Rocky IV (Episode 13) - Training Montages: Hearts on Fire & Nature vs Machines

Deep dive into Rocky IV’s training sequences in Episode 14 of Going The Distance! Guest Kyle joins to break down Paulie roasting marshmallows to Alvin and the Chipmunks, Tony Duke’s heartfelt talk with Rocky about training alone, the epic side-by-side montages (Rocky’s raw nature training vs Drago’s high-tech steroid-fueled sessions), and Adrian’s surprise return with “No Matter What” support leading into the “Hearts on Fire” montage.

Creators and Guests

Host

Ryan Rebalkin

Guest

Kyle Pederson

What is Going The Distance: The Rocky Series Podcast?

Step into the ring with *Going The Distance: The Rocky Series Podcast*, the ultimate celebration of Sylvester Stallone's iconic underdog saga. Hosted by passionate Rocky superfan Ryan Rebalkin, this dedicated feed dives deep into every punch, montage, and heartfelt moment of the *Rocky* franchise—one film at a time, in glorious chronological order.

Whether you're reliving the gritty streets of Philadelphia in the original *Rocky* or breaking down the epic family legacy in *Rocky Balboa*, Ryan brings the energy of a champion. Joined by his brother Ruban, fellow superfans, amateur boxers and even musicians behind the films' anthems (shoutout to Robert Tepper's "No Easy Way Out"), each episode unpacks scenes with infectious enthusiasm, behind-the-scenes trivia, and personal stories that capture why *Rocky* still inspires millions to "go the distance."

From dissecting the legendary training montages and rematches, this podcast isn't just analysis—it's a knockout conversation that honors the heart, humor, and hustle of the Italian Stallion. It's perfect for die-hard fans, casual viewers, and anyone chasing their own eye-of-the-tiger moment.

Tune in for laughs, insights, and motivation that hits harder than Apollo Creed's left hook. Lace up your boots—it's time to go the distance!

Going The Distance - Rocky IV - Episode 14.mp3
Yeah, but we're at the part, though, where Pauly's roasting a marshmallow.
This is when they're having some downtime.
Yeah, that's right.
And Alvin and the Chipmunks is playing.
Yep.
I'll say we are.
Which is a very apt moment in the movie, being that it's the Christmas holidays.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Because those atheistic communist Soviets, they don't care that it's Christmas.
To them, it's Christmas.
To me, it's Thursday, you know?
That's right.
To them, it's just Thursday.
Or whatever Thursday is in Russia.
Yeah, exactly.
I've got a pirate stream that I'm watching, so hopefully that will continue to be okay.
I have the DVDs.
It's just easy for me to have it on my computer.
Yeah, I'm just a really slow computer.
No, no worries.
I'm holding the DVD right now.
What's the policy on?
I own the DVDs.
I actually have bought the movies numerous times, but I'm actually illegally streaming
the movie to watch for the podcast recording.
You know what I mean?
Is that a conundrum or no?
Well, I don't give a shit, but I'm sure technically it is illegal.
It's illegal, but it's illegal, but not unethical, if that makes sense.
There you go.
I like it.
My whole life is one big gray area.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm just going to scene selections here.
Actually, I should just go play a movie.
Yeah, if you just play the movie, I'll let you watch it.
It'll take you 20 minutes to catch up to work.
On the stream itself, it is at the 5250 mark.
Yeah, he's roasting the marshmallow.
Okay.
All right.
Listening to his...
I don't know what that is.
Is that a Walkman or what?
What the fuck is that?
It might be a radio.
If it's a...
It's like they're in the middle of nowhere.
That's the thing, right?
They have the chipmunks playing in Siberia.
And they don't have his comics.
No.
No.
I love how...
I love how his comics have become like...
You know, this is a real journey for him and his relationship with these comics.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, Polly.
Silliness in this movie.
Yeah, well, the scene just before this one was him falling in the snow.
We covered that already, but that was his...
When he's falling in the snow and making those sounds.
Okay, so this is before Adrian shows up.
Yeah, so I think our goal today will be to cover the sequences leading up to the two training montages.
Because we don't have to sit there and dissect the training montages over and over.
Because people can watch that online whenever they want.
We'll talk about, you know, what he's doing, how his training is going, dissect it.
Because they're both putting in maximum effort.
Yeah, I think they're both trying.
Like, the Russian is getting pushed by those people to, like, the breaking point.
Plus, he's getting juiced out.
But then Rocky, he's doing it old school.
And he's making himself uncomfortable.
Because he isn't as cushy.
He's like the indoor gym and stuff.
Right.
We'll talk about that.
Okay, so you ready to go?
I'm ready.
I'm ready.
Welcome.
Welcome to the...
What am I called again?
I always forget this.
Is it Going the Distance, the Rocky Series?
Yeah, see, it's my fault.
So we used to call it Going the Distance, the Rocky Series podcast.
But I think it's the Rocky Series podcast, Going the Distance.
I don't know.
Either way, Rocky Series podcast.
We're going the distance with this podcast.
You can find us on Twitter.
Find us on Facebook.
You name it.
Today, we're recording just moments before Christmas.
And I think that's really exciting.
because in the sequence that my guest host, Kyle, we all know Kyle.
He's been here a few times before.
We are going to dissect Pauly roasting a marshmallow.
Any thoughts on the marshmallow, Kyle?
Sorry.
I just dropped that on you.
I didn't mean to...
That was a terrible segue.
I'm wondering where he got it.
