Action stars eventually get used to the bumps and bruises that come with their genre of choice, but that doesn’t mean they’re prepared to stare death in the face. Unfortunately for Sylvester Stallone, he was convinced the end was nigh after taking a genuine beating in the name of entertaining audiences the world over.
As the writer, director, and star of Rocky IV, Stallone had plenty of sway over how the movie was put together, but he ended up drastically regretting the call to have co-star Dolph Lundgren really lay in the blows during the climactic fight between Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago.
Despite being a hulking physical specimen and a two-time European karate champion before moving into acting, Stallone nonetheless encouraged his opposite number to throw caution and restraint out of the window, explaining to The Hollywood Reporter how he told Lundgren to “just go out there and try to clock me, for the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all.”
Summing up how things turned out for him in the end, Stallone admitted that “Dolph Lundgren put me in the hospital for nine days,” remarking that “I knew I was in trouble when I showed up and nuns met you at the ICU”. While it sounds like macho bluster, the Rambo and Expendables headliner laid out the medical issues that came as a direct result.
He knows exactly which punch did the damage, too, noting it was one that “caught the ribs and hit the heart against the ribcage”. For Lundgren’s part, he absolved himself of any blame, which is fair enough considering he was only doing what he was told: “All I did was obey orders. He was the boss. I did what he told me. We came back and the producer was like, ‘Hey Dolph, you’ve got two weeks off — Sly’s in the hospital.’”
Even in his recent Netflix documentary Sly, the veteran shed new light on how he was “pulverised” by Lundgren: “My heart started to swell, which happens when the heart hits the chest. And then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels,” he continued. “Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care where I’m surrounded by nuns. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s curtains.’”
Not one to let a near-death experience impact his creativity, Stallone has confirmed the body blow that nearly killed him made it into the final cut of Rocky IV, presumably bringing those memories flooding back every time he revisits it. Having recently re-edited the classic sports drama into Rocky vs. Drago: The Ultimate Director’s Cut in 2021 that removed original footage and replaced it with 38 minutes of new scenes, too, he’s probably seen it more times than he’d care to remember.