Ali against, what's it? Well, I would borrow that with him and Fraser. I do a lot later on with like in Rocky III I was trying to channeling Sugar Ray Leonard because he would go from side to side and oddly enough mr. T very powerful it's left-handed like me so it was too and Rocky was kind of this kind of gut so I said there's no contrast actually that whole film was about adaptation if you cease to adapt you will die and hey so when Rocky fights Creed the first I mean a clover he gets demolished because he's the same guy he cannot fight his own image and that's what Apollo comes in and I said okay here's the story adaptation mimic me but you can only do it for three rounds you're gonna be out of gas so the audience number three guys for you like

6. 29:47

   and there were more punches in the three rounds than in the first two Rockies because it had to be that kind of frenetic. And I got that from Marvin Hackler. Is this a sports show too? Marvin Hackler, I don't know if I'm talking to people. And Tommy Hearns. Brilliant fight for them. Right? It was three rounds. These guys hated each other. I knew both of them so much. They threw all their professionalism out the way and it's just like two guys slugging.

7. 30:17

   I go, that's wonderful. This episode of Stick to Football