(ThyBlackMan.com) Note the ROCKY films’ phenomenal success. Why did Sylvester Stallone, who wrote and stars in these pictures, name the hero “Rocky Balboa?” Balboa was the conquistador credited with making the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas. And “Rocky” evokes “Rocky Marciano.” He beat Joe Louis, and was thereafter the white heavyweight champion. He and Ingemar Johansson were the last two “Great White Hopes.” There has not been another white heavyweight champion since, except for the make-believe Rocky. In the first ROCKY film, Rocky fights the Black heavyweight champion “Apollo Creed” to a draw. “Apollo Creed” was a stand-in for the then reigning heavyweight champion, “Muhammad Ali.” On January 24, 1975, Muhammad Ali fought a little known white underdog, Chuck Wepner.
At a theater in Los Angeles, struggling actor Sylvester Stallone watched the Ali-Wepner fight and promptly went home and banged out the script for a little movie called ‘Rocky.’ It wasn’t based on a true story — not directly. But it was inspired by and borrowed
heavily from a true story. By the time the movie was released on Dec. 3, 1976, word had spread that Wepner was Stallone’s muse, and Wepner basked in the glory of hearing his first name chanted in the New York theater where he watched the film. (ESPN 10/25/11)
Years later, having never received recompense, Wepner sued Stallone and settled for an undisclosed sum. Wepner was soundly beaten and knocked unconscious in the real fight, but in ROCKY, Stallone goes the distance. In the next film, Rocky beats Apollo Creed and becomes the heavyweight champion, the Great White Hope. In subsequent films, Creed is reduced to being Rocky’s trainer. Rocky’s nickname in the picture was “The Italian Stallion.” A stallion is a male horse kept for breeding, usually black in color. Sylvester Stallone’s last name, “Stallone,” is Italian for “stallion.” The monicker, the “Italian Stallion,” is the name of a pornographic film Stallone starred in a few years before making ROCKY.
Rocky, released in 1976, the Bicentennial Year, was set in Philadelphia, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed 200 years before. The climax of the training scene shows Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum overlooking Centennial Park, built in 1876 to house the Centennial Exposition, 100 years after Independence in 1776. Members of dozens of Native American tribes were brought to the Exposition and camped out in Centennial Park.
However, that same year, during the running of the Centennial Exhibition, Colonel Armstrong Custer and his entire cavalry detachment were wiped out in the Battle of the Little Bighorn by the Lakota Sioux. Afterwards the US turned its full might on the Native Americans of the West. Today, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, with four American presidents carved into its face, overlooks the territory of the Lakota Sioux. In 1975, the year before ROCKY came out, America suffered stunning defeat in Viet Nam.
Did ROCKY, on a subliminal level, restore America’s confidence during its Bicentennial year? Note it was shot in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Liberty Bell is still revered, aka “The City of Brotherly Love?” Ironically, the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “life, liberty and justice for all” has yet to come to pass. But as we see, the Rocky franchise lives on. Look closely at the last two ROCKY films, and you will see that there are subliminal messages galore. . .
Staff Writer; Arthur Lewin
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