Saturday, July 4, 2009

He Lives Within Us



The greatest underdog story of our time is back for one final round of the Academy Award-winning Rocky franchise, former heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa steps out of retirement and back into the ring, pitting himself against a new rival in a dramatically different era. The fact this move came out in christmas 2006 is not the point. This is no movie review. This is a blog on inspiration and the story of Rocky will always be an inspiration. So, what can we learn? Listen and learn my friends.

Rocky Balboa is a longtime retired boxer and remembered by most as one of the greatest boxing champions in the world. His wife Adrian has died and he's at life's old age cross roads. He now lives back in the skids of Philadelphia but manages a good life including running his restaurant Adrian's, helping an adult Little Marie and her son Steps, and saying hello at any opportunity to his estranged son Robert. After seeing a virtual fight of Rocky in his prime vs. heavyweight champion Mason "the Line" Dixon, Rocky's interest in fighting sparks again.



So, what does Rocky Balboa have to do with you? Rocky lives within you. Yes, Rocky Balboa lives within us. For 30 years Rocky Balboa (played by Sylvester Stallone) has been, as much a metaphor for life's challenges as, he was a boxer. Rocky the greatest perennial underdog of our time. Rocky goes from a "never been" to a "has been" and "back again."

The power of the story was never about how many times Rocky won a fight -it was always about what Rocky needed to do to get in the fight and stay in the fight. The fight with goliaths in the ring...and the fight with life out of the ring. It was a story about being knocked down in life and the will power need to get back up in life. The human will power to keep moving forward in life.



The plot centers on an aging Balboa still feeling he has something to prove when a computer fight, pairing champions from different eras, declares him the winner over the current champion. Stallone copied the computer fight idea from one between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano in 1970. "After all the data was put into the computer, Marciano won by a 13th-round knockout, and that proceeded to create a lot of uproar among fans," Stallone says. "We wanted to duplicate that."

The character, Rocky Balboa, says it best, "It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep on moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward."



The story of Rocky comes out of the 70's stagflation tuff times. There had been a golden age of heavyweights in the early Seventies, but no one knew it at the time. No one bothered to stop and count all the great fighters – The Greatest, of course, Ali, but also Smokin’ Joe Frazier and George Foreman were the major stars and the supporting cast was brilliant with Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, Earnie Shavers, Jimmy Young, Ron Lyle and Jimmy Ellis; there were the usual former champions like Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson, still able to make cameos, and there were the prospects, like Larry Holmes and Ken Norton.



Rocky Balboa lives on within you.