The actor played the cocky heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed next to Sylvester Stallone in 1976, a role that ‘put him on the map’.
Carl Weathers, a former NFL linebacker who became a Hollywood action movie and comedy star, playing nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the Rocky films, facing off against Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and teaching golf in Happy Gilmore, has died. He was 76.
Matt Luber, his manager, said Weathers died on Thursday. His family issued a statement saying he died “peacefully in his sleep”.
Comfortable flexing his muscles on the big screen in Action Jackson as he was joking around on the small screen in such shows as Arrested Development, Weathers was perhaps most closely associated with Creed, who made his first appearance as the cocky, undisputed heavyweight world champion in 1976’s Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone.
“It puts you on the map and makes your career, so to speak. But that’s a one-off, so you’ve got to follow it up with something. Fortunately those movies kept coming, and Apollo Creed became more and more in people’s consciousness and welcome in their lives, and it was just the right guy at the right time,” he told The Daily Beast in 2017.
Most recently, Weathers has starred in the Disney+ hit The Mandalorian, appearing in all three seasons.
Creed, who appeared in the first four Rocky films, memorably died in the ring of 1984’s Rocky IV, going toe-to-toe with the hulking, steroid-using Soviet Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren.
Before he entered the ring, James Brown sang “Living in America” with showgirls and Creed popped up on a balcony in a Star-Spangled Banner shorts and waistcoat combo and an Uncle Sam hat, dancing and taunting Drago.
A bloodied Creed collapses in the ring after taking a vicious beating, twitches and is cradled by Rocky as he dies, inevitably setting up a fight between Drago and Rocky. But while Creed is gone, his character’s son, Michael B.
