‘Rocky II’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan feel like a Kentucky Fried idiot after rewatching their 12th Sylvester Stallone movie on The Rewatchables, ‘Rocky II,’ also starring Carl Weathers and Talia Shire. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Eduardo Ocampo A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to by Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow in the dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic ghost face from Scream. Don't get angry, get orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard's cider company, LLC. Angryorchard.com. Please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  The rewatch was brought to by the Ringer Podcast Network. We can find the watch with Chris Ryan. Here I am. Big hit episode with Vince Gilligan. Yeah. Was it a hit? It seemed like it was a hit. Thanks, Bill. People want to know about Pluribus. Yeah. Have you checked it out over the Thanksgiving weekend? I'm saving it. Okay. Oh.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  It's really good.

• 1:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Bill Simmons?

  Van Lathan Higher Learning.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:04Bill Simmons?

  Ringer Tailgate.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05Bill Simmons?

  Red Hot Show Right Now with all the LSU drama.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Going crazy, so much happening.

• 1:09Bill Simmons?

  And then the Pew Pew.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Pew Pew, me and my boys. Forgot the name of the podcast.

• 1:13Bill Simmons?

  I'm actually the new head coach of North Texas. I'm going to be leaving the Ringer.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  You like that? You going over there to take the job?

• 1:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Before we get to the pod today, somebody sent me a video. Somebody went through all of the HBO movies from the eighties and how many times they aired and did a top 50. It's on YouTube. I'll tweet it out there.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  This is my, this is right up my alley. I love this.

• 1:33Bill Simmons?

  Where do they get this data? He went through somehow every single week of HBO programming. Couple highlights, Eddie and the Cruiser, 16th most airings.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Eddie and the Cruiser is an HBO original movie?

• 1:46Bill Simmons?

  Too high or too low? No, it's just HBO broadcast.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I thought this was HBO original movies. Okay, my bad.

• 1:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Victory, fifth.

• 1:56Bill Simmons?

  Lone Wolf McQuade, I thought was gonna be really high. It was only 37th. I thought that was disappointing.

• 2:01Chris Ryan?

  The distortion field of your own nostalgia.

• 2:03Bill Simmons?

  Number one, Bill Cosby himself.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was on all the time.

• 2:08Bill Simmons?

  It was a devastating number one. It was 25 minutes.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  But you gotta keep it real, though, man.

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and it was like, what's the number one movie gonna be? And it was Bill Cosby himself.

• 2:17Chris Ryan?

  I'm shocked this list hasn't been publicized before.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you gotta keep it real. Remember the bit about the sun playing football?

• 2:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  From Bill Cosby himself.

• 2:26Bill Simmons?

  It was on all the time.

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  Woody Allen's Manhattan, number two with a bullet.

• 2:31Bill Simmons?

  Eddie and the Cruisers, 16. The streets are just shouting for the rewatchables. We just need it somewhere streaming.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  What an ugly.

• 2:37Bill Simmons?

  We have Tubi, we have Howdy, we have Pluto.

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  We didn't pump up the volume without a streaming option? Do you feel like people just have to be able to see it, though?

• 2:45Bill Simmons?

  It's, I want people to see it. You've seen it, right?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Eddie and the Cruisers, of course.

• 2:49Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Like, have you seen Eddie and the Cruisers 2: Eddie Lives?

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  I don't like that movie as much. I don't like when we go to Canada with Eddie and he's working construction. Not on my list. That did not make the top 50. A movie that we're about to do is our 12th Sylvester Stallone movie. A movie we've been circling for a while. Rocky II is next. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by State Farm. Whether you're debating watching that award-winning sports drama or rewatching your comfort buddy comedy movie for the 10th time, choices are important. When it comes to choosing coverage, a State Farm agent can help you find options that are right for you. Go online at statefarm.com or use the award-winning app to get help from one of their local agents, like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.

• 3:48Bill Simmons?

  All right, guys, it's our 12th Sylvester Stallone movie. Rocky II. We've done three, we've done four, we've done one, we've done Creed.

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Bill Simmons?

  Haven't done two. I'm gonna go through the Stallone movies we've done. He's now tied for fourth all time.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  This is a great example of executive unitary theory, where this is like, you, with your sheer act of will, just making Stallone top four for us.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  Arguably not enough Stallone. We could say, like, there's five we haven't done. I like Daylight. I like Lockup.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Daylight's Lockup?

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  I like Nighthawks.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  You're scraping the

• 4:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Day Hawk is cool.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Day Hawk, sorry.

• 4:27Bill Simmons?

  So he's tied for fourth all time now with Denzel. Here's what we've done. So we did Rocky, the most important Stallone movie. We did Rocky III, I think the most entertaining. Rocky IV, the most eighties.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:39Bill Simmons?

  Conification of eighties Stallone.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:42Bill Simmons?

  First Blood, I think the best eighties. Best eighties what? Best eighties Stallone movie. Okay. Victory, most underrated. That was a fun pod. Cobra, most ridiculous. Over the top, best bad movie he's ever made. Tango and Cash, guilty as pleasure.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Tango and Cash.

• 4:59Bill Simmons?

  Cliffhanger, I think his best nineties movie. Copland, his biggest swing. Creed, best twenty first century movie he made. Yeah. So what is Rocky II?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Rocky II. Rocky II is the most important of the Rocky movies to me.

• 5:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, explain.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  So I was trying to figure out why I like Rocky II so, so much. Like I told you, I liked the movie.

• 5:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  There's, I love it. It's one of my favorite ones.

• 5:26Bill Simmons?

  It's not a hot take. The last twenty eight minutes of the movie is. Of Rocky II or Rocky I you're talking about?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Rocky II.

• 5:31Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So there's two reasons why I like the movie so much. Number one, this movie plays like an HBO twenty four seven episode.

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  So when you watch HBO twenty four seven, it's all slice of life. It's, this is what I'm buying. These are the commercials that I'm going to. This is the life of a pro fighter. And then at the end of it, it's the fight. And this is how that movie really is. There's really not much plot happening. It's like a long HBO twenty four seven movie. And then, whereas Rocky stands alone as this, the original Rocky, should I say, stands alone as this incredible dramatic achievement. This movie is kind of the actual beginning of the Rocky franchise as this being a sports action movie franchise. The first one is a very small drama and it's more about, you know, the life of this guy, this big shot that he takes.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  But this movie is the movie where you're in this world and the world is forming for the lore of Rocky to deepen and become what it's going to become. And I like this version of it. The over the top, super muscled us against the Russians. That's the Rocky that I like more than the understated version of it. What do you have, CR?

• 6:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that this movie for me, Van makes a really good point that this is like the beginning of the Rocky saga and the Rocky franchise. What I like so much about Rocky 2 is that it is essentially a remastered version of Rocky. It's essentially a remake. I mean, you know, you start with, but I call it a remastered version because in the first 10 minutes are essentially the end of Rocky with some technical embellishments. I think they're using the same footage, but I believe that they ran it through some processing to make it look a little bit better. They did some insert shots. And then, for the most part, beat for beat, the story is relatively the same. A guy who's down on his luck, who finds a girl, who finds a trainer, who finally

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  finds the will to fight against impossible odds. And then, everything for the last 30, 40 minutes is right out of Rocky I, essentially, in terms of like, the training, the montage, the entrance to the fight, everything like that. You just have some different emotions going on there. So yeah, I think that this is an example of something I wish Hollywood almost would try more of, which is essentially the sequel that is just a remake.

• 7:42Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's interesting, because I don't feel like, we talked about sequels before on rewatchables, like, somewhere in the late 70s into the early 80s, sequels became, oh, we should-

• 7:53Chris Ryan?

  Expanding.

• 7:53Bill Simmons?

  This is like, a huge money opportunity, we should do this. This was like, the purest form of a sequel, where that Rocky, the original one, had a beginning, middle, and end, and it was supposed to end. And then people loved the character, and won the Oscar. And then everybody was kinda like, can this guy come back?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I just wanna hang out with Rocky more.

• 8:12Bill Simmons?

  Because I saw this in the theater, I remember, it was another one, I remember, I went with my best friend Reese Genzer, Cleveland Circle, and it was the only-

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  I don't think I've heard Reese before.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  What are these names?

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Where'd Reese go?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  What happened to Reese?

• 8:23Bill Simmons?

  He was my best friend in first, second, third, fourth grade.

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  What'd he do?

• 8:27Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  What'd he do to you, though?

• 8:29Bill Simmons?

  He switched schools, and that was it.

• 8:31Chris Ryan?

  Alright.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  So Reese switched schools and there's no more Reese?

• 8:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I'm sure he exists.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  So what is it up to?

• 8:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm sure he's doing great. I don't know.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So Reece has never reached out?

• 8:41Bill Simmons?

  No, we exchanged emails a while ago.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  What'd he say?

• 8:45Bill Simmons?

  How come you never talk about me on the pod?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Reece is like, Reece is listening to a bunch of pods.

• 8:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's like, we saw Rocky II together.

• 8:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, maybe he'll reach out again.

• 8:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:54Bill Simmons?

  But we saw this and it was the only time in my life I remember, and I think I've talked about this before, the entire theater cheering like it was a real sporting event. Like, for real.

• 9:03Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I bet.

• 9:04Bill Simmons?

  And it was a lot of kids and everybody just wanted Rocky to win and people, it was like we were on closed circuit watching like Leonard Hearns. Are you gonna make a?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:13Bill Simmons?

  Go ahead.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  This is Boston, all right?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they wanted Rocky to win. They wanted Rocky to eat out the victory.

• 9:22Bill Simmons?

  And the double knockdown was an all time, like, oh my god. And they did a really good job of it. The announcer going, although they bent the rules, but, it's like whoever gets up first and you're just like, they set the stakes perfectly and everyone went nuts when he won. Like, nuts.

• 9:39Chris Ryan?

  I gotta be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I think that I may have spent some of my, a significant part of my life thinking Rocky II was Rocky I.

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not sure if I even saw it.

• 9:50Bill Simmons?

  I mean, they kind of merged together in one giant movie.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  You know what's funny? When we did Rocky I, when I rewatched it, I kept waiting for the scene where Mickey tells Rocky that he shouldn't fight Apollo because?

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  His eye.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Because of his eye, because he's too slow. If I can get that shot on you, think about what Creed would do to you. He's gonna hurt you permanent, but it's actually in the second movie.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think they do bleed together. They are one A and one B of one big movie in some ways.

• 10:15Bill Simmons?

  It's an interesting, from a rewatchable standpoint, and there's a reason we waited to do it because,

• 10:21Bill Simmons?

  you know, when you see it the first time, second time, third time, but after forty-five, fifty, almost fifty years of this movie, there's about an hour where you're like, I think I'm good.

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I would call this-

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  The coma scene's eleven minutes.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  This is only rewatchable, in the sense that if you do not know where it's going, it is unwatchable. Like, if you are watching this for the first time or the first time in a really long time, you're like, holy shit.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Nothing's happened.

• 10:44Chris Ryan?

  How many jobs is this guy gonna get and get fired from? And then now Adrian's in a coma.

• 10:49Bill Simmons?

  It feels like-

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  He's reading to her again.

• 10:51Bill Simmons?

  It feels like a series of deleted scenes on YouTube.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It kind of does.

• 10:56Bill Simmons?

  Deleted scenes, Rocky two, but it's the actual movie for forty five minutes.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  But back to your point, it assumes that you care so deeply about the character.

• 11:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Because if you don't, you just don't care about Adrian getting her part time job at the pet shop back.

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  It assumes a deep connection to the characters and at the end, that's kind of why it works is because when he's holding that belt at the end of the movie, all of those feelings just come pouring out of you.

• 11:22Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of brilliant how they do it, but I don't know how like rewatchably fun it is to watch his dignity just get stripped away.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  Watching him in the meatpacking plant or getting rejected at the temp agency.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  The boxing gym.

• 11:34Bill Simmons?

  Doing the boxing gym, the bucket.

• 11:36Chris Ryan?

  And the guy's a get closer.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  For me too, huge nitpick.

• 11:39Chris Ryan?

  Why? Well, we get to it.

• 11:40Bill Simmons?

  He's too famous to work as a trainer.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Number one.

• 11:43Bill Simmons?

  Or not even a trainer, it's like a janitor basically.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  In a lot of boxing gyms, all over this city and other cities, he just not, would not be treated that way. Just no way. He would, they would not treat him like that. Like up at Phil's, sometimes Zab Judah will come in, Donna Dragon Wilson will come in, this just doesn't matter. He would not, guys who have even had like five or ten pro fights, you, you looked at it as like a different species in a gym like that. And there are other pros in there. He just, they wouldn't, they would in no way, shape or form, somebody that just went to war like that would they have treated him that way.

• 12:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, the good news is that's not even one of the ten most ridiculous things about this movie. Including that he's blind in his right eye and goes fifteen rounds with Creed. Um, this was a big movie for Stallone CR because between Rocky one and two, comes out with Fist. When was the last time you cranked out Fist?

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  I'm not sure I've ever seen Fist.

• 12:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Does Sean even own Fist on Blu-ray, you think?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I don't own Fist.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Black Friday sale on the Keno Lorber site, Sean's grabbing Fist, seventy eight percent off.

• 12:44Chris Ryan?

  We should live call Sean and be like, do you own this on four K?

• 12:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he definitely does. So Fist bombed and then he directed and starred in Paradise Alley, which seemed good on paper, but that also flopped and.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  Is that like a Great Depression kind of comedy? I've never seen that.

• 12:58Bill Simmons?

  People are like, can you just be Rocky again?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Um, but he uses that to his advantage.

• 13:03Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 13:04Chris Ryan?

  Right? So, I mean, you tell the story of the making the film, but.

• 13:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I can do that quick. Completes the screenplay in seventy-seven. Calls it Rocky II Redemption.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  Strong title.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:16Bill Simmons?

  Was supposed to get Jon Avildsen to direct, but he's doing Saturday Night Fever, a good movie that we've done on the rewatch.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Avildsen later says he's, like, I wasn't super pumped to just remake the same movie.

• 13:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  But it had conversations with Stallone about some interesting wrinkles that Rocky's character could go through that we can talk about later.

• 13:35Bill Simmons?

  Stallone basically says, I have to direct or I'm not gonna be involved. Studio breaks. Seven million dollar budget. He gets a lot of points. And it becomes the highest grossing sequel ever. It holds the record until Empire Strikes Back, two years later, or one year later. Seven million dollar budget makes two hundred point one million and then is on cable for the next forty-eight years. This is about as good as it could be for him and sets up the eighties for him, more importantly. Sets up Night Hawks, Victory, First Blood, Rambo, everything. It sets up the next fifteen years of him being an A-plus lister because he proved people wanted to come back to see Sly Stallone. It's interesting, though, he's like a heavier...

• 14:18Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't, I don't know what happened between Rocky II and Victory, basically, two years later, but his face...

• 14:25Speaker 01

  You don't know what happened?

• 14:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't know whether he just, like, stopped eating bread or...

• 14:30Speaker 01

  What do you think happened?

• 14:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, he got thinner. You think he had surgery?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  He's on steroids.

• 14:35Bill Simmons?

  But he's, he's big bulk. I think he was on steroids in one and two, though.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Oh, but it, his body...

• 14:41Bill Simmons?

  Better steroids?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  It's seventies steroids. It's ridiculous, yeah.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  Like, the seventies make you water?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Well, he starts, he starts, he probably has more money, has a different steroids he can get, he gets more into it, and then things are changing along those fronts. But obviously, by the time Rocky...