Did he bring it with him?
Oh, good question.
Did they have marshmallows up there?
I don't think Russians have marshmallows.
I would doubt it.
Especially out there.
Maybe in big city or something like that.
You go to a place that has marshmallows.
But there was nothing around him.
I wouldn't put it past Pauly to pack some marshmallows.
And he's sitting there roasting that marshmallow.
And he almost has a stoned face look on his face.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
He's content for some reason.
Which is odd.
Because before, he was complaining incessantly.
Right.
So I guess the key to Pauly's happiness is a candle, a marshmallow,
the Elvin the Chipmunk scene, Christmas songs,
in a foreign cabin in a foreign land.
It does seem rather cozy.
I'll give him that.
Like, it's very rustic.
But yeah, it does look cozy.
You know, if I didn't have kids,
this is the kind of thing I would do.
You know, go to a cabin out in the wilderness.
No internet.
No nothing.
And just roast and fireplace and food.
And yeah, snuggle with the wife on the couch.
And I kind of like that.
Yeah, exactly.
But kids ruin everything, don't they, Kyle?
Everything.
I always whine and ask you for stuff, you know.
We got to feed them.
Anyways, yeah, clothe them.
All that crap.
It beats the last place Pauly stayed at.
Like that hotel in Los Angeles.
That's right, where he yelled at the sternobums.
Sternobums.
Yeah.
So, this isn't so bad, after all.
Good point.
This is better than that hotel.
What was that hotel called again?
We talked about it.
In fact, you were the guest on that episode, I think.
Yeah, that's a really well-known hotel, too.
I can't.
I don't remember the name of it.
But you see that in lots of movies.
And to Pauly's left, we've got Duke playing chess with one of the Russian handlers.
Which is so stereotypical.
Because, like, of course, chess is a game that's very popular in Russia.
A lot of the chess champions have been from Russia.
Oh, I didn't know that, actually.
And, yeah.
And you're going to see Duke here get a checkmate.
And it's like a really kind of obvious checkmate, too.
Yeah, it's a pretty bad...
Yeah, because you've got the king.
Now, his king has made it...
Oh, that's his queen there.
So his queen's all the way down the end.
To the queen's right is the bishop.
The king is...
Right in front of the king is his two pawns.
And he checkmates the king with...
With a pawn.
With a pawn.
Oh, I see.
Sorry, that's Tony's queen.
Yeah, so he checkmate this guy.
How did that happen?
No, Tony's king.
So it's Tony's king.
Oh, it is Tony's king, yeah.
And then the Russian guy's bishop.
And then the Russian guy's king.
And then he has two pawns in front of it.
And this guy put his king into a corner like that.
Somehow let a pawn creep up all the way over there.
And take it out.
I love how even in this movie, the Russian can't win the chess game.
It has to be the American.
I know.
Exactly.
They're all idiots.
This guy probably did something stupid.
And this is why he's on this assignment.
It's like, okay, you're going to Siberia to watch this guy train.
Maybe it's circumstance.
I don't know.
It's a 50-50 chance.
But, of course, Duke, he's playing the black pieces.
And the Russian's playing the black pieces.
The white...
It is just a coincidence that a black player is playing a white player on the most celebrated day in the country's history, right?
Like, you know if this movie was filmed today that they would have purposely made sure the black guy had the white pieces.
Yeah, exactly.
But the black guy did win, though.
He did win.
Checkmate, my friend.
It's working.
He's American and he's black, though.
The set-up, though.
It's interesting because we get this feeling of there's some sort of community within this, you know, within the time that Rocky's been here that they've made...
Paulie's not complaining anymore.
So time probably has passed since his initial time off the plane.
Paulie's made a home out of it.
He's made his own little setup.
You know, he's listening to the radio, trying to feel the Christmas spirit in Russia.
Tony's relaxed, talking to the Russian handlers, playing games with them.
He even says, checkmate, my friend.
Checkmate, friend.
And then the next sequence is we see Tony look upstairs.
He's looking upstairs and he's like, I better go talk to Rocky here.
Yeah.
And just a little bit.
Tony literally does nothing.
The whole training sequence.
Well, next to nothing.
He holds the pad up that Rocky punches a few times, but Rocky basically just does his own thing.
And even Tony is going to say that in just a second.
Like, you're basically going to do everything by yourself up here.
Yeah.
So Tony's presence up here, it is kind of interesting that it's...
What is he doing?
He's probably helping with equipment, probably.
Well, yeah.
There's hardly any equipment.
But Paulie and Tony will help out here and there a little bit.
But I think they're there for moral support.
Fair enough.
I think moral support's the answer.
They're there to show that we believe in you.
We're here for you.
We're all in this together.
Tony obviously has an interest because Apollo, who he said, was like,
a son to him, was killed.
Right.
Obviously, he wanted Rocky to win this thing.
We cut now to the scene where Rocky is...
Rocky's obsessed with putting photos up on the mirror.
On mirrors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Plus his heart.
But you know what?
To be fair, he doesn't have an iPhone to carry around with him or Facebook.
So he's putting up right now a picture of his son on the mirror.
And it looks like it's the same child actor that is actually playing his son in this film.
Well, if it wasn't, I'd have a freak out.
Because it's pretty lazy filmmaking if you don't make it the same person.
You would think so.
The Rocky franchise is never known to have any kind of lazy filmmaking in it.
No, never.
They are very astute with the details.
I was going to say the newspaper clipping of Drago.
