Sylvester Stallone Considered Backing Off of Rocky IV’s Big Death

It takes only a few minutes for the first big bout in 1985’s Rocky IV to go horribly wrong. What began with pomp and pagentry, as former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed descended from the rafters while James Brown and his band performed “Living in America,” ended in bloodshed. Apollo’s Russian challenger Ivan Drago makes short work of the Count of Monte Fisto, battering him bloody while his best friend Rocky Balboa stands outside the ring, gripping his buddy’s towel. “Throw the towel!” pleads Apollo’s trainer; “Throw the damn towel!”

Rocky doesn’t, choosing instead to honor Apollo’s wishes, even if it costs him his life. But behind the scenes of Rocky IV, Sylvester Stallone almost considered it. “I told Carl, ‘I could have given you a bad back or something, you know what I mean? Put you on crutches for a little while and kept you around,’ Stallone told GoldDerby. “Rocky depends on bouncing off of the other characters, otherwise he has no one to articulate with. I thought killing Apollo was going to make people really angry at the Russian, but it also sabotaged me because I couldn’t replace him.”

Written and directed by Stallone, Rocky IV finds the Italian Stallone long since retired to a life of luxury, and though he’s loathe to admit his discontent, he knows that fighting is behind him. That’s until Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) dies fighting Drago (Dolph Lundgren), which drives Rocky to recover his fighting spirit and face the Russian giant, despite the fears of his wife Adrian (Talia Shire).

If that plot description conjures images of complex character stakes, then you must have stopped watching the franchise after the first movie. 1976’s Rocky, written by Stallone and directed by John G. Avildsen is all grit and realism. By 1985, the franchise had embraced the glossy shallowness and conservative politics that Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer brought to blockbusters. Rocky IV mostly plays out in montages and ends with Adrian realizing that she was wrong to ever ask her husband not to do something he wanted to do and Rocky defeating Drago, thereby winning the Cold War. Also, Rocky gives his brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) a sexy robot.

It’s a silly, wonderful movie, but to hear Stallone talk about it 40 years later, Rocky IV sounds like a powerful tragedy. “Even though it accomplished the mission [of making audiences hate Drago],” Stallone said of Apollo’s death, “when he left and Mickey left in [Rocky III], you know, Burt Young… really tough.”

The gravity Stallone ascribes to a largely silly movie reflects his recent reappraisal of the film. In 2021, Stallone released a recut version of the film titled Rocky IV: Rocky vs Drago, which toned down the silliness (goodbye, Paulie’s sexy robot) and upped the dramatic stakes, receiving positive reviews. Of course, it also helps that Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan revived the franchise with the excellent spin-off series Creed. And those movies are driven by Apollo’s death, which forces his son Donny (Jordan) to wrestle with the weight of his lost father.

So maybe after all, Apollo did win in a way. And maybe Stallone was right not to throw in the towel and stick Carl Weathers in crutches.