What To Know
- Dolph Lundgren revealed in his memoir that he unintentionally sent Sylvester Stallone to the hospital during the filming of Rocky IV.
- Stallone spent four days in intensive care with a bruised heart.
- Lundgren only learned about the severity of Stallone’s injuries after returning to Los Angeles.
Dolph Lundgren sent Sylvester Stallone to the hospital while filming Rocky IV, the Swedish-American actor revealed in his new memoir Fights Worth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle.
In the 1985 movie, Lundgren memorably played the Soviet boxer, Ivan Drago, who killed Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) in the ring. Drago then fought Rocky Balboa (Stallone), who emerged victorious.
After one particularly intense rehearsal, Lundgren, 68, recalled learning that Stallone, 80, had to seek medical care at a hospital.
“I was bigger than him and was probably hurting him a lot more than he was hurting me, but the first I ever knew about it was after I had gone back to L.A. and the producer told me, ‘You’ve got two weeks off,’” Lundgren recounted, per Entertainment Weekly. “I said, ‘Oh, great. Why?’ He said, ‘Sly’s in the hospital.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, s***.’”
Lundgren explained that he and Stallone “had filmed multiple takes of Rocky being hit by a lot of really heavy shots to the body.” After wrapping up filming of the scenes, however, Stallone “began having trouble breathing.”
Ultimately, Stallone spent four days in intensive care — partly because he was “overworked,” Lundgren speculated. (Stallone not only starred in Rocky IV, but also wrote and directed the film.)
“According to Sly, I had hit him so hard that his heart had slammed up against his breastbone and was bruised,” Lundgren detailed. “Because people who had been thrown up against the steering wheel in car accidents often died from this, Sly later said ‘a streetcar named Drago’ had hit him. All I knew was I had hit him hard when he told me to hit him hard and he had absorbed a lot of punishment.”
Lundgren added, “It was only much later that I learned he had actually been in intensive care. Because the next time I saw him was when we started shooting again back in Los Angeles, and he seemed fine.”
In addition to Lundgren, Stallone, and Weathers, Rocky IV starred Talia Shire and Burt Young, among others.
Rocky IV, streaming on Pluto TV, AMC+, Paramount+, and Philo