• 14:57Bill Simmons?

  He didn't use steroids, O'Drago did.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  Rocky IV, he's doing a natural. He's just lifting lumps.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 15:04Bill Simmons?

  He's lifting Polly in the sled.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:06Bill Simmons?

  Um, but yeah, so he's, it's kind of a doughier, very seventies Stallone, and then that guy goes away.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  The size is coming along. And by the time three comes, he's like a action figure. He's like, not, he's he-man.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  He's one of those people in Rocky one and two, you could've told me he was six-four and I could've believed that as a little kid, but he was really like, what, five-seven and a half?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, small.

• 15:27Bill Simmons?

  Casting, whatever. What do you think? Do you have a steroids take, Craig? Rocky.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't know how, if he was on steroids in one and two.

• 15:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Chris Ryan?

  But he's 100 million percent on steroids in three and four. You can't look like that.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Four. Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  The whole, he's, it, it, his whole body.

• 15:43Chris Ryan?

  In three, he's like fully oiled up all the time in three.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, by the time we get to even first blood part two.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  It's obvious that he's, he's, he's training hard and he's, he's on something.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  He could be natural in one and two, maybe.

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  So the, the big calling card of this movie, as it was on marathons forever and ever, was how good the last 28 minutes are.

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  The moment, the moment we get Mick going, what do we wait for? This is the best movie of all time. I, it might be the best run of a rewatchable movie. Every single moment is perfect.

• 16:16Chris Ryan?

  It might be the best running in film history.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  You know what? I'm, I'm so shocked. I'm so shocked at how moved I was rewatching it. The scene just works. It's timeless. It's classic. Just Rocky, running with all the kids. After all of this time, it should not be moving. But you want the guy to win. You want that guy to figure his life out. I still don't think I want him to beat Apollo, but he's running with the kids and the scene gets the wells out of you.

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  I was the exact same age as those kids and I think that might've been the coolest moment of my life to that point. Just the, the chance that kids my age got to run.

• 16:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Bill Simmons?

  With Rocky, like broke your brain. It's like, oh, I'm so jealous of all 800 of these kids. Specifically the one, the one who turns into Carl Lewis for like two seconds, trying to keep up with them. One of the great athletes in the history of movies.

• 17:10Chris Ryan?

  He runs right by my old Little League field on the parkway there.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Oh, you showed me.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Show me when we were in Philly.

• 17:16Bill Simmons?

  There's some controversial how long he ran that we'll get into later. But that kid who keeps up with them.

• 17:21Chris Ryan?

  I would also say his pace is unsustainable.

• 17:24Bill Simmons?

  He's going. Sprinting.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Um, I just thought about a young Bill in Boston, like stalking out joggers, trying to run behind him.

• 17:31Chris Ryan?

  Wishing that like Gordy Howell coming out of a store with six cases of beer.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  You're just playing in Philadelphia and Rocky's running by and you're like, come on, let's join him.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  And you're just, and by, he's got a whole.

• 17:43Bill Simmons?

  And this jogging pack.

• 17:47Bill Simmons?

  There's no Ebert review of this movie.

• 17:49Chris Ryan?

  But.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  But on TV, Siskel said he loved it and that he was looking forward to Rocky III, that it is Siskel and Ebert. Ebert said, I really did enjoy it. And he thought the sequels fight scene was better, but the big thing is he wrote a piece about watching this with Muhammad Ali.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  Very cool, very cool piece. It's on the Ebert site. I guess maybe that's why he didn't review it is because he wrote a feature, which is, did he write a lot of features?

• 18:12Bill Simmons?

  That was a pretty unusual piece. It's, it's a pretty famous Ebert piece and Ali had not gotten the tar beating out of him by Holmes yet, so he was still relatively coherent. Some of the Ali highlights, he, you know, I was identified with Apollo Creed. He said Apollo sounds like me insulting the opponent in the press to get him psyched out. That's me exactly. He criticized the loans boxing, says it's good acting. It's not boxing. And he points to the guy in training in the background, says that guy in the red trunks back there, you can see he's a real fighter. This was interesting. He talked about, he don't feel like fighting because his wife is sick. That's the truth. The same thing happened to me when I was in training camp during one of my divorces. You can't keep your mind on fighting when you're thinking about a woman. I don't know if this is true for your training.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  For me?

• 18:57Bill Simmons?

  In the gym, yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  It helps me to think about women.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Different OnlyFans models.

• 19:02Bill Simmons?

  But he, they're watching.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:07Bill Simmons?

  He says, I have, I predict she's gonna get well and then Rocky's gonna beat the hell out of Apollo Creed. That was a mid movie Ali prediction.

• 19:15Bill Simmons?

  He said, there's no way Apollo could hang, could Rocky could hang with Apollo. He was jealous of Master and Disaster. And then he had this quote, for the black man to come out superior would be against all America's teachings. I have been so great in boxing. They had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Wonder Woman. How she get thrown into it?

• 19:41Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. That was Ali's take. That was Ali's.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Out of nowhere?

• 19:45Bill Simmons?

  They decided not to put that blurb on the poster.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 19:48Bill Simmons?

  For Ali. But those were his takes.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  So when you watch the movie, it is, you're just blown away at how good of an athlete Carl Weathers is. It's ridiculous, right? Carl Weathers. Moves like a fighter, throws punches like a fighter. He is.

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  He also looks like a fighter when he's just wearing a suit, moving around his house and moving through life. Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Obviously Rocky was going to win. The spirit and then the non, I'm not giving up, all of that stuff. That's what the movie is about. Like when you go back, that's kind of the deal you're making with the film is to like suspend the disbelief that Rocky could beat any of the opponents that he's ever fought. I will say, I find Apollo Creed in this movie to be fascinating.

• 20:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, he doesn't smile, I don't think, once in the movie. He's so angry.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  He, the scene, and we'll, we'll talk about it later, but the scene where they're trying to convince him not to do this, where everyone is completely afraid and he is so resolute, he's not angry at all. He's fixated on what he has to do. And him overcoming this and then falling short and not being able to do it, when Apollo slumps down and can't get up.

• 20:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Gutting. Just didn't have.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Then raises the arm at the end.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And then raises the arm at the end, like just his entire perspective in the movie. The reading of the hate mail, all of that, kind of an interesting look at the modern athlete and the kind of chances they take to protect their legacy. Like one of the first times a movie really did it that I could connect to. He's all wrong for us, baby.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Beat that man and he just kept coming. He kept coming.

• 21:23Chris Ryan?

  I have more to say on this later. Yeah.

• 21:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's funny, watching, knowing how the rest of the Rocky series goes, and he's so much fun in Rocky III, Apollo Creed. There's no sign of that in Rocky II. He just is like so fucking mad that Rocky almost beat him. The hate mail makes him so mad. All he wants to do is destroy the guy. And he's just like this really angry, vindictive character. And then Rocky III just.

• 21:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, he also is just a great, it's also like right at that moment where I feel like these guys are on camera, not just when they're competing, but when they're building up to fights or building up to any events. And so he's also like playing three different characters. So there's the character in the ring, the character at home, and the character who is just being filmed at press conferences and any kind of public appearances. And so he always has like these little shades to the way he's performing weathers, I mean, that's just incredible.

• 22:15Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, as a kid in the seventies, it never occurred to me what a, what an Ali impersonation it was, because the only champ I really knew was Ali. So I just thought all champs acted like this.

• 22:26Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 22:27Bill Simmons?

  But now as the years pass and you watch it, it's a very like interesting Ali slash Hollywood hybrid character. There's a lot of Ali in it, especially the way he carries them, the way he talks, like, how polished he is. Yeah.

• 22:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Bill Simmons?

  He's like a businessman, he's charismatic.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  He's like, it's, we talked about this with the first movie too, it's an interesting juxtaposition because, you know, Rock is really in the hood with criminals.

• 22:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  With his homeboy sister.

• 22:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Like in Philly where when you look at Creed.

• 23:00Bill Simmons?

  The singers around the garbage can.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  The singers, what happened to that?

• 23:03Bill Simmons?

  The doo-wop.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  The doo-wop guys, you know.

• 23:06Bill Simmons?

  They just like to hang out on a nice cold Thursday night, singing some doo-wop songs.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Whatever you say to them, they go.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  But then like, you walk by, tell them, think about how they're humanizing, walk by, hey, give me a little Frankie Leman. Okay, fellas.

• 23:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  That's a jukebox in the neighborhood, show some respect.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  But then when you see Apollo, a group of guys in suits, a dedicated PR guy.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  That's giving him advice on how he's going to look like the villain. So polished, like so methodical, that he is literally conning Rocky into taking this fight. Our entire narrative in the story, which is this second fight, is based upon Apollo's ego. Fascinating character.

• 23:51Bill Simmons?

  Also, it's possible it created the whole how to bully somebody into fighting you, and then the wrestling version of this that they just borrowed from the eighties, nineties and so on, where.

• 24:02Chris Ryan?

  Which is cool, because wrestling comes into the movies, it was in three, I guess.

• 24:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's a very professional wrestling type of, you gotta fight me, Woody, come on, let's go. All right, we're gonna take a break. We have a lot going here with the category, so we're gonna take a break, come back with most relatable scene. This podcast is sponsored by PayPal. Let's talk holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in for. No fees, no interest. So whether it's the must have toy or a tiered cheese board, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash pay in for PayPal, Inc. NMLS 910457.

• 24:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, most rewatchable scene. You know, I get why they reran the last six minutes of Rocky I as a remaster. But for the marathons, I always, it really always bothered me. I used to write about this a lot.

• 24:58Chris Ryan?

  If you're, if they're doing a Rocky marathon, you don't like it?

• 25:00Bill Simmons?

  I think it should just go right to them in the ambulance.

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  So here's the thing, as a, as a discreet experience, though, if this movie doesn't have a fight in the beginning, there's no fighting for an hour and a half then.

• 25:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 25:12Chris Ryan?

  And you would be, it's a tough watch if there's no action.

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  For an hour and a half.

• 25:20Bill Simmons?

  Rocky and Apollo to the hospital. The opening credits are the first rewatchable scene because they have the remastered Rocky theme song.

• 25:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Bill Simmons?

  You guys aren't with me?

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  Great title.

• 25:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm with you. I just think you should be around the woman. Maybe you could be one of the guys.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  One man do up for shit.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Bill House. Yeah, House could next, definitely be next to Frank.

• 25:50Chris Ryan?

  For Reese back?

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  Reese back. I thought that song was really good. Could have gone badly. I like that you have brain damage. I don't see any. And then Creed in the wheelchair talking shit.

• 25:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Bill Simmons?

  What do they have to end up at the same hospital in the same waiting room?

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's only like a couple of hospitals in Philly that you would really go to.

• 26:05Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, I had that very small scene. Rocky taking the wheelchair over to Apollo, asking him if he gave him his best. It's a short one, but I like it. Rocky's marriage proposal. How's the Philadelphia Zoo for you, CR?

• 26:19Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 26:20Bill Simmons?

  A lot of times, a lot of good times there?

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  That's an interesting callback to the first movie. I don't know if you remember that.

• 26:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the, oh, the Gasso's driver.

• 26:27Chris Ryan?

  Gasso's driver says retards like the zoo.

• 26:29Bill Simmons?

  You should take it to the zoo. Retards like the zoo. Right.

• 26:32Chris Ryan?

  And they get, they get engaged.

• 26:35Bill Simmons?

  They get engaged.

• 26:37Chris Ryan?

  I'm not saying I endorse the language, but I noted that they brought it. It was Chekhov Zoo.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  You know?

• 26:42Bill Simmons?

  This was a running joke with my buddy Gus and I all through the eighties that if one of us was gonna propose, I was wondering if you wouldn't marry me too much.

• 26:52Bill Simmons?

  Classic line. I like when he invites the tiger. Rocky's just full brain damage for the first hour of this movie. Just doing that. Rocky filming a commercial.

• 27:03Chris Ryan?

  Brutal.

• 27:04Bill Simmons?

  This hurts. I think C R could have played the director.

• 27:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  That would have been a good.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  The true auteur that can't deal with the incompetent talent.

• 27:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Chris Ryan?

  It's like Fincher making him do sixty.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  The guy can't read. The guy can't read. I feel so bad for Rocky.

• 27:17Bill Simmons?

  Get out of here, sir. C R, would you have bought Beast aftershave?

• 27:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure. If I was a young Philadelphia kid, just getting into puberty.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  What was the aftershave and?

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Aqua Velva?

• 27:30Chris Ryan?

  Aqua.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Nah, not that one. The one where they had different athletes to, and you were supposed to act. The audience is going crazy. You know what I'm talking about? But they would, you were supposed to be upstanding where you were. And the guys would come out.

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  Not Old Spice.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Was it Old Spice?

• 27:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Old Spice. And they would have guys in the Old Spice commercials and all that stuff. That's basically what he was doing, right?

• 27:51Bill Simmons?

  Aqua Velva had the, had the athletes with like really, really attractive women. That was a campaign in the eighties that was very effective. That's when Joe Montana met his wife.

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 28:00Bill Simmons?

  He married the Aqua Velva lady.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Oh, so he was like, I'm taking her home.

• 28:03Chris Ryan?

  Did he say?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I was wondering if you would maybe wanna get married to me.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  He took her to the Philadelphia Zoo.

• 28:11Bill Simmons?

  Mickey doing the finger test with Rock is a great scene.

• 28:16Chris Ryan?

  Awesome scene.

• 28:16Bill Simmons?

  On the stairwell.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what.

• 28:17Bill Simmons?

  He'd hurt you permanent.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Hurt you permanent. Mick is the angriest goddess.

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  Point minute.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Point minute.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  Point minute.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Point minute.

• 28:26Bill Simmons?

  And then when he wants to work back in the gym, he's like, where's your dignity? It's just, it's, it's really good. And Rock's, I think Stallone does, I think he has a really, a couple of really, really good acting scenes in this. I think that's one of them where you just feel like the guy's fucking lost his way and it's not happening.

• 28:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough to be trapped in a movie with someone. Making bad mistakes because of like, brain damage essentially, and also just like a lack of kind of imagination about what they could do with their life. And it's a kind of uncomfortable movie because for the second that they're like, you should invest in condominiums, or you should sign with this talent agency, or you should do this, or you should do that. And watching him, you know, blow through his money and buy a house without going upstairs and all that stuff. It's just kind of like, this is, this is like a pretty brave character to play because you don't get a lot of the hero moments until the last, last few minutes.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  And they must have really believed in the climax of the movie. Because everything is played, it's so understated.

• 29:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Like, there's never any, there's hardly any, should I say, huge dramatic failures from Rocky. Rocky gets fired, hey, we gotta let you go.

• 29:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Rocky takes, hey, I gotta.

• 29:38Chris Ryan?

  Hey, can I work the rest of the day?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Can I work the rest of the day? Like, all of that stuff is just, they're almost edging you to, to the big climax at the end. And, sorry for that, but they almost get to, to get you.

• 29:52Chris Ryan?

  Jesus.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  To get you to the big climax.

• 29:54Chris Ryan?

  Van likes going to the zoo, too.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I like it, yeah, it's great.

• 29:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, the guy who fires him at the meatpacking.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  Frank McCray.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Frank McCray, that guy.

• 30:02Bill Simmons?

  Forty-eight Hours.

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  That's right, I called him that.

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  He's so good. That's my favorite Angry Sergeant performance in a seventies or eighties police movie.

• 30:16Chris Ryan?

  More than Inspector Todd?

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, I like him more than Inspector Todd. I like how furious he is at Jack Katz.

• 30:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Bill Simmons?

  He's really just had it. Jack Katz really screwed up.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  Apollo pushes Duke for a rematch.

• 30:32Bill Simmons?

  And then Duke does the, he's all wrong for us, baby. I saw you beat that man like I've never seen you beat anyone. The man kept coming.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  One of the greatest monologues in esports movies.

• 30:43Bill Simmons?

  We don't need this kind of man in our life.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:46Bill Simmons?

  This is what they'll be saying about Drake May and January to Mahomes and Josh Allen. We don't need this kind of man in our life. The man kept coming. Let it go. This is when, he's so good in this scene that Stallone must have filed it away as like.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Bring this guy back.

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  When I kill Apollo in Rocky IV, there's gonna be a really important lock cabin scene with this guy, because I know he can do it.

• 31:11Bill Simmons?

  Apollo calls out Rocky on TV. All the way to Mickey coming over for the.

• 31:17Chris Ryan?

  You mean the the Musburger interview?

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Musburger.

• 31:20Chris Ryan?

  Astonishing.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  I never asked you to stop being a woman.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Don't ask me to.

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  Don't ask me to stop being a man. And then Mickey shows up. I think we ought to knock his block off. Polly, Vansley's favorite character in movie history.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Really funny in the press conference.

• 31:36Chris Ryan?

  This really, I I came around to your way of thinking this this viewing.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  What was it about?

• 31:41Chris Ryan?

  Big, the most big time fucking scumbag character I've ever seen. I wish he went out like.

• 31:46Bill Simmons?

  Or a mostly illicit guy to have in a movie like this. I don't, I don't.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  I just, he's not.

• 31:51Chris Ryan?

  What a miserable piece of shit, though.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  I guess he causes, he is a plague on these people's lives.

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 31:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Like causes his sister, stresses her out into having huge.

• 32:02Chris Ryan?

  Premature labor, yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Complications.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  Where do you have him versus Rod Tidwell's brother?

• 32:06Chris Ryan?

  Rod Tidwell's brother was cool. Brother was basically fine.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  He was, he didn't really do anything. He said a couple of things that were off color, but Polly.

• 32:14Bill Simmons?

  I told you, he doesn't like going over the middle.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Shut up. And then she attacks. Polly legitimately caused a premature baby and then.

• 32:24Chris Ryan?

  And he's always like, you should knock her teeth out.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And then advocates for domestic violence time after time.

• 32:29Bill Simmons?

  Any, any breaks at the pinball machine.

• 32:32Chris Ryan?

  Which one does he get the the robot in?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  That's four.

• 32:35Bill Simmons?

  That's four.

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, servo. Yeah.

• 32:38Bill Simmons?

  They did Stallone. I refuse to watch it, but he recut Rocky IV and apparently the robot's out.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I love the robot.

• 32:43Chris Ryan?

  When did he recut Rocky IV?

• 32:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it's on Amazon.

• 32:46Chris Ryan?

  Who asked for that?

• 32:47Bill Simmons?

  It's Stallone. He's got nothing to do all day.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Why take the robot out? The robot's cool.

• 32:51Bill Simmons?

  The robot's always bothered him. He he he took all the footage he shot and recut a different movie. It's on Amazon.

• 32:56Chris Ryan?

  He's got nothing to do all day.

• 32:58Bill Simmons?

  What's he gonna do? Oh, yeah, I guess he is Tulsa King.

• 33:04Bill Simmons?

  All right, so we go through. Do you want to talk about the coma now?

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Go for it, yeah.

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's, it's, isn't this, what, you go ahead. Go ahead.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  It's 11 minutes of real time. Like, think how long 11 minutes is.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  I know how long 11 minutes is. It's the same length as Ally Larder's dinner speech in the first episode of Landman, season two.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna say, that's like a fourth quarter, like 17-play drive.

• 33:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  Where they're like, they've had the ball 11 minutes. That's how long she's in the coma, Rocky's in church, Rocky's reading to her, Rocky's in the hospital, Paul is there. It just goes on and on and on and on and on, but it does lead to, she finally wakes up. And say, yeah, about that fight, I just went, why don't you do one thing for me?

• 33:49Chris Ryan?

  When?

• 33:50Bill Simmons?

  When? And he like lights up, and then Mick, that, it's one of my favorite sports movie moments of all time.

• 33:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, what are we waiting for?

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  And then the music comes in.

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  One-arm push-up against the sunset.

• 34:05Bill Simmons?

  And we're just like, we are fucking back.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Training montage, we catching the chickens, we doing the whole, now we know what's.

• 34:11Chris Ryan?

  One-arm sit-up, yeah.

• 34:13Bill Simmons?

  Is he the best jump, angrily doing the jump rope, finishing and then whipping the jump rope down?

• 34:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, he is.

• 34:20Bill Simmons?

  I think he perfected it.

• 34:21Chris Ryan?

  The goat of beating up scrap metal.

• 34:23Bill Simmons?

  He is.

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  He is the training montage goat.

• 34:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, this was, this, I mean, there's the training montage in one. This is like, takes it up nine levels.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Then there's the training montage in four, too, again, that's just breathtaking.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  Four is 15 minutes of training montages in a row with like no dialogue. Um, this, this sets the template for what happens in the eighties.

• 34:43Chris Ryan?

  So do you guys, you, let me ask you, fight expert. Do you think, how, how close to the fight is he engaging in this training montage? And how long is he training for?

• 34:55Bill Simmons?

  Cause I feel like. I'm gonna say this is like six weeks.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, six weeks out.

• 34:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Chris Ryan?

  Six weeks out?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Cause they, they started, he had probably two or three weeks of uninspired training.

• 35:06Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's sitting around with Adrian for a long time, too.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  So he's probably six weeks out.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  I have a question for the group, including Craig. So we had the okay motherfucker award for the exact moment when the movie goes up a notch.

• 35:17Chris Ryan?

  I had that. Yeah.

• 35:19Bill Simmons?

  Which is named after Al Pacino and Heat.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Okay, motherfucker!

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  That we're not watching them, they're watching us.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  L A P T.

• 35:31Bill Simmons?

  Police upon. So we named that, that was a category somebody suggested. We just got made.

• 35:43Chris Ryan?

  I was watching it again the other day.

• 35:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:49Bill Simmons?

  Do we change this award to the, well, what are we waiting for? Because technically, heat's already up nine notches. It's not like heat needed the bump. So it's kind of a misnamed award, even though it was a great moment.

• 36:01Chris Ryan?

  By OK, motherfucker. Al Pacino has already done the actual OK, motherfucker moment of heat, which is, by the time I get to Phoenix, he'll be rising. He'll probably leave a note right on the door. Like, that's really when it jumps up a notch.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  You get killed, wop de doggy.

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I feel like we're already up a notch.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Give me what you got.

• 36:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, poor guy.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  So I think, I actually think we should change the award to the, well, what are we waiting for? Because after that.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Too many heat words, anyway. This movie actually is on the same steroids.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's fucking dead.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And then it comes out.

• 36:39Chris Ryan?

  And when she says when, you run through a wall.

• 36:41Bill Simmons?

  Do you agree with that, Craig?

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the movie is literally and figuratively in a coma.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Chris Ryan?

  And then it gets out. The coma is 11 minutes, the fight in the movie's only eight. The coma's longer than the fight.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that would have been one of my notes if you did a screening for us.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  It's also permanent darkness in Philadelphia, like he's just wandering around South Philly ghost town at night, going to church and shit. It's so like, oh my god.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  But from this point on, the movie makes use of all your emotions. All of them, like, the movie gives you this emotional euphoria of the run.

• 37:11Chris Ryan?

  Well, to be fair, it actually puts you in the, in the headspace of Rocky.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  Which is like, you're basically sitting around for 90 minutes, and then for 30 minutes, your heart explodes.

• 37:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Couple of things I love in the montage. I love when he's carrying the log, and he kind of loses it. It's like too heavy for him, and he drops it, and it seems like he's gonna stop, and then he's like.

• 37:32Bill Simmons?

  No, I gotta keep going and he picks it back up and it's just like a good perseverance part.

• 37:36Chris Ryan?

  I personally just want a spinoff movie of the guy who runs the scrapyard and Mick and Rock are like, "Can we come and hit this with hammers?" And it's just like, "Yeah, man, knock yourself out."

• 37:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go ahead, guys.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Hey dude, fucking Rocky Balboa is here.

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  Rocky Balboa is beating the shit out of a Pontiac.

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  Can we give a shout out to Mickey's assistant, the black guy with like the,

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, he's got bald, but he's got the hair on the sides.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  George Jefferson?

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  He has no lines at all. But he's fucking awesome for like two minutes. He's doing the medicine ball thing. He's punching him in the stomach.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that guy in Johnny? Cause he's in the gym earlier, right?

• 38:13Bill Simmons?

  We never get any scenes with him.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  There's another guy that I'm gonna point out as some of the worst on-screen boxing I've ever seen before in my life. I don't think it's the same guy, but there's another, there's an extra in the background. I'll say this about the, the training montage.

• 38:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's two training montages. So we have that first one that ends with the chickens and "I got speed." And then we have the running scene.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  The running scene.

• 38:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna separate them, cause that's the next one I have.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  But like, there's Rocky's training, but then there's Apollo's training. And it's interesting kinda to go back and forth.

• 38:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Because what the montage really does is underscore that Rocky is training in his neighborhood. He's training with his people. He's getting back to himself, whereas Apollo's training is ego-driven.

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  And focused on himself. It's dangerous for people. He's knocking people out without any concern for who they are. Bring me another one. Meanwhile, Rocky has all of these people helping him who love him and all of this stuff. It's clear they're fighting for different things.

• 39:18Bill Simmons?

  Rocky runs through Philly.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  Red jacket kid. It's incredible job by him trying to keep up.

• 39:27Bill Simmons?

  There's some stuff, I guess we can do it now, about how long he ran. Somebody try to figure this out.

• 39:34Chris Ryan?

  It was thirty miles, right?

• 39:35Bill Simmons?

  It was thirty point two miles.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:37Bill Simmons?

  If it went from where his South Philly house was all the way to the top of the art museum steps in the same day.

• 39:44Chris Ryan?

  And he finishes-

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  Thirty point two miles was road work.

• 39:46Chris Ryan?

  He finishes with a dead sprint that is not a short sprint from where he starts at like the Rodin statue or the Rodin statue going up the art museum steps. It's gotta be like six hundred yards. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not positive, but like he's running full out and then hits the steps and takes the steps with all the kids. Kids would be like falling down on the steps, like, like passed out.

• 40:11Bill Simmons?

  Twelve dead. Yeah, that would have been, that would have been the, uh, the dark version of this movie.

• 40:17Chris Ryan?

  Also like-

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  Two kids die on the run.

• 40:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Bill Simmons?

  Rocky gets hit by a car. Uh, the big fight, the second round. Don't let up on this man. This man's dangerous. I'm dangerous. Um, I love that everyone in the audience is getting ready for World War III. And Rocky going, I ain't going down anymore. And then they play the duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh. And you're like, okay, here we go. We're running the old movie back. So this was in the research. I don't know if this is true, but I watched it and it might be true. When they get ready for World War III and they're like pushing each other and have to be held back by the cornerman. Apparently Stallone and Weathers were actually mad at each other because some punches landed. And that was actual footage of them yelling at each other and having to be separated.

• 41:02Bill Simmons?

  And Stallone liked it, so he kept it in the movie.

• 41:04Chris Ryan?

  Smart.

• 41:04Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if that's true because this movie's been out for forty seven years and I, as you know, I feel like some of the half ass gets made up as the years pass.

• 41:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's not a lot of lore about this movie, so that's really interesting.

• 41:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Rounds three through fourteen would be another, uh, rewatch. Well, then the fifteenth round, um, the double KO.

• 41:23Chris Ryan?

  When does he switch?

• 41:25Bill Simmons?

  And that, he switches in the fifteenth, but if you watch the movie, I feel like he's fighting Southpaw half the time in the movie, so who knows?

• 41:32Chris Ryan?

  He also gets punched in his right eye like four hundred times.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Craig, what are your thoughts on the double KO?

• 41:39Bill Simmons?

  Just as a gimmick in a boxing movie.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  The only thing that bothered me was Rocky doesn't get hit. I mean, he trips. It's a trip.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  That's the thing, that's the technical error.

• 41:49Bill Simmons?

  That's a pick and net. It would be ruled a slip.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  He would be, yeah, only Apollo actually had to get up.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Also, yeah, and it wouldn't be that hard for Rocky to get up after a trip compared to Apollo who was hit.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on how exhausted he is.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  I guess, but it's not the same.

• 42:02Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he did get punched over 2,500 times, flush in the face. Couldn't see out of either eye. So I don't know. Maybe he couldn't figure out how to stand up. Rocky's speech at the end, too.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Aw, man.

• 42:14Bill Simmons?

  If my kid be born, this is the greatest day of my life.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Notice that the wedding wasn't in there, so fuck that, right?

• 42:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm asking you, you guys are married, so like, if you were to have like this, this like tremendous professional, I know the kids have to go in there, right? The kids have to go in there, but like, do you put like a sports enemy or something like that, like a head of the marriage? What does the marriage fit in?

• 42:39Speaker 03

  As greatest day of my life?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  As greatest day of your life. Would it be, if Rocky's talking?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Number one, right, guys?

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, number one, man.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I'm asking. Keep it real, man.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  It's like top three with Birds beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl, yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Gotcha. But you're not gonna say, because he goes. He says very clearly, oh, this is, besides my kid's being born, this is the greatest.

• 43:04Bill Simmons?

  But was this kid being born one of the greatest days? Because his wife?

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Was gonna die.

• 43:08Bill Simmons?

  Miscarried and almost bled to death.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  So in a way, that was insulting to her.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  He gets an heir. He gets a son. He also was, he didn't even see his son the day his son was born. He refused to even see his son, and so she woke up. Yeah, I'm sure the doctors at pet hospitals are just like, this fucking guy.

• 43:23Bill Simmons?

  I mean, an actual monkey. That kid had the most hair I've ever seen on a baby. That was an Italian.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  What the fuck? What?

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  I'm just keeping it real. That kid had a lot of hair.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Whoa, be careful there.

• 43:37Chris Ryan?

  That's his kid. That's Stallone's kid.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  That's Stallone's kid. Oh, that's actually Stallone's.

• 43:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow, really?

• 43:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, that was his first son. That kid had the most hair I've ever seen on a baby. I've never seen a baby with more hair than that, ever.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  It's not a newborn baby, probably, like in the movie.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Probably like a baby.

• 43:52Bill Simmons?

  That baby was pretty young, though.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  But it's not a newborn baby.

• 43:57Bill Simmons?

  Baby had a lot of hair. What's your most rewatchable scene, Van?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, um, so you can't beat the fact that the 15th round of the fight is the most rewatchable scene. But if I was gonna give a 1B, it's the conversation between Rocky and Duke. Not Rocky and Duke, between Apollo and Duke.

• 44:14Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Like, that scene is the scene that I wait for whenever I watch this movie.

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Um, um, me, it's coming out of the coma. Well, what are we waiting for in the training scene?

• 44:25Chris Ryan?

  Training.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  Just from that, yeah, that's it. Uh, what's the most 1979 thing about this movie?

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  I got one for this.

• 44:31Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  I got one, too.

• 44:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh, 9.5% mortgage rate.

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  I had that, too. Buying a house in Philly for 16K with a 9.5% mortgage rate.

