FROM THE WIRE to Friday Night Lights, Michael B. Jordan has always been one of The42‘s favourite actors so when he was announced as the man to play Apollo Creed’s son Adonis in the new Rocky spin-off, Creed, we were very excited.
Not one to take short-cuts, Jordan recently appeared on the Bill Simmons Podcast where he explained that filming the fight scenes was proving a frustrating experience as you could see the space between the fake punches and his face.
That’s when Sylvester Stallone suggested he take the punch for real.
“The first couple times we tried to do [the punches], we tried to it with the slips,” he told Simmons.
“You know, and it’s slow motion, so you can see the misses—the space between the punches. So, all of a sudden, you just hear this snickering from the corner, and everybody’s like ‘What?’
“And Sly’s like, ‘Man you gotta take it. I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘No, you gotta take a real punch.’ Like, pretty much, I had to really get hit.
“And legally, Ryan (Coogler)—he’ll definitely tell you this—as a director, he can’t legally say ‘take the punch.’ So I had to willingly step up and be like, ‘Alright, I’ll take the hit.’
“But I definitely got peer-pressured,” he joked.
And this was the result, as tweeted out by Stallone:
