For those not familiar with the "Rocky" franchise, the general outline goes like this: In the first film, Rocky Balboa, a low-rent Philadelphia nobody boxer, gets tapped to fight Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). By the fourth film, Creed and Balboa, now friends, arrange an exhibition match between Creed and trash-talking Russian caricature Ivan Drago, per IMDb. Creed fails to take the match seriously, and Drago beats his adversary to death in the ring.

Stallone admitted, via Screen Rant, that his biggest regret from the franchise is killing off Apollo Creed. "It was foolish. 'Rocky V' would've never happened, and 'Rocky VI' maybe never would've happened...that way," he said of the decision. He further noted that if he had to do it all over again, Creed wouldn't have been killed by Drago, just disabled, and he would have become Rocky's trainer from a wheelchair.

In October 2021, Stallone re-released a new cut of "Rocky IV," which, though it doesn't change Creed's outcome in any significant way, does restore about 40 minutes of cut footage to the film.

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