• 44:40Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, the, uh, the, the national, like, average was 11. So I wonder if the bank was giving him a break. But this is.

• 44:47Bill Simmons?

  9.5% is fucking high.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I have this as what's actually aged the worst. It's like a young couple being able to afford a house.

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  That's what's pretty something to pretty age the worst.

• 44:56Bill Simmons?

  I have, my candidate for this is when Rocky is training for the fight. He's sparring with a smaller, quicker fighter, and that fighter is Roberto Duran.

• 45:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  A young Roberto Duran. A year before he beat Sugar Ray Leonard in Montreal. And two years before Sugar Ray Leonard fucking disgraced him in New Orleans, made him quit.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Made him quit.

• 45:18Bill Simmons?

  Like a fucking loser.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my god.

• 45:20Bill Simmons?

  My guy, Sugar Ray.

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  So you're not into him? You're not into Duran?

• 45:22Bill Simmons?

  No, Sugar Ray's my guy. He didn't shake Sugar Ray's hand after, after the Montreal fight.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  They hated each other.

• 45:27Bill Simmons?

  He's a fucking asshole.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  But I will say that this is Duran has knocked him out.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Is that no Moss? What it was?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  That was no Moss.

• 45:33Bill Simmons?

  He no Moss'd him.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Duran had spent the entire 70s dominating at 135, one of the best fighters at that weight ever. So he, by that time, he was really already a legend. Yeah, Ray did.

• 45:42Bill Simmons?

  He had him fucking quit, and then Hearns knocked him out.

• 45:44Chris Ryan?

  You keep pointing at me like you're gonna make me quit one day.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Duran. I just didn't like him. I didn't like, I thought it was a bad sport.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I thought he was one of the most colorful, interesting boxers that's ever lived. But, yeah, in the 80s, it was the golden boy, Sugar Ray Leonard, against the... Hated Roberto Duran.

• 46:00Bill Simmons?

  I was so mad when he lost the Duran fight. I saw that in a closed circuit. Just furious.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Boy, if you guys want to be entertained.

• 46:07Bill Simmons?

  Furious.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Watch the, the end of that fight. After Duran gets the decision over Leonard. Look how crazy Duran is going. He hated him.

• 46:20Bill Simmons?

  Hated him.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  He's looking in the, he's, he's going nuts.

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  Leonard goes to touch gloves after the fight and Duran like does this.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Get the hell out of here, fucking hated him. Yeah, he's going crazy in the ring.

• 46:32Bill Simmons?

  I don't, he's, cause Sugar Ray was like the, the American popular guy who, whatever.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Duran was like, you know, the hard scrabble, get it out the mud. And he felt like Sugar Ray was actually not a tough bi- fighter, but was a creation of the boxing press and all that stuff.

• 46:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he bullied him and actually fighting him versus boxing him in the first fight. Cause he called him a pussy basically for six straight months.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Talked about his wife, talked bad to his wife.

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  He was so mad, he comes out and he tries to actually fight him for 15 rounds versus like boxing.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Hmm. And then the second one, he was just, he was too quick for him. Duran said he ate like a steak and that's why he quit.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  And he fucking quit cause Ray kicked his ass.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  1979, Jesus, 1979, uh, stuff, 15 round boxing fights, obviously.

• 47:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  15 round boxing.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  When did that end, like 80, 86, 87 range?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Early to mid eighties, they went to 12 rounds. And then actual hate mail.

• 47:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Like getting hate mail.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  I had this in What's Age of the Best.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  That like actual hate mail and reading hate mail rather than responding to tweets.

• 47:39Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot of energy to write out a letter. Dear Apollo. Dear Apollo.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Kill yourself, fuck you.

• 47:47Bill Simmons?

  Sincerely. Oh, oh. Sincerely, Chris Ryan.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Oh, one, dear Roberto. Go fuck yourself. One more 1979 thing. Fights both on regular TV and in Philly. Nowadays, we only have fights in places where people don't have human rights like Riyadh and Vegas.

• 48:07Bill Simmons?

  Vegas. This is, uh.

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  Rio to Vegas. Uh, okay. We don't get to get this out all the time, but the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. This didn't come out till years later, and I'm not positive I believe it. But Rocky said the switch to fighting right handed was not in the script. It came about because of an accident on the set when he was weightlifting with bodybuilder Franco Colombo. Oh, remember him, the short guy from Pumping Iron. And he had a complete, almost complete tear of his left pectoral muscle. And they had to reattach it and he couldn't fight with his left hand. So they had to do the switch thing. I'm not positive I believe this.

• 48:59Bill Simmons?

  I watched the movie carefully to see if there was like scenes and stuff.

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  Like he couldn't do it.

• 49:03Bill Simmons?

  He uses his left arm the entire movie. And I, so Stallone claims this is true, but I'm not positive I believe it.

• 49:11Chris Ryan?

  If it is true, and assuming it is true, just for the sake of the argument, it's two major plot points that were basically like coverups for an injury in Stallone's case. And Talia Shire making a different movie. She had like a scheduling conflict, so that's why they did the coma.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  Hmm. I think the pector, I think, I think it is true because the entire training montage, he's only doing one handed workouts. He's doing the one handed.

• 49:34Chris Ryan?

  Right, Craig?

• 49:35Speaker 03

  He's doing the one handed pull up.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Also, he's not using that hand.

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  That's a good point.

• 49:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so who knows? Yeah, and what CR said about, uh, Adrian was, Talia Shire was filming Old Boyfriends, which is John Belushi's in that movie, and could only film near the end. So that's why she didn't go to the fight.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  They had to film her scenes later.

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  Like months later, they shot her stuff.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:59Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? You mentioned the zoo thing, the zoo callback from Gazzo's driver. Uh, Gazzo. Rocky not wanting to invest in condominiums because he'd never used them. Characters going on spending sprees.

• 50:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  The movie's always good.

• 50:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Bill Simmons?

  It's a real seventies, eighties thing.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  When you know they're fucking up.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like, yeah, how about get the new Trans Am?

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  Thirty seven K took you a long way, though, back then, man.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:24Chris Ryan?

  Get a car.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Car, house, bunch of Rolexes.

• 50:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  The spectrum being filled with actual extras on like the first fight?

• 50:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 50:32Bill Simmons?

  Cause the first fight, they, we talked about that, they had to cut all these corners and it's just dark. What else do you have for what's aged you best?

• 50:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I just love Tony's monotone hype up speech to Apollo in the locker room. You're the man, you're number one, the champ, the best of all time, girls love you, men, old people love you. And I just imagine like, this is how Ben Johnson talks to Caleb Williams. Like, you wear nail polish, you make plays off, off structure, off platform.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  You got a fifty one percent cap push rate. Oh, damn.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, and also, uh, at one point, Rocky is told that he's just gonna be pumping gas in Jersey. You know, you can't pump your own gas in Jersey, so there's.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  I used to make fun of Charlamagne because I would be on the phone with him and then he would stop.

• 51:16Chris Ryan?

  He would be like, fill him up, fill it up.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  And he would be like, he would be like, fill it up. Like, I did this for a long time, he'd be like, fill it up. Like, fill it up, whatever, and I'd be like, bruh, I've been.

• 51:26Chris Ryan?

  You can't pump your own gas.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Pump your own gas? And then he goes, you can't do that in Jersey.

• 51:30Chris Ryan?

  You can't.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I was like, what? He was like, in Jersey, you can't pump your own gas, they gotta pump it for you. The whole time I was getting my little jokes off, it was like an actual.

• 51:36Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 51:38Bill Simmons?

  Connecticut has parts in that, too, where it's mostly somebody's pumping your gas. And when my mom moved here to LA, she couldn't believe that there weren't gas stations where they had the gas station attendance. It's definitely more of an East Coast thing.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  I've never been to a full service gas station that had somebody pump my gas, ever in life.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  If you and Charlamagne did a rewatch of those together, would we ever get through the categories?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Probably not. There would be several arguments.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  I think one of you would leave halfway through.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  It would be, we go back and forth a lot. That's the nature of our friendship, though, is like, you know.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  It'd be an interesting experiment.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:11Bill Simmons?

  Uh, any other what's aged you best before we move on?

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Um, just the Rocky lore and universe, like when you watch this movie, you see all the ways that Creed. This was the movie that Creed really took more from, like the running montage with the kids, the training montages. You literally see the bones of Creed.

• 52:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  In Rocky two, maybe more than you see in any other movie.

• 52:31Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  So that's really aged you best. And once again, I say, man, Carl Weathers is a phenomenal athlete.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  He's a phenom- he has fast hands, he moves well, he's got great feet.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  Great actor too.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Just like a great actor, like him in this movie, I could have done with, I could have been up for a lot more Carl Weathers in this movie.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  That's my flex, it's the Sasha Jenkins Award for the guy I can't believe is not a bigger star. Carl Weathers is so good, like, he's, he's so funny, I mean, him going through Happy Gilmore, great comedic timing, he can just do so many things, I don't, why did he not?

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Mandalorian, yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Mandalorian.

• 53:06Chris Ryan?

  Are you an Action Jackson guy?

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  Fuck yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  It's on the list. No, I've never seen Action Jackson.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Oh, bro, you're gonna love it, first of all.

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  It's on the list for the next year.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Can I interest you in?

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Peak. Peak.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Woman.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Peak.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  I can't tell you.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  The great thing about this movie is you can list two people here, I have back both choices.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I'm going Vanity though.

• 53:28Bill Simmons?

  But Sharon Stone too.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Sharon Stone as well.

• 53:30Bill Simmons?

  Sharon Stone in Vanity, it's like.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Vanity and Sharon Stone at the peak, there is nothing more beautiful than Vanity.

• 53:38Bill Simmons?

  We've discussed this before in rewatchables, I can't remember what movie, but.

• 53:41Chris Ryan?

  I think with Kyle probably.

• 53:43Bill Simmons?

  But the fact that they didn't make five Action Jacksons is unbelievable.

• 53:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Bill Simmons?

  Everybody loved that movie, and then it would, but in general, Craig, your point is correct.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Like, why wasn't he in a Tarantino movie or something?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Well, I'm telling you, it, there's one thing, it's a really, really crowded space in the eighties in terms of action stars, it's the heyday of that. Action Jackson has all of the stuff, it has him jumping full over cars, him, it has bad Craig T. Nelson.

• 54:10Bill Simmons?

  I think he got a little pigeonholed by the Apollo character because the Rocky series was so famous, it was hard not to see him as Apollo. I think Danny Glover market corrected him a little bit, because Carl Weathers easily could have been in Lethal Weapon.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  Well, isn't Carl Weathers in Predator one, Danny Glover Predator two?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  But can I tell you why though, I don't think that Carl Weathers would have been a good choice for Lethal Weapon? He's too physically intimidating.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Like, in, in Lethal Weapon, you have to believe, and this is something else that probably held him back, he's with a, a lot of.

• 54:42Chris Ryan?

  No, he's supposed to be too old for this shit the entire time.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he looks physically, for that, you needed an everyman that looked like, uh, Riz could kick his ass, and that just, yeah, it wouldn't have looked like that.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  He almost got pigeonholed because of his physique and athleticism.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  Do you know he was like an NFL player for like six, seven years?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  San Diego State, baby.

• 55:00Chris Ryan?

  R.I.P.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Rest in peace, man. Very sad.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Carl Weathers, almost a unanimous approval rating, I think, from the general public.

• 55:07Chris Ryan?

  One of the all-time underrated actors.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Just made every movie better that he was in, in the scenes that he was in, made every movie better. Had to die a lot for these other guys to get their shit off, though. Pissed me off.

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like Predator is pretty bad.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Predator had to die, Apollo had to die, Happy Gilmore had to die. Stop killing them. Hey, boy, if I had my koofi right now, hey, man, stop killing these black men to exalt your heroes. All right, it's over now.

• 55:31Chris Ryan?

  He's even funny in Arrested Development.

• 55:32Bill Simmons?

  And let people pump their own gas in their jersey. It's weird he never had, like, a sitcom, like, you know how everybody had a sitcom?

• 55:40Chris Ryan?

  He was in Arrested Development briefly as a character.

• 55:42Bill Simmons?

  But like, late eighties, where he's just like, he does a career swerve. All of a sudden, he's got, like, a little family. He's, like, working in a law office or something.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  When Happy Gilmore came along, I was so excited to see him.

• 55:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  And he was hysterical.

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  He is so good in it.

• 55:58Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm, yeah. Big Coon and Burger were best use of food and drink. The meat's back.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus.

• 56:04Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  What else would you have?

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  Paulie Snow Cone.

• 56:08Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 56:09Chris Ryan?

  I got Snow Cone in the fall. It's a power move.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  The spit bucket.

• 56:14Bill Simmons?

  Is that a food or a drink?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  It's a drink.

• 56:17Bill Simmons?

  Great Shot Gordon were best cinematic shot, The Little Kids with Rocky, or would you go something else?

• 56:21Chris Ryan?

  I actually had the, uh, the first fight footage being projected against Mickey as he's talking to him about how they're gonna fight. And it's also Mickey, early ball knower, early tape head, you know, going through the footage, trying to find the margins.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  He's like Orlovsky.

• 56:36Chris Ryan?

  He's like Shanahan, yeah.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  Why do you have to protect the eye if you already can't see out of it? Yeah.

• 56:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think he can see, I think that if he gets hit again, he's gonna go blind.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  He detaches retina or something like that.

• 56:48Chris Ryan?

  But he gets hit in that eye, like, 400 times in the fight. It's not even, they just drop that.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  I love how throughout the whole movie, they're talking as if Rocky's a human being. He's not. You can't.

• 56:58Bill Simmons?

  It's like Michael Myers.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Can't do anything to kill him?

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, his eyesight gets better during the four Rockies.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Let's say, keep cutting it. Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness were best needle drop, the opening credits, the ambulance ride.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 57:11Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell.

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  Not gonna fly now over the training montage?

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 57:16Bill Simmons?

  Ah, that's probably it. Yeah, you're probably right.

• 57:18Chris Ryan?

  With Frank Stallone on box, right?

• 57:19Bill Simmons?

  That's probably it. Do-Off Band, shout out to them real quick.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the Do-Off guys.

• 57:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Chess Rockwell, Brock Lenders Award, best character name, still Apollo Creed.

• 57:28Chris Ryan?

  I have, I have Father Carmine, though.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  That is pretty good.

• 57:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  And then, I got to throw this in today, the Nico Harrison Award for worst decision.

• 57:41Bill Simmons?

  Lakers third in the West. At least we're recording this. Apollo demanding the Rocky rematch, but then fighting him in the Spectrum.

• 57:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, he was saying anytime, anywhere.

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  He said, "I'mma beat this man in front of his people in his town." Yeah, fight him in Vegas. You don't need the Philly crowd. Come on, Apollo, you're supposed to be smart. Go to Vegas or Riyadh, one of those.

• 58:01Chris Ryan?

  I think that he's doing it also in Philly so that he can't be accused of there being any fixing, throwing going on.

• 58:09Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're gonna take a break, come back with C R's. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner, Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year.

• 58:52Bill Simmons?

  Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

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• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Flex.

• 59:43Bill Simmons?

  All right, CR, what do you got?

• 59:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, I did actually have the OK, motherfucker award for Adrian saying win. But I will, off the top of my head, do a reverse Mallory Rubin.

• 59:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 59:54Chris Ryan?

  Of, did this movie need a better sex scene? It's more of a question, do you think that's the one and only time Adrian and Rock have sex? Is on their marriage night.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Now, remember.

