Carl Weathers has passed away at age 76. In Rocky, and that film is now, amazingly, 48 years in the rear view mirror, Weathers took a role that could have been a throwaway comedic villain role, and invested it with charm, courage and raw power. I will miss him. May his exuberance, energy and humor serve him well in the next life.
Bonus:
Rest in Eternal Peace Carl Weathers. He really did play an enduring character in Creed. I loved how he went from the agitator to the mentor with Rocky.
I’m surprised he was excluded from the latest Creed Franchises. They could have used him to rescue some of the mediocre acting by Michael B Jordan. They were ok.
He was a perfect counter to the Hollywood film producers who thought going with the “gangsta” types was the key to a “relevant” film.
A lot of people (outside TAC) don’t know that Carl Weathers played one season at linebacker (he played in 7 games: It was a 14 game regular season then) for the old Oakland Raiders, the year they went to the AFC Championship but lost to the Baltimore Colts, 21-17. This was when 43-year-old ex-Kentucky star George Blanda, the back-up quarterback, and at that time considered well over-the -hill, kept coming off the bench for Darryl LaMonica when LaMonica was injured, and Blanda either threw for touchdowns or kicked the field goal to win the game.
Weathers was a very competent quick linebacker, but the next year they tried to move him to safety (one of those weird Al Davis ideas— Davis wanted big hard-hitting safeties like Jack Tatum or Al Atkinson), a position that didn’t suit him and he ended up getting released and after that only played in the Canadian league for a couple or so years.
Anyway, Weathers had the last laugh, because he had studied drama at San Diego State, and as everyone knows he eventually became a star as the bad guy, Apollo Creed. He came up the hard way” without any contacts in the Hollywood industry, and made it big on his own.
Boxing to me is legalized manslaughter.
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