Sylvester Stallone made a major contribution to Hollywood with his Rocky franchise. The movie was the first to popularize many concepts of modern sports dramas we see. However, it was not an easy journey for him. The star did as much as he could and even more to make the movies look fully authentic. He had to sustain some severe injuries due to it as well.
In Rocky II, Stallone’s Rocky Balboa went into a rematch against Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed. Reportedly, Sylvester Stallone didn’t hold back and let Weathers go on him with full potential. The star ended up fully broken up after that fight.
From the Rambo star’s statements, it can be seen that Stallone did everything to push his limits. He had a huge role to play in Rocky’s success due to all the problems he had to go through for the franchise.
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What happened to Sylvester Stallone during the filming of Rocky 2?
Following the success of Rocky in 1976, the movie turned into one of the greatest franchises. In 1979 when the sequel was dropped, Sylvester Stallone revealed some off-screen drama regarding the film. To make Rocky II as authentic as it can be, the star faced a serious beating from his co-star Carl Weathers.
In an interview with Roger Ebert, Sylvester Stallone recalled the whole incident and admitted that the filming of the rematch with Apollo Creed left him with broken bones. Despite being scripted, the hits Rocky received weren’t fake. Stallone attempted to keep the fight as real as possible and was left with serious injuries.
“Just what I said. I’m real messed up inside. When we were filming ‘Rocky II,’ I took a terrible beating. I let Carl Weathers really pound me. It was the most gruelling thing I’ve ever been through. Broken bones, the works. The fight’s four times as long and has eight times as many punches as the first one. A lot of those shots aren’t faked. It’s as hard to learn not to hit somehow as to hit them, Right now my health is pretty bad.”
He explained to the late interviewer, that he was left with enlarged intestines and rearranged insides. The fight sequences even led him to intensive care and he lost a lot of weight. But nothing could stop Stallone from giving his best to the franchise and eventually, he ended up in a hospital bed during the filming of Rocky IV.
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Sylvester Stallone was sent to hospital by Dolph Lundgren
The Rocky creator learned nothing from his experience in the 1979 sequel and was fully dedicated to making the franchise as realistic as it could be. When Rocky IV was being filmed, Sylvester Stallone ordered his co-star Dolph Lundgren to forget the choreography and give his best during the filming of a fight scene.
The Ivan Drago star also did as he was told and Stallone received such a blow that sent him directly to a hospital bed. In the Netflix documentary Sly (via Esquire), Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rival stated that he received a critical injury during the filming of Rocky IV.
“Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.'”
The John Rambo star was in a hospital bed for nine days straight. Reportedly, he kept the fight free-for-all during the first minute to keep it fully real. As stated by Dolph Lundgren, he simply followed the orders without thinking about anything. Fortunately, the situation didn’t go out of hand though Sylvester Stallone said that the injury he received usually happened during head-on collisions.
The Rocky movies can be streamed on Prime Video.