Yeah, he's got the Drago newspaper clipping.
Is this a reminder of who he's fighting?
Yeah, I think so.
I think it's like to keep his goal in mind.
Like he's putting up what's important to him.
Like in just a couple seconds later, you see Adrian is actually on top of Drago.
I don't know if you remember from Rocky 2 before the fight at the end.
Apollo had a new saber clipping of Rocky up on the mirror.
Oh, yeah.
Before the fight, he takes it and he crumples it up.
Yep.
So maybe time hasn't really passed.
Because he's probably just making himself comfortable in the room.
It's hard to say with these films how much time passed between scenes.
They don't do a good job with the timeline in the Rocky films in general.
Simple editing would make it a little bit more viewer friendly.
But if truly they're just settling in for the first night.
Like I can't imagine Tony's already playing chess with this Russian guy.
And Pauly's already calmed down since he's getting out of the plane.
But that's what we're led to believe.
I just thought of something.
I don't know if that guy playing chess was the KGB guy.
Oh, right.
I think he was the dude with the kid that was chopping wood.
Yeah, he lives there.
Oh, okay, yeah.
He was chopping wood, yeah.
I think he was well-in-told to have Rocky and those people stay in his house.
Oh, yeah.
It was like, do this or you're killed.
Yeah, exactly.
I love Sly.
His build is, you know, he's so, like, his is short, right?
And he's so stacked.
Yeah.
Such big barrel chest, big arms.
Yeah.
And he's wearing this undergarment type shirt.
What would you call it?
Long John type shirt.
Yeah.
And it's just skin tight.
Just skin tight.
Yeah.
No coincidence.
Yeah.
They really want to show his build.
Yeah.
Hey, champ.
Can I come up?
Yeah, sure.
How you doing?
Pretty good.
Some kind of weather we having up here, huh?
Yeah, it's pretty rough.
A little bit of small talk at the beginning here.
Tony asks if he can come up.
And Rocky says, of course, sure.
Tony asks Rocky, you know, how you doing?
And Rocky's like, no, doing good, doing fine.
And Tony then says, it's some rough weather we're having up, you know.
So a real small talk just before we get into the meat of this meeting that Tony wants to give Rocky.
That moral support you're talking about.
Yeah.
But for what you got to do, it's good.
Toughen you up.
I guess so.
Well, he says here that this is a good place to train because it will toughen him up.
And he gives him a little punch to the chest there and they have a little chuckle there.
Yeah.
Which is funny because he has that skin tight thing.
He looks pretty built.
But I guess that's not synonymous with toughness either.
No, but having muscles is an indication of some sort of strength.
I know what you mean by toughness.
Like, you can be strong, but you could be a...
Have a low pain tolerance.
Yeah, sure.
Which Rocky doesn't have, all right.
Rocky obviously has a very high pain tolerance.
Well, that's the whole training regime in this thing.
No pain.
No pain.
Yeah.
That there is the entirety of the direction that he gave Rocky other than hit the guy in
the middle.
Yeah.
Which will be the next episode will be hit the guy in the middle.
I know you're going to have to do almost everything alone up here.
But you know I'll be with you.
Yeah, I know.
Okay.
So you're right.
So Tony says, I know you're going to have to do pretty much everything alone up here.
But I'm going to be right there with you.
And Rocky kind of looks forlorn here with that statement.
Now, why...
Was this what Rocky intended?
Is this he wanted to train alone?
He just wants to be alone?
What's your feelings on this?
This is a big departure from previous Rocky movies.
Because before, Rocky really needed, especially Adrian in this corner, and needed a lot of support
and guidance and direction in order to train effectively.
Right.
And here, right before this, he got in a huge fight with Adrian.
She made it very clear that she didn't believe he could win.
Yep.
She made it very clear that she disapproved of this fight.
He goes anyways.
Right.
He's determined to do his own thing here.
He's the one who picked this location.
Like, Apollo's the one who picked the location last time, right?
Like, Rocky was kind of just kind of doing what Apollo wanted him to do.
And he still had to get his head in the right place to train, right?
Right.
But here, he's just his own man here.
You kind of see he's matured as a person and as a character here.
And I still think he needs some moral support.
But yeah, I think he kind of designed to do everything himself.
Okay.
And kind of a line from, this is from Rocky Balboa movie.
It kind of shows Tony's mindset.
When Tony's about to train him again in Rocky Balboa all those years later.
Right.
He says to him, you know everything there is to know about fighting.
Right.
Right.
Tony obviously has a lot of, he always has had a lot of respect for Rocky anyways.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point.
That's the idea that Tony's always had this true respect for Rocky.
Of course, you know, at the very beginning of Rocky 1 where he's punching the meat and Tony
was the only one from Apollo's camp was like, hey, you got to take a look at this guy.
This guy, this is a real boxer we're pulling out of a hat here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or like when he's like, you know, like don't let up on this man.
He's dangerous.
Mm-hmm.
You know, Paul's like, I'm dangerous.
I'm dangerous.
Yeah.
Tony, Tony knows Rocky can do it.
I think he believes in Rocky more than Rocky believes in himself at this point.
I think that's why Rocky's looking kind of forlorn.
He, I think he's almost doing this out of obligation.
I'm not convinced Rocky thinks he can actually win at this point.
No, he's got a missing piece.
He's got a missing piece.
We'll get to that later.
All right.
Let's continue with the conversation here.
Apollo was like my son.
I raised him.
Here's a key moment here.
Tony says Apollo was like my son.
