Rocky back in the ring with Creed

Rocky Balboa’s boxing legacy lives on in new movie ‘Creed’ as the fighting legend passes the gloves to young blood Adonis Creed, played by ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Fruitvale Station’ star Michael B Jordan. For those unfamiliar with Sylvester Stallone’s Oscar-winning, six-part Rocky franchise, the first four focused on Rocky’s rags-to-riches boxing story, rivalry and eventual friendship with heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). In part three, Apollo trains Rocky and then dies in Rocky’s arms after a brutal bout with a Russian fighter in the fourth film. The ringside saga continues, but this time, Sly didn’t pen the script. And he also just stood as support and trainer to Apollo’s son, Adonis, who’s preparing for the fight of his life. “The reason I didn’t want to write it is because it’s a whole new generation,” Stallone says. “Forty years has passed, and what worked in my generation doesn’t exactly work in this generation.” He predicts Jordan to be the ‘next thing’ despite ‘Fantastic Four’, where he plays superhero Human Torch, failing at the box office. “It was tough, because it was the first time I ever went through that,” Jordan says of the experience. “Some things are out of your control, even if you show up, give everything you’ve got, even if you give 110 per cent.” To be a boxer, Jordan bulked up, drastically changed his diet and took a lot of hard hits. And just like Rocky, Sly took him under his wing: “He took the pressure off me, not to compete or compare with anything he did 40 years ago. Physically, I felt the pressure. Stallone knows movie boxing better than anyone else. [When I] needed to sell a punch, or really ‘telegraph this’ or ‘telegraph that,’ he connected the dots for me.” Out in cinemas this Thursday.