• 1:00:03Chris Ryan?

  Very chaste.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  No, we did, we did this, we did this in the first movie, right?

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, did we?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Remember in the first movie, she became a little muskrat?

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  A little minx?

• 1:00:12Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  She was trying to get to him, he, he brought her out of her shell.

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  I thought she was a late bloomer. That was my take.

• 1:00:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God. Too many trips to the zoo for her.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Empty house, no furniture.

• 1:00:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Every room christening it. Remember? Cause she, yeah, but so, yeah.

• 1:00:27Bill Simmons?

  You know who sniffed that out? Clubber Lang.

• 1:00:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:00:31Bill Simmons?

  You could see that twinkle in her eye.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Clubber Lang looked there, I was like, she needs a little bit something more.

• 1:00:35Chris Ryan?

  Adrian has like a personality transplant in three and four, right? She's like a different woman.

• 1:00:41Bill Simmons?

  Three, she's, that's her best performance in a movie.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  And then four, she still does the thing that she does where she shakes her head and talks and looks at the ground and says the line. And I'm like, why don't you just communicate so this guy doesn't go out and get killed?

• 1:00:53Chris Ryan?

  And then five, she's dead?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  No, five, she's alive.

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  Five, she's alive.

• 1:00:56Chris Ryan?

  Rocky Balboa, she's dead.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Rocky Balboa, she's gone, yeah.

• 1:00:58Bill Simmons?

  Ben's the only one who likes five. The Butch's girlfriend.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Rocky V is good, man.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film. I went with, uh, one-eyed, slightly brain damaged Rocky beating a prepared, motivated, angry Creed in the rematch was my pick. If you can't see out of his right eye, which is the jab, you just Creed, he had to been up by a hundred points heading into round fifteen.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  He was, they said it.

• 1:01:24Chris Ryan?

  He was, and, and Duke's like, you gotta, all you have to do is just not get.

• 1:01:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, it's a weak link.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Apollo did everything that you could do to win a fight.

• 1:01:35Bill Simmons?

  To beat Michael Myers.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 1:01:37Bill Simmons?

  Uh. What'd you have for the weak link?

• 1:01:38Chris Ryan?

  Well, two things. One, coma, uh, and two.

• 1:01:42Bill Simmons?

  Obviously.

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  Gazo being in the movie and not having any impact on the plot. Shows up like three times, asks about the condos, comes to the gym. Never really, if he had not been in this film, it wouldn't have made a difference. And he's been so good, I just wish there'd been some like mafia, like we're trying to get you to throw the fight or something going on.

• 1:02:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that would have been better than the coma.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  But there's a cool ass line where he goes, hey, you remember that guy?

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And then he walks out, yeah. And so, but the movie needed, to your point.

• 1:02:13Chris Ryan?

  I feel like he's in the movie, but and like they just either cut his plot or there was like a Polly plot that they didn't use. There's something where he's in the film, but there's no story with him.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe one more dimension for the movie.

• 1:02:25Bill Simmons?

  You know what he gets though? A coveted spot in this, in any big sports movie is the, the cutaway shot to the guy in the crowd. Go get him, Rock!

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the hug shot. Vision Quest was the best one for this, because there's four different people in the audience that they're just cutting to throughout it. Did you have a weak link, man?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Uh, no, every, no, no, I mean Adrian, that's it.

• 1:02:48Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst?

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Polly just horrible as always, we already talked about him. Ollie said on Rocky's weightlifting, it's the worst thing a boxer can do, it tightens the muscles, a fighter never lifts weights, but it looks good in the movie.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  A fighter never lifts weights?

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  I'm not like, I don't, I'm not on that level. I mean, they lift weights, but I just go in there, hit the bags and then get in the ring, get my head beat in.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  Adrian not going to the fight.

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  So they had the kid, six weeks of training.

• 1:03:20Chris Ryan?

  Are you trying to say that Adrian like?

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  She should have gone to the fight. It's, it's, it's, it's a bad job by her, go to the fight. Your guys fighting, you might get killed in the ring.

• 1:03:30Chris Ryan?

  Your attitudes about this are really funny.

• 1:03:32Bill Simmons?

  Come on, you watch this on a black and white TV in 1979, go to the fight. It's 15 minutes from your house. I have one really good what's age the worst, but what do you guys, do you guys have anything for?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Uh, a young couple buying a house that like is aged pretty bad right now, stickball. Kids don't go outside to do anything besides protest right now.

• 1:03:50Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  I mean, like, the last time I saw a group of kids outside and there was no cost. It's been a while. Um, uh, the, the, the, the, the character of Paulie aged terribly. Um, the scene where Rocky is hitting the heavy bag and Rocky's hitting the heavy bag, right? And Adrian comes down and says that she's gonna go back to work.

• 1:04:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Basically, she has to go back to work.

• 1:04:26Chris Ryan?

  Part-time at a pet store.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Part-time at the pet store because Rocky's not making any money. Then Rocky says, hey, go get dinner started. So she, he has no.

• 1:04:35Chris Ryan?

  Seventies were different, man.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Definitely, definitely. He has no income. She comes down, I gotta go back working part-time at the pet store. He says, hey.

• 1:04:43Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't he also say, but he's sort of like, I don't, I wanna support you, kinda like?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  He doesn't want her to go back.

• 1:04:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  But I just don't know of the modern woman where she decides, I have to go back into work to support the family, and then you can say.

• 1:04:56Chris Ryan?

  How much is she making at that pet store anyway?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  I'm not sure, man.

• 1:04:58Chris Ryan?

  Can they make that mortgage? Fifteen hundred for the property taxes?

• 1:05:03Bill Simmons?

  Cause that, that scene in two thousand twenty-five would be different.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Way different.

• 1:05:07Chris Ryan?

  Nine and a half percent?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  And the last one, I gotta say this. At fifty-four twenty-six in this movie, over Mickey's left shoulder, I don't know how you guys gonna put it, there is some terrible boxing by one of the extras. It was just, I mean, it looks crazy. And the only thing that's worse than the boxing by this extra is the hairline. And I, like, I, I, I have to show you this. This is one of the worst hairlines I've ever seen in anything that's ever, look at this. Look at that guy.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Look at this hairline. Look at that.

• 1:05:44Bill Simmons?

  Whoa, it's like a peninsula.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got an entire peninsula. But when you see it, when you look at the actual, the actual time code, what the fuck is he doing back there? And then I was completely distracted.

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  I have, uh, by what's age the worst, my biggest one is that I think Rocky, I think Stallone dials the brain damage up a little too high in this one. So I had my scale of brain damage for each movie.

• 1:06:09Chris Ryan?

  I actually have what age the worst, too many in this, too many characters in this movie on the Balboa side of things have little to no brain activity.

• 1:06:18Chris Ryan?

  It's just too many people just not being able to like, yeah, communicate.

• 1:06:21Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 1:06:22Chris Ryan?

  It's not exactly Michael Clayton.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Brain damage from one to 10. Rocky one, I think he's a four.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Rocky two, he's like an eight and a half. Rocky three is back down to a two.

• 1:06:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's recovered.

• 1:06:35Bill Simmons?

  Rocky four is a one. I mean, he's like, he could be running a record company.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  I'm interested now.

• 1:06:41Bill Simmons?

  Rocky five, he's a full 10.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  He's a 1,000.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  He's like a 15 out of 10.

• 1:06:46Chris Ryan?

  What happens in Rocky five?

• 1:06:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why he made Rocky five.

• 1:06:49Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Drago scrambled his egg. It's post Drago. Drago is the now, he's a 1,000.

• 1:06:56Bill Simmons?

  And you like this movie?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Love it. Don't like, love.

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  Creed, I think he's about a five and a half, six.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Oh, he's bad.

• 1:07:01Chris Ryan?

  No, he's fine in Creed. He's running a small business.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  So you have him lower?

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I have him at like a four, four in Creed.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  But literally in.

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Creed, he's running a restaurant. You know how hard that is? Watch the bear.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  But literally in five, Tommy will ask him a question about boxing. Like, Rock, what should I do? Should I drop my left hand? Rock will go, oh, yogurt. And then the scene will end. Like, he's, he's like, totally, totally out of here.

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  Stallone is disowned Rocky five.

• 1:07:32Chris Ryan?

  Has he?

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  I like it. Vans is the only person that owns it.

• 1:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Who directed five?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 1:07:35Bill Simmons?

  I think Stallone.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  But Tommy Gunn is in that one.

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  John Avildsen.

• 1:07:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, he came back for five?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Rocky losing his money, just the whole thing with his son.

• 1:07:43Chris Ryan?

  Oh, five is when Paulie loses all his money?

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Paulie loses all his money. His son has to go back in Philly, but evil Kevin Connolly is in that. Chevy Kevin Connolly.

• 1:07:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  And his son has to learn how to, how to bow up. And the whole thing, Don Keen character, I like it. It's just, it's crazy, but I like it.

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  The Don Keen character is probably the funniest part of that movie.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  George Washington Duke.

• 1:08:04Chris Ryan?

  Ventimiglia is in Balboa.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Chris Ryan?

  And then he's in Creed two.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  He comes back in Creed two, I tell you.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  John Avildsen, just as a quick aside, does Rocky and then is doing Saturday Night Fever and gets pulled off it. He gets fired.

• 1:08:21Bill Simmons?

  And then by the time we get to, uh, then he does Karate Kid two as a comeback. But he does back to back Karate Kid three, Rocky V. Back to back in eighty nine, ninety.

• 1:08:34Bill Simmons?

  What a run. What a run. Karate Kid three, the funniest sports movie of all time, for all the wrong reasons.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  The bad boy of karate, Mike Barnes.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  Really such an awful movie. Um, okay. The rough Lohan of Ruben and Partridge, overacting word for, uh, the overacting, the commercial director?

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  Burgess.

• 1:08:54Bill Simmons?

  Burgess.

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  Burgess, yeah.

• 1:08:56Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  What do you mean, make the case, watch the movie?

• 1:08:58Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean?

• 1:08:59Chris Ryan?

  Every fucking scene, Mickey is going like, rock, rock, you know, like, it's just, it's, he's completely over the top.

• 1:09:06Bill Simmons?

  Do we need to add Mickey to your characters? Cause we need to refresh to twenty twenty six.

• 1:09:09Chris Ryan?

  Mickey from Rocky would be good, be commenting on some of these movies.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  I agree. I think, I think Mickey is, he killed me today. I think you, but that's kind of, isn't that Mickey's whole deal though?

• 1:09:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like, he's really going for the supporting actor.

• 1:09:24Bill Simmons?

  Ali commented on it. He said the trainer would never be that, that on it yelling at a boxer the whole time. Uh, what do you have for a flex category, Van?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Uh, top five, I made up my own, top five unrealistic sports movie outcomes.

• 1:09:37Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Uh, so number five is Teen Wolf.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Uh, if you guys haven't seen the end of the Teen Wolf, Scott as the wolf has gotten the team to the championship game. The team that features.

• 1:09:48Bill Simmons?

  Are you really telling us the ending of Teen Wolf?

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Just making sure the audience knows.

• 1:09:51Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:09:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  All right, Scott decides in the last scene not to wolf up.

• 1:09:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And they go out there and they win, never fucking happening. I don't know if you guys have seen their power forward, but if you could be a mind of like forty five, they're just not gonna go out there and get a victory. It's not happening.

• 1:10:06Bill Simmons?

  Number twenty three puts up like a triple double though.

• 1:10:08Chris Ryan?

  In Teen Wolf?

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Chris Ryan?

  What's number two?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Uh, number, number four is the Karate Kid part two.

• 1:10:13Bill Simmons?

  Um, yeah, he's not beating that guy.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Not be, he's not going to Japan. He, okay, him winning the All Valley Tournament against Johnny is one thing. He goes to Japan and beats up the head of a karate gang.

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  Sato's Karate Gang henchman dude, he's not winning that.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  He's not winning that with them stupid ass drums. He's not doing that. That's not happening.

• 1:10:32Bill Simmons?

  Daniel-san, this time not for points, for life.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  For life. For life is not happening, right? But, I go for it, man.

• 1:10:40Bill Simmons?

  It's a quote.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  It's a new day. So we should add Pat Marita to the cast of characters.

• 1:10:45Bill Simmons?

  Have we done Kid 2 yet?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Uh, I haven't.

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  It's terrible.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Bill Simmons?

  I don't think we've done it.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Although I will say that I, one thing is- Swank is 3? Swank is, no, Swank is the next one. The next one, okay. Uh, one thing I do like about, these two movies have in common is both Karate Kid Part 2 and Rocky begin with the recap of the last movie. Uh, number 3, Necessary Roughness. Texas State takes, uh, beats the number 1 team in the country with a 34-year-old quarterback named Paul Blake, who hasn't played football in a long time. True. Now, at that time, you know, we hadn't seen that, but you can see a 34-year-old quarterback playing in, uh, in college football all the time now. Number 2, the Little Giants beating the Cowboys.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  I just don't believe in it. Yeah. I think Spike is going crazy. I don't believe in Icebox. I don't believe in anything that the Little Giants had going on. When you look at Spike, he's ready for war. He's gonna go out there and, and leave some corpses out there. That's number 2. This is, and Rocky's number 1? Rocky's number 1.

• 1:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Rocky winning the rematch.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  You didn't go after Hoosiers a little bit? Nah, cuz Hoosiers, Hoosiers is, I can see it happening in the Hoosiers. Chip would got hot. If Hoosiers would've played the team from across town. Chip would got hot. If they would've played, if Hoosiers would've played, if they'd have played like, well, Hoosiers is Indiana, right? Yeah. If they'd have played like, W E B Duwa High School in South Chicago, then they probably would've. Right. But they playing this, that's, you know.

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  So one-eyed Rocky beating a motivated and shaped Paul Blake.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  They could, they could fight 10 times. They, it, it, not, not happening. And it really hasn't happened. Because people like to go, say that Rocky is like Rocky Marciano. Rocky Marciano was a dog.

• 1:12:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he beat everybody.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  He was, he was a dog. Tough, powerful, all of that. Can we add an honorable mention to your list, Van, for Challengers, which ends in 2 professional tennis players hugging at the net?

• 1:12:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  After doing volleying it back and forth from 2 feet away?

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Most intense matchup ever, they ended up hugging.

• 1:12:36Bill Simmons?

  Can't stand that movie. I would add to your list, which I enjoyed.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  I like Challengers.

• 1:12:41Bill Simmons?

  Challengers is bad.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I like it too, until that final scene.

• 1:12:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think, there's one, so Bad News Bears breaking training.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  They had to cheat with the lineup to win though, so maybe technically, you know, but I think victory is the one. The, uh, who's still in the soccer movie.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, beating the Nazis, yeah.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Beating the Nazi team that's been practicing and it's like they have this ragtag group of POWs. Michael Caine is like a pot belly and it's fixed. The refs are in the bag. There's no way they tie that game, I don't think.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Bill Simmons?

  Did they lose like five to one, something like that? Uh, the Sierra thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harris before how to stake a word.

• 1:13:23Chris Ryan?

  This one leapt off the screen this time and it basically is following up something Van mentioned in our opening segment. But I think inside of Stallone, there are these two characters. There's his physical form and he's like, I gotta be an action movie star. I gotta take juice. I gotta be built up and I am Rocky, right? I am synonymous with Rocky. And then there's the other person, which is the more sensitive storyteller filmmaker creative side. And if he had listened to that side, this movie would have been called Creed. And it would have been the Godfather two of sports movies.

• 1:13:54Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:13:55Chris Ryan?