I raised him.
Do we gloss over this issue?
Did Tony truly raise Apollo?
From what age and from what background?
Well, we don't know.
We don't know anything about their relationship other than he was Apollo's trainer.
My guess would be that he trained, he's older.
Tony's a little older.
Yeah.
And he trained Apollo ever since he was a young man.
We don't know if Apollo ever had a father figure or not.
Actually, I think he did.
I think you see his parents at the funeral.
Now that I think about it.
Well, there was a, anyway.
Yeah, there was an older black couple there that could have very well been his parents.
But he says he raised them though.
So who knows?
He could mean that in a lot of ways, right?
Like if they've spent most of their lives together.
Apollo was born in 1942.
And so that would make him 43 when he died.
Right.
And Tony could, if Tony was with him since the beginning of his pro career, that's like over 20 years.
Yeah, he probably raised him up in that he, like I could see Rocky saying something similar about Mick in a way.
Especially if Mick had trained him earlier.
Okay.
Yeah, I like that.
And when he died, part of me died.
But now, you're the one.
You're the one that's going to keep his spirit alive.
You're the one that's going to make sure that he didn't die for nothing.
So, of course, he says, you know, when Apollo died, a part of me died with him.
That goes without saying.
And then he tells Rocky that you're the one to make sure that he doesn't die for nothing.
That's a lot to put on Rocky's shoulders here.
Yeah, and I actually don't really understand what that means.
Yeah, I was waiting for it.
I didn't want to lead the witness.
I didn't want to lead the witness.
I was going to wait to see what you had to say about that.
Yeah, what does that mean?
Anyways, he didn't die for nothing.
Like, he is dead.
He died in a sporting event.
He didn't die in the field of battle.
Okay, if you look at this from the perspective of this is America versus the USSR, they've often fought each other through sports, and that somehow if you beat them in sports, then you're a superior country.
Yeah.
I think it's stupid, but people do kind of think that way.
I guess Apollo trying to show America's superiority would have been for nothing if he got killed and then it went unanswered.
Yeah.
Like, if Drago went back to the USSR and Rocky wouldn't fight him, then doors kind of closed on that.
But to me, that's kind of almost shallow.
Like, even if you do beat Drago, what does that really, it doesn't really do anything, and Apollo's still dead.
So, actually, even Adrian said that earlier.
That's right.
She says, you know, even if you beat him, what have you accomplished?
Apollo's still dead.
She brings it up earlier, absolutely.
Yeah, I think this is, for lack of a better word, kind of like a macho type of mentality.
Yeah.
I'm a man, and we just got challenged, and you beat my friend, and so to protect their honor or whatever, I have to beat you.
I think a lot of women wouldn't think that way.
It's a very male way of thinking, yeah.
Yeah.
I can't let him get the last laugh or last punch in.
Or women are peacemakers.
You know, they just want peace.
Yeah, and then also, like, it came up in Creed, the Creed movies.
Yeah.
But, like, in Creed 2 especially, where Rocky said, I was supposed to be in there, which I think is, he could think that, that's fine, but I don't agree.
Because Apollo had to talk him into going in there, right?
Right.
It's not like Rocky chickened out, and then Apollo had to go in and do it for him.
Like, Apollo more or less manipulated him into it, right?
Right.
Whatever.
But regardless of how logical it is, that's how he feels emotionally, and that's all that matters.
You're going to have to go through hell worse than any nightmare that you ever dreamed.
But in the end, I know you'll be the one standing.
That's right.
So, Tony says, you're going to have to go through a nightmare worse than you've ever imagined to beat this guy.
To train to beat this guy.
But I know you'll be the one standing.
Now, what does Rocky say here?
Does he say that's right or I'll try?
Hey, you there?
Yeah, yeah.
No worries.
I was talking into the iPhone for an embarrassingly long amount of time before I realized you weren't.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I don't know.
Did you hear my question?
No, I don't think so.
Oh, okay.
Just the question was, Duke says to Rocky, like, you're going to have to go through hell to beat this guy.
You're going to be the one standing at the end, though.
My question was, oh, what did Rocky say after that?
Does he say, I'll try?
I'll try.
Okay, that's what I thought.
The closed caption says he'll try.
Okay.
And then, it's kind of a weak response after that big.
Well, it is.
And that reflects his mindset.
Yeah, good point.
I was explaining this to no one just a few minutes ago.
But I think that him just being in Russia, things just got real for him.
He committed to doing the fight before, but now that he's here and he's in this foreign environment, everything changed.
Harsh landscape, harsh people.
At least the KGB people.
You know, I think it kind of collapses in on him.
And he, in his mind, he's probably thinking, like, Apollo was a worthy adversary for him.
And this adversary was murdered within two rounds, right?
Right.
I don't think he took this fight because he thought he was going to win.
Hey, is Rocky feeling suicidal here?
Does he want to die a warrior too?
What's going on here?
Yeah, I don't know.
He probably thinks to himself he can't live with this going unanswered.
This would bother him for the rest of his life.
Which is probably how Apollo felt after his first fight with Rocky.
He could have just moved on, right?
Yeah.
But he knew it would bother him.
Right.
And he'd have to go through with that second fight.
And Rocky's really feeling kind of the same thing.
All right.
So they give each other a little bit of an embrace, a hug here.
And Rocky repeats again.
I'll try.
Yeah.
Tony puts his head down on Rocky's shoulder a little bit there.
It's a little bit intimate.
A bit of an intimate hug there.
