The Curse of Rocky Balboa

We've all heard of curses in the sports world. There used to be one that haunted the Boston Red Sox, but that curse was broken in 2004. Not to be outdone, the Cubs have their own curse, as do the St. Louis Cardinals (later broken in October 2006), anyone or anything touched by basketball legend Elgin Baylor and the entire city of Philadelphia, apparently suffering under an umbrella curse that affects all of their sports teams. Well, I'm proud to coin the newest addition to the landscape: the curse of Rocky Balboa.

You see, Rocky Balboa is the quintessential Part-American success story, a linguistically challenged, down-on-his-luck Italo-Philadelphian boxer, portrayed effortlessly by the linguistically challenged Sylvester Stallone. The first movie, Rocky, actually won two Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Director) in 1976 and netted Sly a nomination for Best Actor. Following that success, there have been several iterations of the Rocky franchise which, along with the first film, have grossed in excess of $500 million in aggregate. The plot line for the subsequent movies did not stray much from the original: Rocky takes extraordinarily dramatic punishment and, in some cases, a loss, before triumphantly stomping a mud hole in each successively larger opponent. With that beating complete, the villains who opposed Rocky have only begun to suffer-- for they have now been infected with the curse of Rocky Balboa.

The first victim of the curse was Carl Weathers, who played heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. Creed wins a heart-wrenching battle in Rocky I, but later returns for multiple beatings in Rocky II and Rocky IV. If that wasn't enough for Carl Weathers, he later lost an arm in an unforgettable scene in the 1987 hit Predator.

Beginning with the third Rocky movie, new villains had to be introduced to provide some false hope that Rocky would finally get the beating that he deserved. In Rocky III, Hulk Hogan makes an appearance as a heel, but the real hay makers landed on the inimitable mug of Mr. T. Not that either Hogan or Mr. T needed much help in failing, but the curse has pushed Hogan back to the disdainful world of television wrestling and displaced Mr. T from once-budding star bodyguard to pitchman for collect phone call commercials.

Rocky IV's villain, Dolph Lundgren as the Cold War villain Ivan Drago, also stumbled following his stint as Stallone's appointed punching bag. His next role was as He-Man in the Masters of the Universe, and then he was The Punisher. Need I say more? Okay, he was also engaged to Grace Jones, who left an indelible mark on the silver screen with her work in Conan the Destroyer.

All was well and good at this point, as the villains were only taking a symbolic beating as victims of the Rocky Balboa curse. What happened next was, well, simply breathtaking. The curse of Rocky Balboa first manifested itself physically in the form of Tommy "The Duke" Morrison. Morrison, an undefeated professional boxer, took on the role of villain in Rocky V. Less than a year after that film was released, Morrison took a monumentally viscous beating at the hands of "Merciless" Ray Mercer. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can now share in the joy of witnessing that savage beating by pressing play in the frame below:

Following that pummeling, Morrison's career never regained its upward trajectory as he toiled against good fighters (including Lennox Lewis and a sideshow event with George Foreman) for inferior purses and largely unrecognized titles. He later tested positive for HIV and spent a little time in the pokey on drug and weapons charges.

[Update: As of October 31, 2006, Tommy Morrision is now applying for a boxing license in Nevada to begin a comeback. Morrison's attorney now claims the Duke never had AIDS/HIV, alleging that "his prefight blood test for his 1996 bout... resulted [in] a false-positive or was rigged by a rival promoter out to get him." Morrison was quoted as saying, "A lot of people doubt that I have anything left. But one thing they're forgetting is that I haven't been fighting for 10 years. I've been resting. I'll go down in history. It's going to happen. Then I'll become a legend." That's right Tommy, after you go down in history you become a legend. But to become a legend, you can't just fight bums. Instead, you'll have the tall task (pun intended) of defeating behemoths like current IBF heavyweight champion, the 6'6" Dr. Wladimir Klitschko and current WBA heavyweight champion, the 7'+, 330 pound Nikolai Valuev. Morrison was last listed at 6'2", 224 lbs.]

So, given the history of the curse of Rocky Balboa, it should come as no surprise that the villain for Rocky VI (titled Rocky Balboa), Antonio "The Magic Man" Tarver, has recently fallen victim to the curse of Rocky Balboa. This evening he took a convincing beating (and lost me $20) at the hands of Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins. The fight was never close and one should expect that Tarver will probably hang the gloves up soon. It clearly isn't going to get any better for him-- just ask Tommy Morrison.

In addition to the Rocky Balboa curse, Tarver likely suffers from the bad karma generated by the name of his character, Mason "The Line" Dixon (really, no shit), in the upcoming Rocky Balboa. There had to have been gross negligence at multiple levels of the production and corporate regime to permit a black character to be named after a surveying reference most renowned for its role in the Missouri Compromise slave debate and resulting Civil War. That's just plain stupid and Tarver, along with everyone else involved in Rocky Balboa, should be cursed for that kind of boorish idiocy. As a public service, we ought to get Ray Mercer a few rounds with Stallone and those Sony Pictures executives.

Comments welcome. Curses not.