Stallone had already spent months searching, in increasing desperation, for an actor who could credibly challenge the by-then iconic Rocky Balboa. So in a sense I was hit by ‘a streetcar named Drago’.”Īs he was rushed to the emergency room, he must have wondered if Rocky IV had itself suffered one concussion too many. “Many people that have car accidents die like this when the steering wheel slams into their chest. “He struck me so hard in the chest that my heart slammed against my breastbone and began to swell, so the beating became laboured, and without medical attention the heart would’ve continued to swell until it stopped,” Stallone continued. “In the first round, I thought these two characters should hate each other so much that they should just attack each other like pit dogs…professionalism be damned,” he revealed to Ain’t It Cool. The heavy strike had been the idea of Stallone, who wrote and directed the $28m production, which had its premiere 35 years ago today (21 November). Rocky IV had not been going particularly well by the time Lundgren, playing Soviet Ubermensch Ivan Drago, delivered his fateful – and potentially fatal – blow to Stallone’s chest. At 6ft 5in, Dolph Lundgren was also the most intimidating opponent 5ft 10in Stallone had faced off against in the course of his career as Rocky Balboa. The punch had been delivered by a one-time Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fulbright scholar from Stockholm who had become famous for his relationship with singer Grace Jones. “Later that night I couldn’t breathe very well, and they took me to the emergency room.”
“I felt a burning in my chest, but ignored it,” Stallone recalled in 2015 to Ain’t It Cool.
Within a few hours, he would be on his way to A&E.
ROCKY BALBOA SPEECH TO COURT MOVIE
It was spring 1985 and, in a boxing ring erected inside the 5,000-capacity Vancouver Agrodome, the world’s most bankable movie star had just suffered a body blow to the rib-cage that sent shockwaves directly towards his heart. Sylvester Stallone staggered backwards, threatening to hit the canvas like a $28m sack of potatoes.