![]() (Of course it didn’t hurt having one of the greatest songs of all time to assist his rhythm with Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger!) Toughness with footwork is a pretty nasty combo as Ali demonstrated for real and the fictional Rocky showed us in Rocky III. Instead of fighting like a slow (but tough) Italian, he started developing actual rhythm. Once Rocky started to dance, he was a force to be reckoned with. While he was always a tough fighter with heart, he didn’t become a great fighter until he developed the most important skill in fighting, footwork.Īpollo could dance and punch fast and run his mouth, whereas Rocky was tough as nails and slow as molasses. While he was savvy and mentally as tough as anyone, his real mastery was his footwork (widely considered the fastest and best of all time.) When Rocky went down to the beach to train with Apollo, he stepped up his game. Muhammad Ali wasn’t stronger than his opponents. In real boxing though, unless you’re as fast as Floyd Mayweather, Jr., you best have those hands real close to that jaw. ![]() It makes for great film and entertainment with the fighters just pounding each other senseless as there is always an open target to hit. This never happens in Rocky, as the hands are everywhere except up. ![]() Specifically the right hand (for orthodox fighters) is wired to the jaw or “on the phone” as my professor would always say. One hand should literally be touching your jaw at all times. The first lesson any boxing students learn is to keep your hands up – always. I have never seen a poorer display of boxing hand positioning than in these films. Particularly as it relates to the hands, the Rocky movies show beyond bad form. While watching Rocky can show you what it means to have heart, I also think watching the Rocky movies shows a good example of what not to do. No one exemplifies this quite like the character of Rocky, and in fighting, heart matters, more than anything. You cannot will yourself into being a good basketball player, but in boxing it’s not all about talent. What drove me to the martial arts and boxing in the first place is the principle that heart matters. Rocky goes the distance with world champion Apollo Creed because of one thing and one thing only – heart. He ends up losing his title shot but just barely. What changed is that The Stallion found his mojo (falling for the girl in the pet shop), found a little luck (getting a random title shot), and found his trainer (Mickey). Let’s face it Rocky was already washed up when the Rocky series began. Here are the five biggest lessons I learned from Rocky: You’ll also be pretty darned entertained in the process as the Rocky movies (at least the first four) never seem to get old. That said, there are some boxing takeaways from the Rocky series if you watch closely enough. Conversely, while Sylvester Stallone was pretty darn convincing as the character of Rocky, his boxing moves and that of his opponents (save perhaps those of the late boxer Tommy Morrison) left something to be desired. As bad as an actor as Bruce Lee was, his ability as a martial artist was unparalleled both on film and off. That’s how winning is done!”įrom a technical standpoint, the Rocky movies are some of the worst fight movies out there. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward how much you can take and keep moving forward. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. The unfortunate effect is that of an invisible angel of death hooking Rocky's mouth with a fishing line and implacably reeling him in.“Let me tell you something you already know. The famous Stallone face now looks more asymmetrical than ever it's as if a gallon of Botox has been injected into one side of his head, and his lower lip is so skewed that its right corner is now directly under his right earlobe. We get the usual "training" montage showing this Saga-vintage Michelin Man running, lifting heavy weights and roaring motivationally at himself. Then he gets a chance to prove himself in the ring. At any rate, Rocky is now a melancholy widower running a Italian restaurant. It could be that Rocky the Italian Stallion, the legendary boxer he first created in 1976, is supposed to be younger than that, but no one in this film ever has the bad taste to mention his precise age. Maybe when Stallone returns with the fourth Rambo next year, the title should just be John J Rambo, signifying the same sort of gravitas and spiritual acceptance: tying the old red bandana round the head one more time, before heading out to Basra and kicking the asses of a few young punk insurgents, just to show he's still got the chops.
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