I just caught that.
It's like he really kind of snuggled into Rocky's neck there.
Maybe this turns into Brokeback Mountain or something.
Yeah.
And what happens in Siberia stays in Siberia.
Yeah.
Or it dies there.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You know what you got to do.
Do it.
Do it.
And then Tony says, you know what you got to do.
Do it.
Do it.
Oh, by the way, this place they're in is really, I believe, in Wyoming.
That's affirmative.
It is in a Wyoming.
He tells Rocky, do it.
Do it.
And then you hear that musical cue kick in.
I love that musical cue when the camera cuts to Drago in the mirror.
And you hear that Vince DiColo score coming again.
That Drago thing.
It's like, rooo.
I love that theme for the Drago.
So good.
We got some thaw on the icicles.
He's wearing his aviator jacket.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is like, I was going to say it's Canadians, but you live in a much warmer part than me.
You would not really wear that jacket.
Pacific Northwest.
Now, let's talk about his outfit here.
He's wearing the skin-tight type jeans.
I assume he's almost wearing jeans.
He's got a toque on.
And for our non-Canadian listeners, a toque is a snow cap, wool cap.
Yeah.
He's wearing a beanie.
He has the aviator jacket on.
Now, his beanie doesn't cover his ears.
It can get my, like, 30 or 40 below here.
And I'll tell you, you would not wear anything like this if you're going outside to jog in the snow.
But maybe Rocky doesn't know better, right?
And it's not like the Russians are there to help him.
Right.
Perhaps that's part of the toughening up process.
He has to work out inadequate dress.
I love how we see some of the Russian population watching Rocky run.
Because he always has to have an audience watching him run.
Whether it's kids or people in Italian Alley.
And they're incredibly primitive, too, right?
Of course they are.
They could be right out of the 19th century.
Oh, actually, let's go back here.
So we got...
So we're seeing a bit of a setup here.
There's the father with the axe ready to chop more wood.
I guess all he does is chop more wood.
So we see Rocky running in the snow.
The Russian handlers are going to follow him.
And I just want to talk about the Drago machine once they get to...
Oh, I had to go back for a second here.
We see the horse.
How many of those KGB guys are supposed to really do?
I don't know.
What does Rocky get out of?
Do you guys gather intelligence on the wood chopping industries of the Soviet Union?
Maybe just to see what his training regime is.
Maybe they report to the Drago camp.
We know how Rocky's training.
Who knows?
Oh, that's true.
Now we get to Drago's machine.
I just wanted to...
I paused it here real quick.
The read, the red...
The red dials that come up and everything...
Let me get there for a second.
Yeah.
It's a minute five, six exactly.
Okay.
Hold on here.
I've rewound too much.
Okay.
Okay.
Very, very interesting readings on here.
Yeah, we've got monitor, retrace, impulse, calibrate, detector, encoder, transmit, and...
I can't read the last one.
Receive.
Receive.
Thank you.
Okay.
There you go.
Now, the first glaring error here is it's in English.
Right.
Well, it could have been American-made equipment.
No.
Because...
Pardon the bluntness there.
No, no, please.
When you saw the equipment when Drago did the punch test...
Right.
All of the feedback, the output, was in Russian.
Except for the fact they did pounds of pressure for a square inch.
Right.
Because that's not metric.
That's right.
Delta text output was in Russian.
Which is probably just gibberish.
Just as an aside, Ryan, I still have that Russian-speaking guy we could do an episode with.
I know, we will.
I got so much things in the queue.
My wife's going to kill me.
But yes, we have to get him on.
Anyways, that's the first thing, was it's not in Russian.
And the other one is...
A lot of this doesn't make any sense, anyways.
I know.
I don't know what the...
The impulse.
Impulse?
Whatever.
And they have these symbols up there, which is kind of...
This might be an actual piece of equipment for something else.
I love the little sliding opening door when it pans down.
And you got these two...
It almost looks like a flux capacitor Star Trek engine.
Yeah, exactly.
You got to make sure the flux capacitor is flexing.
It's like...
Does anyone have any extra dilithium crystals?
We need to put them in...
Dragos trading...
Oh my gosh.
And then you see a monitor where it's in Russian.
So good job there.
Filmmakers.
I like to say too, this is the first trading montage in the Rocky series where they do side
by side training.
Yeah.
They did a little bit between Clubber and Rocky.
They did it between Rocky's failed...
Oh, you're right.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
When he sort of trained for his...
Sort of training.
Yeah.
Because they're showing...
That's what I did there.
No, that's okay.
Yeah.
They're showing that Clubber's really training hard and street toughness training and Rocky's
pansy-nazy training or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah.
So we got a shot here of Drago on the Stairmaster thing, pumping his legs up and down with a
big, huge spotlight on him from behind.
I'm not too sure what that spotlight's for other than visual effect for the audience, but...
And then the scientists.
They have a lot of people watching him train.
He truly is a specimen for the Russian government because he's being monitored and studied by these
scientists.
They're comparing notes and they're saying, look, look, he's doing legs now.
Amazing.
They're probably supposed to be monitoring all his vital signs and trying to calculate, is he
really...
What percentage is he maxing out cardio system or whatever?
Right.
They're probably monitoring and tracking his progress.
I just find it funny that there's that many of them there.
I don't know what they're getting paid, but they're employed.
Since it's under communism, it's theoretically the only way they're paid to save.
Yeah, that's true.
Who knows?
Maybe they get extra state perks or something.
