He would not have had the height and reach to make it in the heavyweight division. Still, Sylvester Stallone might have made it in a lower weight class. Even at the relatively short height of 5′9″ in his prime — maybe only 5′8″ barefoot — he still was a man with formidable drive and natural athletic ability. He’s also fairly well-built and has strong arms and large hands for a man his height.
He never dedicated all his energy into boxing, however… he dedicated it in acting, film making, creating art and convincigly portraying larger-than-life characters on film, despite only being a relatively short male specimen himself. I say that’s pretty impressive. Before he did the first Rocky movie, Stallone was a nobody. He lived paychecks to paycheck and could barely feed his dog.
He had to do an awful lot of negotiating to even be allowed to play himself in his own movie. Let alone hold on to the rights of the script, allowing him to make it into a series and leverage his way into Hollywood. That dog he had in the first Rocky movie? It was Stallone’s actual dog. He’s in the credits of the movie, too — he made that movie for him. Had he not gotten the part, he might not have made rent.
If boxing was his way out, he would have grasped it. But it wasn’t boxing — it was acting. And he excelled in it. Had he felt boxing was his ticket to fame, surely he would have tried harder. But he was a stocky and not particularly quick boxer in a world full of lightning fast punchers. So the lightweight division was hard to get into. And for the heavyweights, he was simply too short. So acting it was. And acting, it remained.
You can say a lot about Sylvester Stallone. About his acting ability. About his boxing ability. But the man has and had tremendous drive and true grit and it cannot be denied.
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