  And he would have made a movie about Creed, dealing with the embarrassment and humiliation and shame of losing to this Palooka.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  It's good.

• 1:14:04Chris Ryan?

  And what's he gonna do? And he's getting the mail and his wife won't have sex with him and, and Duke's like, you, we gotta do this or whatever. And it would have been awesome. It's in this movie. You see the four scenes with Carl Weathers. We're like, why can't we get 10 more of these scenes?

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  It, it is the better perspective. I couldn't agree more.

• 1:14:21Chris Ryan?

  And if we had done that, and then we have one is Rocky, two is Creed and three is three. And it's just about Clubber Lang and, and, and it goes, or you know, you even jump to four basically and like have these guys together. But I thought it was just like so obvious.

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

  It's a great idea that never would have happened because everybody just wanted to see Rocky win the title.

• 1:14:39Chris Ryan?

  I know, but I'm saying when we.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  That's why I made 200.1 million dollars.

• 1:14:41Chris Ryan?

  When we saw Godfather two, you probably weren't like, what I want to see is young Vito Corleone.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 1:14:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Bill Simmons?

  From a movie standpoint, you're a hundred percent right. It's more interesting movie. I just don't think, that's why it's a great hot take.

• 1:14:53Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 1:14:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't think everyone would have made it.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Um, mine is that Rocky and Apollo's lives would have been much better if they swapped lives.

• 1:15:01Bill Simmons?

  That's true.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  So Apollo needed some vanilla serenity, right? He needed a little muskrat, a little minx cat to jump on him and calm him down. That's what he needed. Somebody to like be cool, didn't have to go back. And Rocky needed.

• 1:15:17Bill Simmons?

  An alpha.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  A sister. You know how she looks at him? Apollo's up there, he's reading the hate mail. She's like, stop reading it, right? But Apollo, he can't appreciate that. Rocky was okay, Cynthia. Like, he would have been all right with it. If they would have swapped wives.

• 1:15:32Bill Simmons?

  Apollo's wife wouldn't let him work in the gym.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:15:34Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna carry a bucket for these guys?

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  No, we didn't carry a bucket. Look at these guys over there. Those guys talking to you? She would have been the one to be like, hey! Talk to my man like that? You talking to Rocky Balboa, you paluca? So things would have been better for them. I thought that in the movie. I'm like, Rocky needs some, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  Rocky three wife swap.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Wife swap. Probably already happened. Y'all know how I feel.

• 1:15:55Bill Simmons?

  It's great, and it ties into my hottest take.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:59Bill Simmons?

  So glad you brought up Apollo's wife. Apollo's wife, one of the best looking black women of the 1970s.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Talk about it.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  Here's my list.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Oh shit. Wait, wait a second. I.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  I knew you would love this more than anybody.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  I know, this is it. This the content you want? Yeah, let's go.

• 1:16:16Bill Simmons?

  Best looking black women of the 1970s in. My list.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  How many, like, how many, how many sisters on the list?

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Seven.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Seven sisters.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  How big was the long list? Like, how big was the pool for you? No, this was the seven. Okay. I don't think the list, I didn't go in with a number. I went with how I felt as a kid and how I feel now and tried to combine those two worlds.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Let's hear it.

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  Diana Ross.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Okay, is she number one?

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Seven or one? No, no, no, I'm not, I'm not ranking. Oh, you're not ranking? That's really sweet.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Diana Ross. Studio 54 Diana Ross. I like that late 70s Diana Ross.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 1:16:54Bill Simmons?

  Ali's third wife Veronica Porsche.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Gorgeous.

• 1:16:57Bill Simmons?

  Was fucking outrageous.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Gorgeous.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  The best looking athlete wife of all time.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Like, next level beautiful.

• 1:17:05Bill Simmons?

  So beautiful that she goes to the. Hotter than Brittany Holmes. He meets her and.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Shut the fuck up.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  He meets her. Ali meets her and immediately gets divorced as he's trying to fight George Foreman.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, not the best thing, but yeah.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  He's like.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  I gotta have her. She's gorgeous, yeah.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Lola Fellana.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Classic.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  Always liked when she showed up on the love boat and I always knew Isaac was getting, getting in, in that episode. It's like, oh, this is gonna be good for Isaac. Uh, Thelma from Good Times. I've talked about her many times.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Uh, staple.

• 1:17:47Bill Simmons?

  Career highlights was Rem and I getting a picture with her.

• 1:17:50Chris Ryan?

  That's four so far?

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  That's four.

• 1:17:52Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  Rem and I got a picture with her.

• 1:17:54Chris Ryan?

  You're making me a little nervous. Go ahead.

• 1:17:55Bill Simmons?

  That was a 14. But why am I making you nervous?

• 1:17:57Chris Ryan?

  I'm worried about somebody you're looking out.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm thinking about it too.

• 1:18:00Bill Simmons?

  Pam Gray.

• 1:18:01Chris Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Of, has to be in there.

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  Of course Pam Gray was gonna be out there.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  It has to be in there. I can't trust you.

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Apollo's wife Sylvia, I think her name's Sylvia Miles.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  Um, just an absolute smoke show.

• 1:18:14Chris Ryan?

  Sylvia Miles.

• 1:18:15Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then number one, Jane, Jane Kennedy. Jane Kennedy, in the running for best looking, anything of all time, but she was.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  You almost fucked up.

• 1:18:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm saying any era. Like she could, she could move into, advance from the seventies into the all time bracket.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  The type of, of lady that your father has, just so I, I wanna make sure you know about Jane Kennedy. I wanna make sure you're up on her. Can I interest you in two people?

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  Listen.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  From the seventies. Just two people.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  We're all winners on this list.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  We all winners.

• 1:18:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Carol Speed.

• 1:18:47Bill Simmons?

  Which one was that?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Carol Speed, she's in, I think she's in the Mac. Love her. She's in the Mac or she's in.

• 1:18:53Bill Simmons?

  Not familiar with Carol's work.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Carol Speed, uh, Marilyn McCool.

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  Thought about her. She didn't quite get there for me.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Cause she, she, the eighties came along and like she, will was with big things.

• 1:19:05Bill Simmons?

  She solid gold at it a little bit.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Solid gold, but in solid gold, that's my era of Marilyn McCool. Then I go back and I look at Marilyn McCool when she was in the fifth dimension.

• 1:19:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's cool. Marilyn McCool in the fifth dimension.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Like Marilyn McCool in the fifth, gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Jane Kennedy levitated. I, I had to do the rankings. Veronica is probably the one beat of Jane Kennedy.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jane Kennedy is otherworldly, next level gorgeous, just all time beauty.

• 1:19:33Bill Simmons?

  Really important sports. Do you know who Jane Kennedy is, Craig? So NFL, the first ever NFL pregame show on CBS, it's Brent Musburger, Irv Cross and Jane Kennedy.

• 1:19:46Bill Simmons?

  And I think Jane Kennedy followed Phyllis George.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  I'm not.

• 1:19:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Phyllis George. Initially, it's the three of them. Phyllis George marries John Y. Brown, the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy buys the Celtics. They replace him with Jane Kennedy and she's just, everybody's in love with her from the moment she shows up. And I'm not, then she married Leon Isaac Kennedy, the star of Penitentiary, Penitentiary.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Some things happened.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  Some things happened.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we all talk about that.

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  Casting What-ifs. Couldn't really find any except for Chuck Wepner was offered the part of a trainer upon the addition.

• 1:20:20Chris Ryan?

  Like, is he supposed to be new Mickey?

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Because Stallone felt bad because he was the real life Rocky.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he's, the movie's based on him.

• 1:20:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  And he wanted to put him in.

• 1:20:28Chris Ryan?

  But were they gonna make him like Mickey's assistant or something?

• 1:20:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  They deleted that character from the script. Best That Guy Award. So Joe Spinell.

• 1:20:41Chris Ryan?

  It's Frank McCray, man.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  It's Frank McCray, yeah.

• 1:20:43Bill Simmons?

  Is Frank McCray a that guy, though?

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  I think he's a that guy.

• 1:20:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes, to 99% of the people listening to this podcast, he is a that guy.

• 1:20:49Bill Simmons?

  Okay, fine. Dion Waiters Award.

• 1:20:51Chris Ryan?

  This is.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  I got one.

• 1:20:53Chris Ryan?

  Musburger.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Musburger is great.

• 1:20:55Chris Ryan?

  Musburger blacks out. Wrote his own dialogue. Musburger went nuts. It's like, you're like, this is real, this is happening. He's like, one, many reporters like this one standing next to you, Apollo, would say, and he's just like, you're entitled to your opinion, you know? I don't know why I'm doing Pacino, but it's an incredible scene.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:21:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, Frank, we have Frank Stallone.

• 1:21:20Bill Simmons?

  Gets subdued up with him. We get Rocky's commercial agent as a possible Dion Waiters.

• 1:21:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:21:25Bill Simmons?

  Slinking out as the beast aftershave as it go well. Stu Nahan, got a bench at him. And then I think Duke is eligible in this.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Fuck, no.

• 1:21:36Bill Simmons?

  He's only in like three scenes.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Chris Ryan?

  But he's in four movies.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not, no way.

• 1:21:41Bill Simmons?

  For Dion Waiters?

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  He can't, well, then if that's the case, he's the Dion Waiters of all, well, no, because he's way.

• 1:21:46Chris Ryan?

  No, I like the Musburger. Really good in this. If I was gonna give it to anybody other than Musburger, but Musburger is just like, it makes this feel like more of a sporting event that the entire country cares about.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think of who would be now that would be the equivalent of Musburger being in this.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Pat McAfee.

• 1:22:02Bill Simmons?

  Pat McAfee?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Craig made a fucking face, you hate him.

• 1:22:06Bill Simmons?

  I didn't realize you guys were beefing.

• 1:22:08Chris Ryan?

  I guess.

• 1:22:10Chris Ryan?

  It would be McAfee has like McAfee having.

• 1:22:14Bill Simmons?

  You don't think it would be like Joe Buck?

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  I was gonna say Buck and Aikman. It's Buck and Aikman.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  But who's the guy who crosses?

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Because because you're you're covering like a serious sporting event.

• 1:22:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, if it's fights, who does fight? I mean, it would be.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Dario Hawani?

• 1:22:27Chris Ryan?

  Or Kellerman or.

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  No, but Brent was like legit on a show that like 20 million people watch before these NFL.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's Aikman and Buck.

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

  It would have to be the most famous announcer now. I think it's Buck.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Probably. I guess it would be Buck.

• 1:22:43Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city. I would recast the commercial director with CR. And I would just use AI to make it work and just have CR playing a character. Backup choice, Al Pacino.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:22:57Bill Simmons?

  Just two minutes of Pacino. You did your flex category, right?

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, my my other mini hot take is that Stallone is clearly a better movie runner than Tom Cruise.

• 1:23:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, undoubtedly.

• 1:23:08Speaker 03

  He just is. Tom, I actually.

• 1:23:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it looks like he has wheels.

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  It just looks more athletic. It looks more natural. Cruise is way too robotic and stiff with it. This feels, you can like feel how difficult this is with Stallone. He's the best movie runner.

• 1:23:20Bill Simmons?

  Who do you think Stallone? Who is your best movie runner ever?

• 1:23:24Chris Ryan?

  I did not come prepared for this.

• 1:23:26Bill Simmons?

  Because we know Segal is the worst.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Segal.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  Segal's one out of 10.

• 1:23:29Chris Ryan?

  I'd like to go back and watch the crud up and Leto tape of the two Prefontaine movies just to see it. I haven't seen that in a while.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:23:38Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say Cruise is pretty good in The Firm.

• 1:23:41Chris Ryan?

  It's really stiff.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  He's running away from those guys.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  He some of the some of his Mission Impossible running scenes are just fantastic, but there's also so much majesty in the way that it's shot and they're shooting them all the time.

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours, Subway Stadium, running pretty well.

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  Rocky's sprint feels more like a sprint. It feels like he is truly like at 100 out of 100. And the Cruise ones, Cruise's sprint still feels a little bit reserved. Like he kind of knows what he's doing. When Rocky sprints in this movie, you're like, this guy is running as fast.

• 1:24:08Bill Simmons?

  The only problem is like Rocky III, you know, Weathers throws that sprint. It's pretty clear.

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  He eases up on the beach big time.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Do you know who is an underrated movie runner?

• 1:24:20Bill Simmons?

  Who?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Michael J. Fox.

• 1:24:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:24:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  Back to the future.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Back to a future, scrappy runner, getting up there. Marty's always running, trying to get some. Michael J. Fox, underrated runner.

• 1:24:31Chris Ryan?

  I think I was impressed with what little I saw of Austin Butler running and caught stealing. Just keep your eye on him as one for the future, you know? A Don Russ rated rookie for me.

• 1:24:42Bill Simmons?

  Put him over here just in case.

• 1:24:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, we'll take one more break, then we'll do. This episode is brought to by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes. Get up to 3 million in coverage with no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/rewatch. That is E T H O S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. This episode is brought to you by Viori. All right, let's talk about a category we appreciate. Clothes that stay in the rotation. Viori earned that spot.

• 1:25:29Bill Simmons?

  Their core shorts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at viori.com/rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Who Half-Assed? All right, Half-Assed Earn It Research film is dedicated to Jane Oliver. That was Stallone's first agent. She died. Leroy Neiman's in this? He's drawing a picture of Apollo while he's training?

• 1:26:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Bill Simmons?

  The book that Rocky reads to Adrian for multiple excruciating scenes is The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County by Edgar Rice Burroughs, published in 1940. I know you're a big fan.

• 1:26:17Chris Ryan?

  You're a big Burroughs guy, I know.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Can we talk about the fact that in this movie Rocky basically like learns to read?

• 1:26:25Chris Ryan?

  He actually seems pretty adept at reading. I mean, he's doing Zane Grey or Louis Lamour books later in the movies.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  I know, but is he, but it.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  So could Rocky not read or was it just brain damage?

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Well, it seems to me that like a secondary story in this movie is Rocky learning to read.

• 1:26:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Which should be kind of a big deal.

• 1:26:45Chris Ryan?

  But he's not sounding out words. He's reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's not like you're like a picture book.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  So I know, but why did, why do we come back to him reading?

• 1:26:52Chris Ryan?

  I think it's Stallone being like, just so you know, I got some shit to me.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Okay, got you.

• 1:26:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna crank some Burroughs in this scene. Estimated 800 schoolchildren used as extras for the Rocky running scene. Adrian's hospital room number was 669, which is considered an angel number. Did you guys know this?

• 1:27:12Chris Ryan?

  I didn't.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Chris Ryan?

  669, is that what it is?

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  Yep. There's a novel published by Ballantyne in 1979 for Rocky II, and Stallone is credited as the author. And it's a first person narrative.

• 1:27:25Chris Ryan?

  So if you've got it, please reach out. I want to know about this.

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  A first person narrative told by Rocky?

• 1:27:28Chris Ryan?

  Except it's, it's like written in Rocky's brain pattern, so it's apparently like.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  It sounds awful.

• 1:27:34Chris Ryan?

  It's like, settle down, Faulkner. All right.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Flowers for Algernon type shit?

• 1:27:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but when they write about, when he writes about Apollo, it's in the third person and is normally written.

• 1:27:47Bill Simmons?

  And then Bert Young lost a lot of weight between the first and second film.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then they comment, they put it in the movie.

• 1:27:53Bill Simmons?