Yeah, the janitor's getting paid the same amount as the scientists.
Now, Rocky's running through the snow, so that's the juxtaposition here.
So, Dragos on the machine, showing the resistance machine, and Rocky's running in the snow.
And you could argue both the calibration on the machine is tough.
You could argue that the machine could be harder than what Rocky's doing.
Because you could...
I think the snow does suck, though.
Of course it sucks, but...
Yeah.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
That we're led to believe that training in nature is supposed to be more hard.
But you can calibrate the machines to make it near impossible to move.
Yeah.
And, well, I think what they're trying to show is Rocky's in this brutal environment.
And so, not only is he exercising and becoming stronger, but also the toughness of being in the cold, working outdoors, and being physically uncomfortable.
Right.
Above and beyond just the strain.
He's running through water.
That's got to suck for his feet, man.
He's running through this little river of stream.
Yeah, he's got waterproof boots.
In reality, Rocky would have got frostbite, and the fight would have had to have been postponed.
Like, the tip of his nose would be, like, black, and his ears would be all screwed up.
Right.
But whatever.
So then they show Drago running around the track.
I'm counting here.
He's got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 people in this one scene watching him jog around the track.
Well, you could say for sure jogging on the track is much easier.
Oh, yeah.
And then we cut to the Russian handlers watching Rocky run on this stream, making it hard for the guys in the car to follow him.
I think it's, so Rocky's kind of saying F you to the Russian handlers, saying, I'm going to run down the stream.
Have fun following me.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to gather some intelligence on your stream and mountains.
Drago's leg is now strapped down on this leg curling press machine.
Yeah, he's doing the, uh, well, you know, just the tip.
Say that again?
Hey, you there?
Yep.
Okay, I believe we left off at Drago's strap-on.
Yeah, so Drago's leg is strapped on.
Yes.
To the table.
Basically, the leg extensions you do at the gym.
Yeah, that's what he's doing there.
And now we cut to the scene with the horse and the guy who had the horse and carriage in the snow that Rocky passed by earlier at the start of his run.
It looks like he's having some trouble with his horse.
It looks like his horse is going to fall over in the snow here.
Yeah, and Rocky, he does his own weight lifting and also helping humanity at the same time.
He's winning over the Soviet people.
He's rewriting their misconceptions about the evil, greedy Americans.
Yeah, he helps the guy lift the carriage out of the snow.
And then we keep cutting back to now Drago with this some sort of resistance arm training.
His arm is, again, another strap-on.
His arm is strapped on down.
He can't lift it up as he kind of does these backwards side arm curls.
I'm not too sure.
Yeah.
And Lamilla's to his left, you know, with a stopwatcher timer and his trainers are behind him watching with aberration with a big Russian flag in the background.
Now we've got Drago with this kind of like an arm rowing machine type machine.
Yeah, they have those at the gym now.
What do they do?
Yeah, I remember when I saw that a few years ago.
I was like, hey, it's like Rocky movies.
They've already had them all along, but I haven't seen them in gyms until fairly recently.
We can't have a training sequence without Rocky on the speed bag.
Yeah, so he does some traditional training.
Yep.
Now he's sawing logs out.
The weather's getting kind of rough out there.
It's cold.
Yeah.
He's suffering.
Oh, he is suffering.
I think this is supposed to be the point.
Is that Drago is not really suffering like Rocky is, even though they're both working hard.
I thought it was interesting.
There's a black Russian trainer.
I found that interesting.
I didn't know there was any black people in Russia.
I thought it's like literally all white country, but I could be wrong.
I know there's like the...
I'm picking up demographic info right now, by the way.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
What I'm saying is it's progressive because if you think about it, you know, this was filmed
in 84, 85.
That's what I always loved about the Rocky films.
They've played equal parts to black people where films weren't doing that back then.
They barely do it now.
Quite frankly.
You have a main antagonist who was black.
You've got trainers that are black.
You know, you've got the Creed franchise.
Like, you've got to give Stallone credit.
If you would have had other ethnicities in Russia, you would likely have people of Asian descent
from like Eastern Russia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what I was trying to get at.
Or more Middle Eastern type of descent from like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, which would have
been part of the Soviet Union at the time.
But yeah, probably Africans don't have a big representation in the former Soviet Union or Russia.
And they don't.
And you can only imagine that this guy actually made the training team of their biggest athlete
in the country.
So, bravo Zulu to him.
Bravo.
Bravo.
Okay, so now we've got Rocky pulling on a sled.
His rope is wrapped around his shoulders.
That's got to hurt.
And he's like on all fours.
And he's just, the resistance on this, that's legit tough.
And he's just like in pain and struggling.
Yeah, and he's trying to do it on the snow and slippery.
And then the wind is blowing in his face.
I was just saying, that's all natural weather.
Yeah, that's all natural snow.
Because there's film in Wyoming.
Well, it's film in Wyoming.
I think it just would have been too expensive to bring in real snow machines.
It's a real tundra out there.
It's not that hard to find one in the right time of year, I guess.
They probably had all types of weather go through there while they're up there.
And they used it when they could.
We're indoors.
And Rocky's doing the pull-ups.
Forward and backwards.
He's looking pretty good here.
He's got a fire next to him.
Sweating good.
Tony and Pauly are watching admirably.
Yeah, he seems to do the outdoor stuff during the day.
And then the evening comes into the barn to hit the speed bag, pull-ups or sit-ups or whatever.
Right.
And Rocky's got the log on his shoulders outside again.
