Rocky

Rocky was a film from 1976 starring Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. It tells a classic rags-to-riches tale about a washed-up boxer from Philadelphia who gets a shot at the world heavyweight title in the Spectrum. It was written by Stallone and directed by John G. Avildsen.

In it, Balboa takes his one thousand to one shot at the title and makes the most of it, dropping Creed, an imitation of Muhammad Ali, in the first round and putting on an impressive show of heart before losing on a 15 round split decision and gaining instant fame world wide.

An interesting detail is that Joe Frazier, a real life former world heavyweight boxing champion who boxed Ali three times, had a cameo appearance in this film.

The film won the Oscars best picture award for 1976 and earned Stallone a nomination as best actor.

The success of Rocky spawned a number of sequels (Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV and Rocky V), about which it is generally agreed that they got progressively less inspired and less entertaining.

One legacy of the original movie is the stirring theme music, which is often played at various sporting contests.