  So in the, when they're seen right after the fight, when they're in the hospital, they had to like pad him to make him seem fatter.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Well, one of the guys, somebody says, hey, you lost, you lost a lot of weight. Like they addressed it in the movie.

• 1:28:04Chris Ryan?

  So what's Paulie's arc here? He, at the end of this, at the end of one.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if arc's the word we can use.

• 1:28:10Chris Ryan?

  He, after one, after the fight, he's basically like, Rocky, get me your job with Godso. Then two scenes later is like a made man and is like lording over the docks, right?

• 1:28:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He's basically, who was the guy in Wire, season two?

• 1:28:26Chris Ryan?

  Ziggy?

• 1:28:27Bill Simmons?

  Frank Sabaka.

• 1:28:28Chris Ryan?

  Frank Sabaka.

• 1:28:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Frank Sabaka. He's basically Sabaka.

• 1:28:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And then, but is, but is also like Rocky, you need to thank me for getting you a job at the meatpacking plant, right?

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:38Chris Ryan?

  What an asshole. I hate this guy.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Big.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  By, by the fourth movie, he's just living in the guest room playing with a robot.

• 1:28:44Chris Ryan?

  And then getting that cut out.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  And is so angry after he's ruined their lives.

• 1:28:49Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Is so angry. What about me? What about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:28:53Bill Simmons?

  How come no woman for, was, is a possible Polly was either asexual or gay?

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  Could be. This is might, this might be why he was so mad.

• 1:29:00Chris Ryan?

  I haven't seen the recut version of Rocky IV, so I don't know.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  This might be so, hey, just, you know, it just dawned on me.

• 1:29:08Bill Simmons?

  Gay Polly?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Polly's in love with Rocky.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  This just dawned on me. The reason why he treats Adrian like shit this entire time is because he's in love with Rocky.

• 1:29:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Polly this entire time was trying to get some of that Italian sausage. The entire, he's, he's, he's, he's jealous.

• 1:29:28Bill Simmons?

  Or the alcohol, alcoholism made him incompetent sexually.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Either way.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't get one up. They didn't have Viagra back then. Apex Mountain. Stallone, no.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Carl Weathers, no. But maybe Rocky III, Rocky IV range.

• 1:29:44Chris Ryan?

  Definitely, definitely, definitely the spectrum. Cause we are coming off the back of Broad Street.

• 1:29:50Bill Simmons?

  Doc's there.

• 1:29:51Chris Ryan?

  Broad Street Bullies.

• 1:29:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Chris Ryan?

  Doc, this.

• 1:29:55Bill Simmons?

  The original Doc, the only Doc. Um, you also have some good wrestling back then too.

• 1:30:00Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:30:01Bill Simmons?

  WWF, big hot spot, big matches there in the spectrum.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:30:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's good. Spectrum, I like that. Philadelphia Zoo, definitely. Right? That's the most famous thing that's happened, Philadelphia Zoo.

• 1:30:11Chris Ryan?

  I mean, there's some tigers and stuff there, but.

• 1:30:14Bill Simmons?

  Talia Shire, I'm gonna say no.

• 1:30:15Chris Ryan?

  Godfather.

• 1:30:16Bill Simmons?

  Somewhere, Godfather II slash Rocky.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Maybe even III.

• 1:30:20Chris Ryan?

  She's good in III. She's like one of the only redeeming, not one of the only, she's, she's a redeeming quality of III.

• 1:30:25Bill Simmons?

  Burt Young?

• 1:30:27Chris Ryan?

  I can't give him any credit for anything here. I'm sorry.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go mid eighties for Burt when he's in Miami Vice, Rocky IV, and Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:30:36Bill Simmons?

  That's like a year.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  That's a redeeming role for him.

• 1:30:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Like, uh, what's the guy's name in Back to School again? The guy who does Triple Indi?

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  What's the characters? I can't believe I can't draw this. Anyway, but he's his muscle.

• 1:30:49Chris Ryan?

  Did you say Apex Mountain for?

• 1:30:51Bill Simmons?

  Thornton Mellon.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Thornton Mellon, yeah.

• 1:30:52Chris Ryan?

  Did you say Apex Mountain for Stallone?

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  No, it's not.

• 1:30:57Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:30:57Bill Simmons?

  It's not. It's got it. You gotta go into the-

• 1:30:59Chris Ryan?

  He forces his way into the director's chair.

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  Rambo two and Rocky four.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  First Blood part two is, is, is, uh-

• 1:31:06Bill Simmons?

  He's got, he's got like two of the top three movies in 1985.

• 1:31:09Chris Ryan?

  I just think by the letter of the law of what Apex Mountain is, which is obviously like a very clear and understandable concept, he forces his way into the-

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  413 movies.

• 1:31:18Chris Ryan?

  Director's chair for this sequel, gets points on it, makes 200 million dollars with this movie.

• 1:31:24Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:31:25Chris Ryan?

  Creates an iconic character and can pretty much calls him shot from here.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  But if he's at the peak of his powers, it's mid 80s Stallone, right? He can do whatever he wants.

• 1:31:34Bill Simmons?

  Mid 80s Stallone, he could have been like, I had this idea.

• 1:31:36Chris Ryan?

  He's trapped in his own body and he has to just make action movies like, you know? It's not until Copland that he truly gets out of that.

• 1:31:43Bill Simmons?

  He lost the vote two to one. Brett Young. Brent Musburger, yes.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  1979 Brett.

• 1:31:51Chris Ryan?

  Uh-

• 1:31:52Bill Simmons?

  You're looking live.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, I've listened to Brent Musburger every Saturday for like, it's like, you know, so this, I would not be looking at this as Brent Musburger's apex.

• 1:31:59Chris Ryan?

  Does Brent have like a-

• 1:32:00Bill Simmons?

  He's on NFL Today at this point.

• 1:32:02Chris Ryan?

  Brent college football.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you know what? Wait, was it, was it not Brent Musburger when, uh-

• 1:32:06Chris Ryan?

  Iron Bowl?

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  No. Uh, what's his, what's his name's girlfriend?

• 1:32:09Bill Simmons?

  The girl, yeah.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, AJ McCarron's girlfriend?

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Um, how, how can I not remember her name? Kate, Kathy? This is a huge moment and he's, that's kinda apex Brent Musburger, right? When he was being-

• 1:32:22Bill Simmons?

  How about Kunder the Tiger? That's the tiger Rocky talked to. Apparently a huge attraction in the Philadelphia Zoo. I think Sierra's embarrassed by the Philadelphia Zoo.

• 1:32:30Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it's great. Okay.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  Coma scenes that go on too long? Have we ever topped this for Rocky two, 11 minutes?

• 1:32:39Chris Ryan?

  Man, that's a-

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  Million Dollar Baby?

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Steel Magnolias?

• 1:32:45Chris Ryan?

  Million Dollar Baby is sh- that's just the last 10 minutes, right?

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  That movie should be shot in the sun. Hate that movie.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  We made, do you ever, we made, Jomie had never seen it.

• 1:32:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh, God. Did he know anything about it?

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  Didn't know anything about it.

• 1:33:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's like actually cruel. That's it. Well, I'm reporting that to HR.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Jomie didn't know anything about it. Jomie had never seen it, knew anything about it. We talked about it. I'm like, hey, Jop. I was like, Jomie, go home and watch Million Dollar Baby and then report back to us. And he, he texts me that night, all caps, what the fuck? You just can't see it coming. The movie totally turns.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  And somehow that movie won the Oscar.

• 1:33:25Chris Ryan?

  That happens, like, what, halfway through the movie?

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Not halfway, like maybe three quarters through.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. What are you talking about? When she dies?

• 1:33:31Chris Ryan?

  No, when she breaks her neck.

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Was it half- I can't remember.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  It says the ending. It's the last 15 minutes of the movie.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  It's like three quarter of the way through or something like that. I can't remember.

• 1:33:41Bill Simmons?

  Boxing movies now. 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams? Yes. That was the apex. Cruise or Hanks for this movie?

• 1:33:54Bill Simmons?

  Who would have been a better Rocky?

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  Almost like-

• 1:33:58Chris Ryan?

  It's too bad that Cruise never did a boxing movie. Cause you know that he would have committed.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  Dan considers it a boxing movie.

• 1:34:04Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Bare knuckle boxing right there.

• 1:34:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say Hanks.

• 1:34:08Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Hanks is Rocky, no.

• 1:34:10Chris Ryan?

  It has to be Cruise. It has to be Cruise.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Hanks can't do this.

• 1:34:15Bill Simmons?

  Cruise fighting for the welterweight title?

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:34:20Chris Ryan?

  I think Marty.

• 1:34:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  It's Marty, but I would like to see Spielberg's version. This big expansive, like morality tale that he would make this into, but it's definitely Scorsese.

• 1:34:32Bill Simmons?

  What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Probably Mickey.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Polly.

• 1:34:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Polly would have been good. Yeah. Or a good commercial director.

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for picking at CR?

• 1:34:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we've gone over the ones that I, that I had. A lot of these.

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  All right, I have some left.

• 1:34:50Bill Simmons?

  After the first fight, Rocky's definitely getting more than one commercial. I think Sports Illustrated is following him for a giant feature. And uh

• 1:34:59Chris Ryan?

  Gary Smith's just like, let me get to know you.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  This has always been an issue with this franchise. So

• 1:35:04Bill Simmons?

  He's way more successful and popular after the first fight.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  So even when he loses his money, we've talked about this before in five, and then he has to move back to the ghetto in Philly, right? It just doesn't make any sense. He is the greatest heavyweight of his generation. He just beat

• 1:35:21Chris Ryan?

  But I thought the whole thing with Rocky is that Mick set up 10 easy fights for him so that he wouldn't get hurt again. So like, is he really the greatest heavyweight or is he just get?

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  He's beating Clubber Lang. He legitimately, he's a legend. Yeah.

• 1:35:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, most popular.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  He's beating Clubber Lang and also he has beaten the Soviets on the worldwide stage.

• 1:35:40Chris Ryan?

  Soviets?

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  He has. He's beating the Soviets on the worldwide stage.

• 1:35:45Bill Simmons?

  He got the Soviets to root for him.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's signing autographs. He's doing the whole thing. Rocky's getting put, Rocky is not going to, this fighter exists. This guy that continues to come back. Mike Tyson, based upon the, the strength of his personal brand, this fighter exists. He's not going broke.

• 1:36:01Bill Simmons?

  They make it seem like the fight's a year after the last fight. So you're going early 77 Philly, right? He's going to Sixers games that year. He's at the finals.

• 1:36:13Chris Ryan?

  He's going to hockey.

• 1:36:14Bill Simmons?

  He's going to, he's like going around, he's getting invited to stuff. He probably, somebody owns like some cheese steak store or something that they, he probably has his name on a pizza place. Come to Rocky's.

• 1:36:26Chris Ryan?

  I don't think the problem was the opportunities. I think the problem was him getting hoodwinked and not being able to deliver. I mean, he was, he could have been in those commercials. He fucked up.

• 1:36:33Bill Simmons?

  I think Paulie's running some sort of, he becomes the Maverick Carter for Rocky. He's like getting him, he does his version of Spring Hill. He's got a content company.

• 1:36:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's doing pods.

• 1:36:43Bill Simmons?

  All kinds of things are happening for him.

• 1:36:44Chris Ryan?

  He would have a drive time radio show, Rock.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Rocky Balboa boxing show.

• 1:36:48Bill Simmons?

  He's not doing one commercial and then working as the bucket guy in the gym.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  It's not happening.

• 1:36:53Bill Simmons?

  That's not happening.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Well, he's doing cameos in movies and all kinds of stuff.

• 1:36:56Chris Ryan?

  Possibly unanswerable questions, but was the solution here for Rocky just to invest in condominiums? Would that have been like a?

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  That would have been the time to do it.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  Mid 70s.

• 1:37:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:05Bill Simmons?

  Apollo didn't fight for six months after the Rocky fight?

• 1:37:10Chris Ryan?

  How often do you guys box? I don't really follow boxing.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Back then, they're fighting every two, three months. Well, if you're not, if you're the champ, right? If you're the champion, fight a couple of times. Ali fought like six times a year. Not when he was in his, not when he was really Muhammad Ali. Seventy-five to seventy-eight, he fought like nineteen times. Huh, interesting. Well, like. He's fighting shavers, he'd fight Norton again, fight Dwayne Bobic, like he just kinda kept going. But if you know your guy and you want the rematch.

• 1:37:33Chris Ryan?

  Didn't Tyson used to fight like twice a year?

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, guys fought a lot back then. All the way up. Like, but when you get to the point, twice a year is one thing, but no heavyweight of that ilk is fighting six times.

• 1:37:45Chris Ryan?

  It's also it works because Apollo's obsessed with Rocky.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48Chris Ryan?

  Because they're like, we could get you this guy, we could get you that guy, and he's like, I want Rocky.

• 1:37:51Bill Simmons?

  Um, Rocky chasing a chicken, the worst training idea ever in a sports movie? Like, what the fuck?

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Roy Jones does that.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:38:01Chris Ryan?

  In homage to Rocky or just because it's good for you?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  I think both.

• 1:38:04Bill Simmons?

  It feels like that's how COVID could have started, like a boxer chasing a chicken. Ground zero.

• 1:38:11Chris Ryan?

  That's good. An alternative to lab leak.

• 1:38:14Bill Simmons?

  What was going on in Philly that hundreds of kids were just hanging out outside during the middle of the day? Was that what Philly was like back then?

• 1:38:20Chris Ryan?

  We're a great sports town.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  What were they protesting?

• 1:38:26Chris Ryan?

  It was probably like a trash strike or something.

• 1:38:28Bill Simmons?

  Ali's nitpick was that they would have stopped the fight once his eyes closed. And then the double knockdown we covered, Rocky falling would have been ruled a slip. And in real life, if both fighters get up, the fight just keeps going. If you both get up before the count of ten, we're going. Apollo stayed down, so it didn't matter.

• 1:38:43Chris Ryan?

  It's not about beating a guy to getting up.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's not beating a guy. Here's my.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Isn't that, just as an aside, isn't that one of the most dramatic ways, maybe the most dramatic way to end a boxing?

• 1:38:56Chris Ryan?

  Don't they have to get up in time before the last bell?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  To beat the count, yeah.

• 1:39:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but it's not, I got up before you, so I won.

• 1:39:03Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Like, one thing that boxing, uh, movies have a problem with a lot of times is how dramatic the ending of the fight is. Some guy gets knocked out, how dramatic can you make a knockout? If it goes to the decision, how dramatic is, but this is legitimately, probably, like, the most dramatic way. Like, double knockout, who's gonna get up first?

• 1:39:23Bill Simmons?

  I have a small nitpick on Apollo's boxing. I've never seen anybody just take body shots like that.

• 1:39:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, don't neither of them defend very well.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:32Bill Simmons?

  Apollo's supposed to be the greatest fighter. Rocky's just like going to town.

• 1:39:36Chris Ryan?

  But Rocky's like hit me in the fucking eye that might fall out of my head the whole time. He's not defending his face at all.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  Put your elbows down. Try to block him. Here's my biggest nitpick, though. So Adrian's in a coma for a while, like three weeks.

• 1:39:50Chris Ryan?

  You think Rocky, you were just getting something on the side?

• 1:39:53Bill Simmons?

  No tubes. She's lying in the bed.

• 1:39:55Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:56Bill Simmons?

  She's not connected to anything.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:58Bill Simmons?

  She go in the bathroom?

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:00Bill Simmons?

  Is there food, water, anything?

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  It's a good one.

• 1:40:03Bill Simmons?

