How Muhammad Ali Really Felt About Sylvester Stallone's Rocky

The perennial piece of advice "write what you know" is a good rule of thumb for writers of all kinds, as familiarity only affords a writer additional insight and opportunity. Yet it can be a double-edged sword, particularly when using real-life people for inspiration. Those writers who look to their friends, family, and other people in their social circle for inspiration at least have the option of speaking to those folks personally in order to get a sense of how they'd feel if their character or life experience was used in their novel or screenplay. It can be a lot trickier when a writer uses a public figure for inspiration. Sure, there's a decent likelihood that this celebrity may never learn about your work, but on the off chance they do, would they be okay with it? And what if the script you wrote that's inspired by them becomes a huge success, famous enough in its own right that the muse can't help but find out about it?

That was the dilemma facing Sylvester Stallone when "Rocky" became a breakout hit upon its release in 1976. Prior to that film, Stallone had been languishing in Hollywood as an actor who hadn't found success, leading to his writing the script for "Rocky" as a wild jab toward a win. Surprisingly, the punch connected, and the actor/writer found himself presenting at the 49th Academy Awards in 1977, where "Rocky" was nominated for nine Oscars and won three. During his presentation, no less than one of the major inspirations for the film, professional boxer Muhammad Ali, approached him at the podium. In this clip from the broadcast, you can see Stallone become nervous at Ali's appearance (even though the bit was almost certainly rehearsed beforehand).

Although Ali pretended to be incensed at Stallone — shouting things like "You stole my script!" and "I'm the real Apollo!" at the writer — the two gamely staged a mock bout before shaking hands, indicating that Ali was accepting of Stallone being inspired by him for the movie. To be fair, the plot of "Rocky" and its central character, Rocky Balboa, was mainly inspired by another real-life boxer, Chuck Wepner, and it was Wepner's 1975 bout with Ali that Stallone drew from in particular. Despite that tangential connection, Ali was the direct inspiration for another aspect of "Rocky," something which the boxing legend was apparently flattered by.

To say that the character of Apollo Creed (played by Carl Weathers) is an Ali analogue might appear lazy on paper. After all, both men are boxers, both have a boisterous and boastful personality, both are Black, and so on. Yet despite all the unique qualities that Weathers brought to the role, there's undeniably some DNA of Ali in Apollo. It's there clearly enough for Ali himself to have noticed it, hence the moment at the Oscars.

Yet Ali didn't simply casually observe a connection between himself and Creed. He also articulated it, most succinctly during an interview with film critic Roger Ebert in 1979, where the pair watched "Rocky II" together. In the piece, Ebert speaks to Ali about the general similarities between the events and characters in the film and the boxing world, aspects which Ali gladly corroborates or denies. (During a scene of Rocky weight lifting, Ali says it's "the worst thing a boxer can do...but it looks good in the movie.")

However, when Ebert pressed Ali about whether he thinks the Balboa character is inspired by him, Ali sets the record straight about which character is really more like him:

"No way. Rocky doesn't act nothing like me. Apollo Creed, the way he dances, the way he jabs, the way he talks ... that's me."

Furthermore, Ali claims that Weathers himself told him that "he got the dancing and the jabbing, the whole style of Apollo Creed" from watching footage of the boxer. For the most part, Ali seemed to be pleased with Apollo and "Rocky" in general, calling "Rocky II" a movie that "has all the ingredients...the excitement never dulled." Yet there is an aspect of the "Rocky" films (the ones Ali got to see, that is) which the champion had some sobering thoughts about, and stated plainly to Ebert when prompted:

"For the Black man to come out superior would be against America's teachings. I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky."

Ali passed away in June of 2016, just seven months after the release of Ryan Coogler's "Creed," which followed the exploits of Apollo's son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), and made Rocky a supporting character. It's not clear if Ali got to screen the film before he died, but one hopes that if so, Ali enjoyed it just as much as — if not a little more than — he did the first two "Rocky" films.