‘Rocky IV’: Carl Weathers Once Fooled a Doctor Into Thinking He Was Severely Injured During on-Screen Death

As most know, actor Carl Weathers’ character, Apollo Creed, met his fate at the hands of Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. But Weathers’ performance was so convincing that a doctor on set believed Lundgren’s killer punch did real damage.

Carl Weathers sometimes intentionally went at it with his co-stars in the ‘Rocky’ franchise

Weathers once revealed that the fighting could sometimes be a little too real on set of the Rocky franchise. In an interview with GQ, Weathers described the risks that he and Stallone took pretending to battle it out.

“It was hard to escape taking punches on set. There were times when intentionally we went at each other. I was always concerned that if I hit Sly, threw a punch right, it might hurt. And there was no reason for that. And I think he was pretty much the same way,” Weathers said.

But of course, accidents did happen on set.

“But there were times when we did get hit. You know, fatigue and slipping would occur and you’d just go, ‘Wait a minute, man. Another one of those and you’re gonna get something back. And it won’t be fun what I throw back.’ So there were moments like that, of course. But none of it was intentional unless it was supposed to be intentional,” he added.

A doctor really believed Dolph Lundgren knocked out Carl Weathers in ‘Rocky IV’

GQ noted that there were rumors Lundgren and Weathers got into a real altercation on the set of Rocky IV. But Weathers asserted it was nothing but a pleasure collaborating with the Expendables star at the time.

“I love those stories when they’re made up, you know. It’s kind of great fodder for publicity. You get the audience interested and all that. But Dolph is just a sweet guy. And I like to think I am as well. Despite what it has looked like on screen,” Weathers continued. “No, we worked really well together and I’ve seen Dolph so many times since then. He’s just as generous today as he was then. And I think more than anything else, he played that character extremely well.”

Lundgren’s Ivan Drago would go on to kill Weathers’ Apollo in the fourth Rocky movie during a boxing match. But the two worked so well together that a real-life doctor on set rushed to Weathers’ help.

“I thought, well Apollo goes down – number one, I don’t want to catch myself, ’cause that gives it away,” Weathers said on the documentary The Rocky Saga: Going the Distance (via Contact Music). “And then I was doing this little twitching as I went down and the doctor really thought I’d got taken out. He came running up to me – ‘Are you okay, are you alright?’ ‘Yeah, man!’. He saw the twitching and thought I got tagged, man. It worked, it worked.”

Carl Weathers believed his acting career began after Apollo Creed’s death

Although the Rocky series brought Weathers much superstardom, The Mandalorian actor felt his career flourished after he left the franchise. This was because Apollo’s popularity and recognizability presented an issue to Weathers’ career.

“What happens is very often, people begin to confuse you with the character,” Weathers said according to BillBogs TV. “And movie producers tend to do the same thing. You find yourself in a situation where they don’t see Carl Weathers, they see Apollo Creed.”

Being killed off in Rocky IV allowed Weathers to move away from Apollo and explore more diverse characters.