While Apollo Creed is a beloved and iconic character in the realm of cinema, it's important to clarify that he is a fictional creation and not a real-life boxer. The character was conceived by Sylvester Stallone, who wrote the screenplay for the original "Rocky" film.
Adonis "Donnie" Creed (born Adonis Johnson) is the fictional protagonist of the Creed trilogy — Creed (2015), Creed II (2018), and Creed III (2023) — the follow-up franchise to the Rocky film series. The character is played by Michael B. Jordan in all three installments.
Ivan Vasilyevich Drago (Russian: Иван Васильевич Драго, pronounced [ɪˈvan vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪdʑ ˈdraɡə]; Ukrainian: Іван Васильович Драго) is a fictional Russian character from the Rocky film series.
Finding the right actor to match the physical prowess and athletic ability of Drago was no easy task but, eventually, Sylvester Stallone found his man in Swedish-born actor Dolph Lundgren.
Robert "Rocky" Balboa (born June 6, 1945) (also known by his ring name the Italian Stallion) is a fictional character and the titular protagonist of the Rocky film series. The character was created by Sylvester Stallone, who has also portrayed him in eight of the nine films in the franchise.
He had training for the Rocky movies, but he didn't have any previous boxing background. Playing Rocky went to his head when they were auditioning guys to play “Clubber Lang" in Rocky III and Earnie Shavers auditioned. Shavers was pulling his punches and Stallone told him to hit him, open it up, make it look real.
Lang is a professional boxer from Chicago, Illinois, and is a one-time world heavyweight champion, having taken the title from Rocky Balboa only to lose it back to Balboa in his next fight. The character is very loosely based on a combination of Sonny Liston, Larry Holmes, and George Foreman.
Following his loss to Rocky, Ludmilla divorced Ivan and left him to raise Viktor Drago (Ivan's son) on his own, in which Viktor succeeded his father and pursued a career in boxing.
Anabolic steroids were steroids that were given to Ivan Drago to make him more muscular and endure more than a regular boxer. Even though several American people suggested this was the cause, but Ludmilla Drago denied this.
Every fighter knows that the toughest opponent isn't the strongest, the fastest or the most skilled. It's the one who won't stop fighting, no matter how badly they're beat. Despite pummeling Rocky with everything he's got, Drago just can't finish him.
Are Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren friends?
Lundgren is now one of Stallone's closest friends in Hollywood, and the two reunited on-screen as Drago and Rocky for 1990's "Rocky V" and 2018's "Creed II." The duo also co-starred in all four movies in the "Expendables" franchise.
She is a Soviet gold-medal swimmer who is the ex-wife and spokeswoman to Soviet captain Ivan Drago. Compared to Ivan himself, she is more despicable as she abandoned him after he lost to Rocky Balboa, and later appeared to have gone unchanged when interacting with her own estranged son Viktor.
If a punch thrown by Rocky IV villain Ivan Drago is supposed to measure 2,150 psi and his glove's impact area is something like four square inches, he'd be exerting a force of 8,600 pounds, or more than four tons. Based on the professional literature, no boxer in real life comes anywhere close to that.
Johnson is the biological mother Adonis Johnson Creed. She conceived her son via an affair with former heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed before he died in 1985. Her son was left orphaned after her death, until he was adopted by Mary Anne Creed, Apollo's widow, in the year 1998.
Despite being the face of the Rocky franchise, Stallone chose not to appear in Creed III due to creative differences with producer Irwin Winkler as well as with Jordan, although he is still a producer on the film. According to Stallone, the film had a much darker tone that he didn't agree with.
Milo Ventimiglia as Rocky Balboa Jr.: Rocky's estranged son, who moved to Vancouver in the period between Rocky Balboa (2006) and Creed and is now a father himself.
Ivan Drago: Drago was a Soviet boxer who was trained to be a killing machine. He was incredibly strong and had a powerful punch. Rocky faced Drago in a 15-round fight in Rocky IV, and it was one of the most brutal fights in boxing history.
Ivan Drago may seem like a robot, but his human side begins to shine through at the end of Rocky IV, and that's when his country turns on him. In this, Rocky IV subtly makes Ivan Drago another victim of the Soviet regime, with the real villain being the indifferent attitude to life that he had been taught to adopt.
In 1985, he killed an African-American boxer named Apollo Creed. In boxing business, he was undefeated until Christmastime of 1985 when Rocky Balboa defeated him. Shortly after his defeat, he was arrested alongside several other members of the Koloff crime family, causing the syndicate to become heavily weakened.
But when he can't stop his hands from shaking after the fight with Drago, doctors confirm that all the fights and blows to the head have taken their toll on Rocky; he has suffered brain damage and is told to stop fighting if he wants to continue living.
Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) returns to Creed III after serving as the primary challenger to Adonis in the preceding film. Notably, this isn't just a one-off cameo, either. Viktor and Adonis are quickly established to have buried the bad blood between their families, even becoming friends and sparring partners.
Now, you're wondering whether or not Rocky was based on a real person. The answer is yes and no: while this film focuses on fictional characters like Rocky Balboa and his opponent Apollo Creed, it was inspired by the life of real-life boxer and former World Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano.
