The “Rocky” series has become an iconic part of cinema history for various reasons, not all related to the movies themselves. Various stories have come from the set of each film, as the filming and production have somehow managed to be just as interesting as the films themselves, a trend that started with the very first film and continued throughout every installment in the series.
Even today, interesting stories keep popping up every now and then. In a recent interview, Sylvester Stallone remembered a particular moment from the shooting of “Rocky 2”, when he underwent some serious training as part of his preparation for his role in the film. In the process, he had to spar with Roberto Duran, a serious champion in the ring – and according to Stallone, the fights went very badly against his favor.
Duran allegedly represented his position as a champion properly, delivering a serious beating to Stallone during one of their sparring sessions. What’s more interesting about this story is Stallone’s claim that he was strongly convinced that he would win the fight going in. Having already received some training during the production of the current film as well as the previous one, he had built up strong confidence in his boxing skills, something which was quickly dealt with by the powerful hands of Duran.
The story has sparked discussions at various online forums, where fans have been pointing out the analogy between this incident and some of the underlying morals presented in the films. Humility has been a common theme in the “Rocky” series, and according to Stallone, this incident has done a lot to make him more humble and patient outside of the film set. Stallone has also said that he had intended to make his role in “Rocky 2” more realistic, which partly drove him to the decision to get in the ring with an actual professional boxer. Following his dramatic loss, however, he quickly dropped the plans and decided to keep his role more dramatic. Whether the alternative option would have made the film better or worse can be debated, but it’s an undeniable fact that “Rocky 2” still ended up quite successful.
This is yet another example of how an actor’s work can have an actual influence on their life off the set, and it’s one of the more positive cases of that as well. Considering that the job of an actor revolves around playing different characters, each of them trying to teach viewers something, it’s good to see actors deciding to take something positive out of the experience for themselves as well, as there’s certainly plenty of opportunity for that on the set of a large-scale production such as “Rocky 2”.