  She's just like, yeah, I'm in a coma.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna go see Adrian? Yeah, let's go here.

• 1:40:13Bill Simmons?

  Nothing? That's just what comas were like in 1979?

• 1:40:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  People were tougher.

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable. They've done all of these, I think, except for Prestige TV.

• 1:40:27Chris Ryan?

  Except for the literal Creed prequel.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Prestige TV might be coming. Did you hear Mike's got a show coming?

• 1:40:34Chris Ryan?

  Set in the world of?

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Set in the world of Creed.

• 1:40:38Bill Simmons?

  Mike will be Jordan?

• 1:40:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I don't think he's gonna be in it, or if he is, I think he's just gonna be.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Mike is now the Kevin Feige of the Creed universe. He's got a Creed verse coming. Be interesting.

• 1:40:51Bill Simmons?

  Need to get him an Oscar nomination.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  I think it's coming. It's shit.

• 1:40:55Bill Simmons?

  You think it's happening?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. The year all of a sudden got super duper crowded. I still think that he deserves one, but I just.

• 1:41:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna be really mad if he doesn't get nominated.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  I think Autumn will get nominated, the cinematographer. I think Ryan will get nominated, and I'm really, I think it would be awesome if Mike got nominated too. I think it was a great performance.

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  My dude Joel Edgerton might get nominated.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Train Dreams. Good movie.

• 1:41:17Chris Ryan?

  Did you see Train Dreams?

• 1:41:18Bill Simmons?

  It was fucking awesome.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Good movie.

• 1:41:19Chris Ryan?

  Bill, you never cease to surprise me.

• 1:41:21Bill Simmons?

  Why wouldn't I have loved Train Dreams?

• 1:41:24Chris Ryan?

  I was just wondering.

• 1:41:24Bill Simmons?

  It was great.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, good movie. Good movie.

• 1:41:27Bill Simmons?

  See Train Dreams?

• 1:41:27Chris Ryan?

  Didn't you not like Weapons? Like, I don't even know how to like.

• 1:41:31Bill Simmons?

  Weapons is fine.

• 1:41:32Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:32Bill Simmons?

  Train Dreams is awesome.

• 1:41:34Chris Ryan?

  I haven't seen it yet. That's the Sing Sing guys, right?

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great movie.

• 1:41:38Bill Simmons?

  I had no idea it was gonna be, a couple of people told me it was good.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Sean.

• 1:41:42Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was amazing. I'm just surprised that you liked it as much.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Sean put me on the movie. Sean told me about it. They caught Jack doing something like Train Dreams was good. You know, Sean had already seen it. He saw Train Dreams probably like 2021.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  So he had already seen the movie. So he goes, hey, man, like this is like one of those fun ones. And he lived up to the hype.

• 1:42:02Bill Simmons?

  It was great. Is Rocket 2 better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog, Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo, Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Planview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley?

• 1:42:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh my, she doesn't even have tubes in her. She's just sleeping there. It's a Wednesday night in Philly, you know? I feel like we need to do names. We've talked about this.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  You stopped in the middle of it.

• 1:42:27Chris Ryan?

  Why is it doing Collinsworth?

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Collinsworth is good.

• 1:42:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  You're not doing Wayne Jenkins?

• 1:42:31Chris Ryan?

  For this?

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  All right, can, if we, if, it's not, I don't even know if we need new ones, but we should just thin out some of these.

• 1:42:40Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna get new ones for 26. Can I give you one that's not on the list?

• 1:42:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:45Bill Simmons?

  2025 Al Michaels doing the double knockdown scene?

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  And Rocky's knockdown Creed, they're both down.

• 1:42:56Bill Simmons?

  Whoever gets up before 10 seconds is gonna win this.

• 1:43:00Bill Simmons?

  Al, come on, you're one of the best announcers ever. I need a little more. I just need a little more.

• 1:43:05Chris Ryan?

  New season.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Take the time to diss him?

• 1:43:07Bill Simmons?

  No, I just need more. I know more's in there.

• 1:43:10Chris Ryan?

  A new season of The Boys, now streaming on Amazon. Prime Video.

• 1:43:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Al could get more excited. They've had some good Thursday night games this year. Need a little more from Al. Just one Oscar who gets it. Bill Conti?

• 1:43:24Chris Ryan?

  What a great call. I mean, I guess he's running back the same score from the first one.

• 1:43:32Chris Ryan?

  Changed key in a couple of places?

• 1:43:35Bill Simmons?

  Um, or Apollo's wife. Probably an answerable questions. Did Adri- Adrian's pet store ever have a customer?

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Nobody's ever in there.

• 1:43:44Chris Ryan?

  What, what could she?

• 1:43:45Bill Simmons?

  Same four dogs and seven birds.

• 1:43:47Chris Ryan?

  What could she possibly be making?

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  Uh, what is it? It's nineteen?

• 1:43:51Chris Ryan?

  It's like an exotic pet store in South Philadelphia in the seventies.

• 1:43:54Bill Simmons?

  Any pet store need that much bird feed?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Actually, the only person that ever bought, did, did Rocky not buy something in there?

• 1:44:01Chris Ryan?

  For his turtle, right?

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  For his turtle or for his, uh, for, did he buy something for the dog too?

• 1:44:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, for, what's the dog's name again?

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Brutus?

• 1:44:07Chris Ryan?

  For, Buckus.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Buckus.

• 1:44:09Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, good. Adrian's gonna be able to work part-time at our pet store with no customers. It's in right across the street from the boxing gym. What kind of foot traffic did they get? We mentioned Godzo earlier, the mafia bookie. Godzo or Godzo?

• 1:44:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think it's just Godzo, yeah.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  What happened to him before Rocky III?

• 1:44:31Chris Ryan?

  That's a great question.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 1:44:32Chris Ryan?

  You think he got taken out in the, uh, like, Italian restaurant?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Hey, you know what? You know what happened between, Rocky III is what year again?

• 1:44:41Bill Simmons?

  Eighty-two.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  Eighty-two. This was the time when the Rico statutes came in.

• 1:44:45Chris Ryan?

  This is the Irishman.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  This is the whole time they're fucking, they're fucking over these guys.

• 1:44:49Bill Simmons?

  I think he got blown up at the docks one day.

• 1:44:51Chris Ryan?

  They blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Um, Rocky, they said?

• 1:44:56Chris Ryan?

  It's Bruce Springsteen lyrics.

• 1:44:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:45:00Bill Simmons?

  Rocky was a five to one underdog for this fight, they say. Would you have bet that?

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  After the first fight?

• 1:45:07Chris Ryan?

  Five to one seems like pretty...

• 1:45:09Bill Simmons?

  Pretty tasty. I think Sal and I would have talked ourselves into that.

• 1:45:13Chris Ryan?

  You would have parlayed it with something stupid, though?

• 1:45:14Bill Simmons?

  I would have done Rocky for the knockout.

• 1:45:16Chris Ryan?

  Let's do Rocky, but let's get the Hartford Whalers in here too.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Columbus Blue Jackets.

• 1:45:21Bill Simmons?

  That would have been Sal. Sal would have taken like a high favorite. Uh, what piece of memorabilia would you?

• 1:45:26Chris Ryan?

  Wait, I just want to ask a one unanswerable question.

• 1:45:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:28Chris Ryan?

  Does Rocky love boxing?

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  No, not at all. He, well, so he's a club fighter. It's something that he is really good at.

• 1:45:36Chris Ryan?

  It feels like he's trapped boxing.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  It feels, yeah.

• 1:45:38Chris Ryan?

  He's like, this, this body, this mind, you know, I have, I have few gifts. This is what I have to do. But I don't feel like he's ever like, man, I can't get back, wait to get back in the ring because I love it.

• 1:45:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if Rocky had a lot of opportunities. Yeah, right. That's the thing. But it's like asking like if Murph loves going on walks. Like, I just don't know if there's a lot going on intellectually for Rocky. Well, like, what would Rocky's dream have been? Like, I really love the theater. I don't know. He seems captivated by the old west, you know?

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Rocky didn't want the rematch with Apollo at all. And you would think that he is the one that will want it more than anybody.

• 1:46:18Bill Simmons?

  Seems like he wants an office job. I think Rocky loved boxing. What else did he have? He just fucking walked around with a super ball. Occasionally would stop by the do up guys. Maybe they had a good fire going.

• 1:46:31Bill Simmons?

  What do you think? He loved like independent movies? That's really the only thing to talk about.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  I love the Palmer's movies lately. They've been really good.

• 1:46:37Bill Simmons?

  Like, what did he have? He wasn't a sports fan.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Called dress to kill.

• 1:46:43Bill Simmons?

  He didn't love like the Flyers. We never knew what were Rocky's hobbies? Yeah, I don't know. Couldn't drive. Terrible driver. Presumably he knows a little bit about sports gambling because he's collecting for the mob, right? That's one of my favorite TV movie things when the guy can't drive and they park and they hit like the garbage cans.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:03Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?

• 1:47:08Bill Simmons?

  I think it's the Beast aftershave bottle for me.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47:11Bill Simmons?

  It's like very stealth, but I could put it like right behind CR. Like right there, right next to the Patriot helmet, just have the Beast aftershave. I also like his fake broken nose eye thing for the commercial that you take on and off. That'd be fun to have. And then the trunks.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Apollo's trunks.

• 1:47:29Bill Simmons?

  Either.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:30Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I would like. Trunks, gloves, anything from the.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  The car too. The cars fly.

• 1:47:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The snow cone machine that Rocky says he's gonna buy Paulie. Oh. I miss having snow cones. It's really good. What one your coach Finstock will wear for best life lesson?

• 1:47:49Bill Simmons?

  Do you have one?

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Bill Simmons?

  Listening to your trainer?

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Uh, don't listen to your ego. That's what got Apollo. What got Apollo, like legitimately relegated to a co-star in Rocky's universe?

• 1:48:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Is he was too anxious, he was chasing it. He could have literally...

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  If he hadn't read it, don't read your mentions.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Man.

• 1:48:08Bill Simmons?

  Don't read your hate mail.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Don't read your hate mail. He could have literally let Rocky fade away into obscurity.

• 1:48:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, nobody would have, nobody would remember that.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  And this, the whole thing is about Apollo, but it's about Rocky now because Apollo chased it.

• 1:48:19Bill Simmons?

  Double feature choice, would you go one or three?

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  You know, I...

• 1:48:24Bill Simmons?

  I would go three just for variety because I feel like this is so close to one. I would do three because in the marathon, the 28 minutes from two, when then they would go to Rocky III, the first like five, 10 minutes of Rocky III, which is like probably the best stretch in the history of the franchise. Can I make a recommendation from the not Rocky universe for, uh, Dikstown?

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Oh, what a movie.

• 1:48:46Bill Simmons?

  Dikstown.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Honey Roy Palmer.

• 1:48:47Bill Simmons?

  James Woods and Luke Goss. Big Sean owns that on Blu-ray? I'm sure he does. Dikstown 4K UHD.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  What is the movie, it's a boxing movie, but it's got Cuba Gooding Jr. and the white boy?

• 1:49:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, James Marshall.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Bill Simmons?

  And the guy from Few Good Men.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  The guy from Few Good Men. How? How? How?

• 1:49:09Bill Simmons?

  Answer the office's question!

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  How? Ask him a quick, like, how? How? Like, literally, man, shout out to our men and women in service.

• 1:49:17Bill Simmons?

  Brian Dennehy gets in the ring with him at the end.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  And at the end, he...

• 1:49:19Bill Simmons?

  Gladiator's good.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  Gladiator's good and he's punching and he puts his forehead down like that to make him hurt us, yeah. Gladiator's good. Gladiator is my Dikstown double feature.

• 1:49:28Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Who won the movie Stallone?

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Stallone.

• 1:49:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, directed, wrote it. Craig, what do you got?

• 1:49:33Speaker 03

  Um, I, I, I think the Rocky franchise is really interesting because you get to witness in real time the transition from 70's Hollywood to 80's Hollywood.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:41Speaker 03

  And you have like, the first two movies are in the 70's and it's like the gritty 70's and then the next two are in the 80's and it's like the glossy 80's. The first two movies are two hours, the next two movies are 90 minutes. And I gotta be honest, I think I like three and four. Like I, it's like, I, I don't love that. That's my opinion, but I'm like, I, I can't help.

• 1:49:59Chris Ryan?

  Craig, I'm not, I'm not sure I don't disagree. I'm not sure I don't agree with you.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  It's the right opinion.

• 1:50:03Speaker 03

  It's clear.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  That's why we did three and four first before we did one and ten. Like, the end of these movies, all of them are fantastic. My dad and I watched this over Thanksgiving break and we like basically both fell asleep halfway through the movie. But then by the time you get to the end, we were like shadow boxing our way out of the living room.

• 1:50:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  So it always delivers at the end, but it's a tough first 90 minutes.

• 1:50:22Chris Ryan?

  It is. YouTube kinda killed this movie.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:50:26Chris Ryan?

  You can watch the montage, you can watch the fight and you're like, I'm good.

• 1:50:29Speaker 03

  I mean, YouTube did a lot of harm in many ways to movies. I feel like now you can, like I talked to my two brothers in law and every big movie, they're like, oh, I just, I saw the end of that movie on YouTube. And I'm like, fuck, are you even gonna watch it? And like, wow, there will be blood. Like the bowling, I saw the bowling alley. So I'm like, well.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 1:50:45Chris Ryan?

  Seriously?

• 1:50:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You just watched like the 20 best endings in movie history.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  But, but you know.

• 1:50:49Speaker 03

  You throw that up on YouTube.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  You know, I'm so.

• 1:50:51Speaker 03

  And it kills you.

• 1:50:52Chris Ryan?

  Going to hell, Sierra.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  I'm such an idiot that that makes me watch movies. I like, I got something that popped up in my algorithm that the whole YouTube video was about the way that Sicario is written. Like how.

• 1:51:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  The actual protagonist of Sicario is Benicio del Toro's character. But the whole script makes you think that it's Emily Blunt's character the whole time.

• 1:51:14Chris Ryan?

  Have you seen Sicario? Yeah.

• 1:51:15Speaker 03

  Heard it's, heard good things.

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  You guys heard.

• 1:51:19Chris Ryan?

  We, we did, uh, Two for the Money.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Chris Ryan?

  The other week. That was pitched to me by Bill as, here's your birthday movie.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  And so I watched.

• 1:51:28Chris Ryan?

  I was just like, that's not how this is supposed to work.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  I watched the whole video and then the video is maybe like four minutes long about the true hero of Sicario, whatever. Oh, how Sicario fools the audience, I think is the name of the video. And then I went and watched Sicario, like last night when I should have been watching, doing higher learning stuff. So that pod's gonna suck today. But like, I, I went and I, and I watched Sicario, watched the whole thing back.

• 1:51:49Speaker 03

  It's just hard. There's a lot of like TikTok, that top 10 performances of the 21st century and you're watching like the climax of all these great movies.

• 1:51:56Chris Ryan?

  I've slipped on some of the, some of my favorites. Like I feel like it's been a while since I watched A Few Good Men in full, but have watched You Can't Handle the Truth and You Cut These Guys Loose, like.

• 1:52:08Bill Simmons?

  You know, 300 times. Well, I mean, we have stuff like Landman to watch now. That's true. Real art. Thanks to Craig. Thanks to Gao. Thanks to Eduardo. Don't do that top seven social.

• 1:52:20Bill Simmons?

  Why are you getting weird about it? We'll be back with the rewatchables next week.

• 1:52:34Bill Simmons?

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