Resistance walking through deep snow.
The big log on his shoulders.
Kind of reminiscent of Rocky 2 when he had the log on his shoulders doing the squats.
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
And I was just thinking, too.
Rocky's actually putting himself at a fair amount of risk, I think.
Because it's like there's probably like wolves and heirs and all sorts of things.
But he's not thinking about that.
And Drago's now boxing with sparring partners.
And Rocky is just shadowboxing.
Literally, in the shadows, boxing.
Pauly said that when they first got there.
He's like, no sparring?
No sparring?
I don't think I need it anymore, Paul.
No sparring?
Yeah, and Rocky says...
I don't think I need that anymore.
That's right.
Which is silly.
Like, sparring is a huge part of training for a fight.
It is weird.
It's this weird thing that Rocky's deciding for himself.
That he's just going to like...
He's literally training alone.
That he's not even having sparring partners.
And now he's chopping down a Christmas tree or something.
Pretty obvious metaphor here.
Drago's chopping down men one at a time.
And his sparring partners.
And Rocky's chopping down trees in the woods.
The commentary in the fight, when they fight.
One of them says, like, Rocky's chopping the Russian down.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
This is foreshadowing for that.
Well, yeah.
The training montage is always a pretty obvious foreshadow.
To what he...
How the training that he does will, you know, be beneficial to the fight that's upcoming.
Yeah, Drago's running around in the big gymnasium by himself.
No one around.
So, just showing that he's doing extra training on his own.
Without an audience of his handlers.
And then Rocky, of course, alone.
Running through the tundra.
Rocky now has a beard when the KGB guys are following him.
Yeah.
So, they're showing that this training montage is not all in one day.
This is a daily, daily, and day after day, day after day, Rocky's doing this kind of training to the point now that he has a pretty good beard coming in, which was probably at least two weeks old.
At least.
Yeah.
So, he comes back from a run and looking tired and looking sexy in his outfit.
And lo and behold, we got Adrian wearing 70 sweaters and three jackets waiting for him at the lodge.
What did you have on him?
20 sweaters?
I know three.
And she's wearing these, like, space white boots.
They're probably really expensive.
Oh, probably.
She says, I couldn't stay away anymore.
I missed you.
And then Rocky says, I missed you.
I couldn't stay away anymore.
I missed you.
I missed you.
And she's like, I'm with you no matter what.
And then he repeats, no matter what.
I'm with you no matter what.
No matter what.
Which I love because it's almost like Rocky's learning how to speak again.
He's a castaway from Tom Hanks' castaway on an island.
We're led to believe that he's so one with the wilderness.
He's turned into Tarzan.
He's me, Rocky, repeating back everything my wife said to me.
So, Rocky just learned something here that with enough time, Adrian will cave.
She did it in the second movie.
Now, it took her to be in a coma to do it, mind you.
And now this one.
I think if she realizes to be serious enough about it, she will eventually get on board.
Let's be honest.
If she died in that coma, Rocky would have been champion without any opposition for many years.
Well, yeah.
Except without her, he wouldn't have been talked into a fighting club or again.
It's a beach scene.
Yeah, but I think...
I think...
Yeah, it's a discussion for another day if Rocky would have ever found out these guys were ever handpicked or not.
But because don't forget, he only got mad at Clever when he said,
Hey, woman!
Hey, woman!
If there was no woman there...
Yeah.
If there was no Adrian there for him to taunt, it would have just been...
Oh, Clever would have said something else.
Hey, old man!
Hey, old man!
Yeah.
When he comes over to my training group, I'll show you a real fighter.
You say like something anti-Semitic or something to...
To mech or something.
Oh, jeez.
And then she repeats, no matter what.
Again.
No matter what.
They walk towards each other.
Hug.
A very awkward hug.
They're both wearing about 50 layers of clothes and they kiss.
And apparently that Stallone beard there is a fake beard.
It's makeup.
Is it really?
Yeah.
It's not a real beard.
So now that we have Adrian's support, you know what this means, Kyle.
It means we have another training montage.
We have to.
And this is the Hearts on Fire one.
Now this is like the more upbeat training song.
You know, Hearts on Fire.
He's skipping rope and the rope is going 100 miles an hour.
It's a great sequence.
Great shot.
It's like...
It's the equivalent of Rocky II when she says win and we see him doing the one-arm push-up.
This is the same thing here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, he wasn't training bad before.
No, no.
He was training hard, but now he's got his heart.
Now he's taking it to the next level.
Well, just like the song said, his heart's on fire.
His heart's on fire now, right?
And he does that wicked moment where he lifts himself up really slowly with his stomach muscles
and he's like hanging in mid-air, those upside-down sit-ups.
It's pretty insane, man.
Like, that's Stallone doing that.
Regardless of what you...
You know what I mean?
At the end of the day, that's...
There's no wire work or anything.
That's Sly doing that.
Man, I missed that last part.
My wife was...
Oh, no, no worries.
I was just saying...
I was just referring to the upside-down sit-ups when he's holding himself mid-air.
That's pretty awesome.
It's super easy.
Anyone can do those.
Oh, yeah.
You sent me the video of you doing that.
I'll...
I'll literally put a needle in my eye.
I'll take it, but it must just not have got through.
So, Rocky's beard is getting bigger and longer.
He's doing speedbag.
But...
So, we got Rocky here.
His beard's getting longer.
Speedbag, though.
He's still speedbagging.
Now, he's lifting up rocks.
