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“I must destroy you.”
This is one of the most memorable lines of all Rocky/Creed catalog – up there with “Yo Adrian!” and “Ain’t gonna be no rematch” – delivered by towering blond Swede Dolph Lundgren as punishing Russian murderer Ivan Drago in the 1985 Darling sequel Rocky iv, which turns 35 today.
In fact, Lundgren almost broke Rocky Balboa, or rather Sylvester Stallone, the actor who created boxing’s iconic underdog and played him in eight films now. After filming the climactic Cold War-flavored confrontation, Stallone found himself in intensive care for eight days. A particularly crushing punch from Lundgren hit Stallone’s heart against his breastbone, causing his heart to swell, resulting in difficult breathing and high blood pressure. Stallone said he could have died without urgent medical attention.
“That was back when you didn’t have CGI, so everything you did had to be in camera. You wanted a good hit, you had to make it look good in camera. And if you wanted blood to come out of your mouth, you had to put it in your mouth and spit it out as and when you were hit, ”Lundgren explained in a 2014 Role reminder interview with Yahoo Entertainment (see above, with Rocky iv starting just after the one minute mark).
“So Sly decided to do more realistic boxing scenes where I punched a little harder in the body.” After completing the streak in Vancouver, Lundgren was back in Los Angeles when he learned that Stallone was in the hospital and production was on hold for two weeks.
“They say it was my fault,” said Lundgren, who then reunited with Stallone in The Expendables. “But he was injured.
Stallone has also revealed over the years that there has been bad blood between Lundgren and Carl Weathers, whose heavyweight champion Apollo Creed is killed by Drago at the start of the film. Weathers was bowled over by Lundgren’s aggressiveness in the ring, and at one point he left the set resulting in a four-day stoppage of work.
According to Lundgren, however, the grudges only went one way.
“I love Carl,” Lundgren said. “But I had worked with Sly for five months before the photo. So I knew him pretty well. And I was a fighter, a European karate champion and I think when Carl came in he said to me, ‘I’m going to have to fight this guy? It seems to be the real thing. I didn’t hate anyone on this set but I think he was a little scared of me.
“Then I had to kill him, of course.
Current Rocky iv currently broadcasting on Amazon.
Watch Part 2 of our interview with Dolph Lundgren Role Recall:
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