Triviadecided that for the shooting of the fight, he and should hit one another for real, so as to increase the intensity of the scene. After doing three takes of Rocky taking shots to ribs, Stallone felt a burning in his chest, but ignored it. Later that night, he had difficulty breathing and was taken to a nearby emergency room. It was discovered that his blood pressure was over 200, and he had to be flown on a low-altitude flight from Canada to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, where he remained in intensive care for four days.
Even at 70-years-old Sylvester Stallone looks to be in tremendous shape. At 65-years-old he was still ripped. This is Sly at 65-years-old and he was ripped. For preparation for his roles as Rocky Balboa and Rambo, Stallone would push his body to its limits with a vigorous training regimen that often. Rocky Balboa (2006) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
What had happened was that Lungren had punched him so hard in the chest, Stallone's heart had slammed up against his breastbone and began to swell, cutting off the blood supply and restricting the oxygen flow throughout the body. Here's another low-brained but very entertaining 'Rocky' movie with one more interesting villain. Instead Of 'Apollo Creed' or 'Mr. T.,' we now have 'Ivan Drago,'(Dolph Lundgren) a giant Russian who is more like a machine. He's 'indestructable' (and on steroids, too, and unlike some baseball slugger, he admits it!). He has the latest in technology, nutrition, etc., but you just know the much-smaller disadvantaged hero 'Rocky Balboa' (Sylvester Stallone) will somehow find a way to chop this 'Goliath' down.
Minute-for-minute, this might be the most entertaining of all the Rocky films, and looks good on DVD despite some graininess in the first five minutes. Rocky's wife 'Adrian' (Talia Shire) never looked better: mature and pretty; the gruff and profane manager played Burgess Meredith is gone and the repellent obnoxious slob 'Paulie' (Burt Young) has only a few lines. This is the ultimate 'David vs. Goliath' tale in every aspect and the final bout - held in Russia - breaks the all-time Rocky record for most punches ever thrown at two fighters. Of course, any real-life human would have been knocked cold about 50 times had they suffered the blows 'Rocky' did in this fight! This is a real flag-waving film with Rocky draping the Stars and Stripes around his shoulders. It's a totally unrealistic story but, all of these in the series were similar, credibility-wise, so just go along with it and enjoy the story.
It's only an hour-and-a-half and story literally flies.