You know, everything's kind of like natural.
There's no equipment.
Everything he's doing doesn't involve electricity is kind of what we're getting at here.
And then we keep juxtaposing going back to Drago's training with the machines and his...
And Paulie and Tony basically just watch Stallone and or Rocky be sexy with his leg lifts and his ab curls.
And Adrian looks on...
And Adrian's checking out his butt.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Now, do you think that's Adrian looking at Rocky or Talia Shire looking at Stallone?
Both.
Sure.
Probably both.
Yeah.
So, we got the scene here, too, with Rocky going up and down underneath the rope.
Right?
Doing those...
Deeking below the rope.
And that was shown in Creed 1 with the rope.
Was it not?
Yeah.
Oh, no.
It was shown in Southpaw.
And Rocky 5.
And the movie Southpaw.
Didn't?
Yeah.
Did you ever see that movie Southpaw?
No.
Oh, they did...
They actually did that in the movie Southpaw.
The trainer made the fighter, Jake Gyllenhaal's character, do the rope thing in the ring.
So, I guess it's a real boxy thing.
Yeah.
Now, Rocky's...
Rocky 5, when he has the vision.
Is he doing that, too?
I...
I don't remember.
Okay.
So, now we see Drago lifting up that big, huge, heavy weight.
And LaMilla claps and looks at her husband, like, oh, my husband's so strong, so powerful.
And Rocky does the same thing with that kind of wagon car.
He lifts up, you know, four people in it.
And I assume they're heavy.
Same type of weight.
We're led to believe it's probably heavier than what Drago did.
And Rocky runs off the road.
We all know the sequence so well.
Anyone listening to this show knows exactly the part we're talking about.
He runs off the road.
He runs up the hill.
The Russian handlers can't, you know, can't chase after him.
There's no way.
He runs higher and higher into the mountain as Drago runs, you know, up his little, what do you call it, treadmill?
Running treadmill.
And they increase the incline to represent the incline that Rocky's doing on the mountain.
And I love how the editing is done here.
We're led to believe that they're doing the same exercise at the same time.
That Drago's machine's going as high.
Well, who says they weren't?
Sure.
Yeah, who says they weren't?
And Drago reaches a point where he just can't do it anymore.
And we're led to believe that Rocky is still going higher and higher and higher.
This is great editing and the music swell.
This is all good stuff.
You know the scene I'm talking about.
Everyone knows it that's listening.
Kudos to Sly with his helicopter shot at himself.
Going up this mountain.
Getting to the top of his edge.
Puts his arms up in the air, you know, a la the stairs in Philadelphia.
But now the mountains of Wyoming slash Russia.
Yelling, Drago.
that's a great ending to the train sequence classic scene and then the helicopter shot is
great because there's no cgi here there's no cgi this is a helicopter shot so they timed it as such
that you know rocky or stallone is at the top of this mountain they got this helicopter whipping
around the mountain and it's a good little peak there like i can't it doesn't look that safe
yeah well stallone's uh he's a real man he's a real man he's a real man takes the risks well is there uh
any final thoughts on these two training montages before we close the show i think it's pretty clear
drogo is on the juice and oh yeah we we missed that yeah we forgot this mention that that the
they did show a needle full of uh what we can only be led to believe anabolic steroids and then
having that same needle be shoved into drago's arm there so not only is reg uh rago rocky training on
his own but he's up against a cheater basically a cheater in the ring coming up in the fight coming
so it just shows you the odds are continually stacked against our hero rocky yeah rocky's main fighting strategy for the most part is to allow his opponents to punch themselves out and without blocking them and so basically take a tremendous beating and then have some left in the tank to knock them out at the end like that he's never won on points ever uh so no he doesn't win on points
obviously he's gonna out fight them but he's preparing himself to endure hardship for a long
period of time which is a theme that was in creed too uh the same idea that rocky's at the point now and same with adonis that they're they're already good boxers but now they've got to train against their opponent who can you know rocky knows that he's gonna have to go through hell so he's put his body through hell he's put his body through every kind of condition that he can think of that he will face this russian giant in the ring so stand by for future episode listeners dear listeners as
we will cover the final fight between drago and rocky who will win we don't know i think drago's gonna do it i think drago's gonna win well he's the favorite yeah he's the he's the russian odds favorite i just want to do a little bit housekeeping here so just uh thanks for listening everybody to the show remember to leave us a review on itunes or on our facebook page and also a reminder that we have our 100th episode coming up i think this will be episode 96 i think so we're getting there and send us an email to
gtd w i t h r r that's gt d w i t h r r at gmail.com and uh talk to me and ruben and let us know what you like about the show what you hope we do for the next 100 episodes and all that good stuff and what rocky's meant in your life if you've ever met stallone or anything like that ruben and i are going to do a live reading of those emails and we've gotten we've gotten a handful so we're getting we're getting enough to do an episode already but we want to hear from more of you yeah we love the uh love the reviews we've been
getting those emails it's been fun to read we look forward to reading them on there find us on twitter if you want or find us on facebook to leave us that message as well and kyle thank you so much for coming on i appreciate you as always guest hosting with my brother ruben can't be here due to the holidays and our work schedules it's just it seems like it's getting harder and harder lately for us to correlate time so we're getting more and more guest hosts on but uh thanks for coming on brother i do appreciate it you're most welcome my pleasure and enjoy the holidays my friend you too have a merry christmas
merry christmas to you and to all have an alvin chipmunk's christmas to all ding ding
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Thank you.