Rocky

“If you stop this fight I’ll kill ya.”

Rocky is one of the greatest films ever made. 

Every time I watch Rocky I am struck by how awful everything is and how cheerful and friendly Rocky remains. 

If you look at Rocky Balboa’s life logically you would have to conclude that the best thing he could do for himself is blow his brains out. 

He lives in a city that looks like a 20 mile wide crack den. 

Financially, he’s done. He’s fighting guys who are, like him, just this side of homeless. And he’s doing it for $40 bucks a throw twice a month in dank, half filled pool halls. 

His only other job is as a leg breaker for a bookie but he doesn’t seem to have the heart for it. 

He gets scolded because he doesn’t break some poor bastard’s thumb when the guy gives him $130 instead of the $200 he owes. 

He likes a girl but she’s so damaged and shy she barely speaks to him. 

He’s got one friend and he’s a dangerous drunk who hates the world and the world seems only too happy to return the favor. 

And Mickey, the guy who runs the local gym, wants Rocky to quit boxing and give his locker to a younger fighter who still might have a career. 

When Rocky asks why Mick is always insulting him Mickey delivers the first of what will be two truthful conversations between the old mentor and the younger man.

“You had the talent to be a good fighter but instead of that, you become a legbreaker to some cheap, second rate loanshark!”

“It’s a living,”

“It’s a waste of life.”

The second conversation comes when Rocky gets a magical, once in a lifetime opportunity to face the Apollo Creed for the heavyweight championship of the world. The movie is a sports fairytale and this part of it is somewhat ridiculous (though not impossible). But what isn’t ridiculous is how everyone in Rocky’s world reacts when he becomes famous overnight. 

Paulie wants a job. Mickey does too, saying that he could be his manager and will look out for him. 

Rocky, for perhaps the only time in a movie that’s forever beating him down, lashes out. 

“Remember I needed your help about 10 years ago …” he starts. And wooo boy. He has some things to say. 

Still, when the screaming is over Rocky runs out of his house and grabs Mickey and pulls him in. So Mickey becomes his trainer and manager. And he lets Paulie trade on his now, famous name. That includes wearing an advertisement on his robe to the big fight. 

Mickey upon seeing the robe: “Well, what do you get out of it.”

Rocky: “Paulie gets three grand. I get the robe.”

Mickey: “Shrewd!” 

And Rocky woos and wins that girl he loves and they start to build a relationship and a life together. 

All this happens before the fight. 

In life Rocky is a loser, a bum, but as a person, he’s got a heart of gold. And when things go his way you can’t help but cheer for him. 

Every scene in Rocky is either funny or heartbreaking and a lot of the time it’s both. 

Let’s talk about one more scene just for the fun of it. Rocky ends up on the evening news for his unusual training method which is to go into a commercial freezer and beat giant racks of hanging meat until he breaks their ribs and ends up bloody. 

Then we see “Duke” Apollo’s trainer watching this with growing alarm. This guy is punching the hell out of anything in his way in a freezer, meanwhile, Duke’s fighter is wearing expensive suits and doing business deals and assumes that the fighting will take care of itself. 

He tries to warn him but Apollo won’t listen. 

Later, during the fight, when Apollo has realized his painful mistake Duke says this: “He doesn’t know it’s a show. He thinks it’s a damn fight.” 

Famously, Rocky does not win the fight in Rocky. The night before he tells Adrian that he knows he can’t win but that no one had ever gone to the end of a fight with Apollo without getting knocked out and if he could just do that … if he could just go the distance. 

Well, the fight is spectacular and the ending is what you would expect. 

But that’s not what makes me cry every time I watch it. What makes me cry is that Rocky was a winner before he ever stepped in the ring. 

He was good to his friends, he was true to himself and he relentlessly worked for his dreams. And it didn’t matter that the world thought he was a failure because he never gave up, never gave in and never gave an inch. 

If he got knocked out in the first round he would still be a winner. He would still be the kind of man you would be proud to call your friend. 

I don’t know how your life is going. I hope you are one of those who seem to be living like kings and sleeping on cushions filled with good times and money. 

But if you’re like me sometimes it can be a struggle to just go get through your day then Rocky may be your patron saint. 

After this Sylvester Stallone became a major star and they made a bunch of sequels. I love them all. And I mean that. I love all of them. I love the Creed spinoffs too. 

I think they’re magic. But mostly, I believe in the lesson. 

Stallone laid it out fully in a movie called Rocky Balboa. In the scene he’s trying to explain the world to his son who is distant and has had a tough time living in the shadow of a famous father. 

The speech always hits me as hard as any punch in the series. 

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. 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. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” 

There is no opponent as tough as just living in the world.

The diagnosis doesn’t go your way. Someone you love betrays you. 

The career you thought you were going to build just never materializes. 

But the world doesn’t get the final say about your life and how you lived it. Only you can make the choices that will define you. 

So I watch Rocky and I cry and I move forward in hope. 

I hope that I am good to my family, my friends, and the people around me. 

God knows I’m trying.