Sylvester Stallone didn’t just act like he was fighting for his life in Rocky IV – he actually was. One punch from Dolph Lundgren sent him straight to intensive care. “He pulverized me,” Stallone admitted, and that was putting it lightly. The hit was no stunt. Stallone wanted real punches to make the fight scenes feel authentic.
Lundgren, a legit 4th dan black belt, was happy to oblige. Bad idea. Stallone took a full-force shot to the chest. At first, he brushed it off. Then, reality hit – hard. “I didn’t feel it in the moment, but later that night my heart started to swell,” he said, per the National Post.
His blood pressure skyrocketed to 260. The next thing he knew, he was on a low-altitude emergency flight from Vancouver to California. Doctors didn’t sugarcoat it. That punch slammed Sylvester Stallone’s heart against his breastbone. He spent four days in intensive care. Some reports say eight. Either way, he was lucky to walk away. And despite almost literally dying for the role, he left the footage in. “How could you take that out?”
Fast-forward to the 35th anniversary of Rocky IV, and Stallone was still talking about the wildest hit of his career. In The Making of Rocky vs. Drago, a behind-the-scenes deep dive into his director’s cut, he relived the moment that nearly ended it all. The reworked version, Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago, dropped with 40 minutes of never-seen footage on November 12.
Not everyone remembers it the same way. Producer Irwin Winkler claimed in his autobiography that Stallone’s trip to the ER wasn’t because of Lundgren but from a hit by a stand-in fighter. Stallone, however, stuck to his story. Sylvester Stallone took a punch that nearly sent him to the pearly gates and kept rolling. Rocky IV wasn’t just a movie. It was survival.
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