WEATHERS TOOK ROCKY GRUDGE TO THE GRAVE!
Stallone fired him for wanting raise
ACTOR Carl Weathers went to his grave hating Sylvester Stallone, the man who gave the former pro-footballer his iconic role as Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky flicks — and then booted him over a salary squabble slamming him as “Apollo Greed!”
“Carl had a love--hate relationship with Stallone,” says a source who knew the stars. “He loved the fact that Sly gave him his greatest role, but he hated him for taking it away!”
Before Weathers died in his sleep at age 76 on Feb. 1, the former NFL player revealed, “They didn’t want me for Rocky because I was nobody. Then, I get the Rocky script and I’m chomping at the bit. It’s so brilliantly written!”
He read for the part with Sly, who Carl thought was the script’s author, not an actor, and “at the end it’s like quiet,” he recalled. “I think I blew the audition. So I said, ‘If you get me a real actor, I could do a lot better!’ And Stallone looks up at me like I’m this idiot.”
Later, Weathers jokingly told people: “I think I got the job because Sly wanted to beat the hell out of me.”
Weathers’ character was later killed off by Russian heavyweight Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren, in 1985’s Rocky IV.
In 2006, Sly said Weathers “wanted many thousands of dollars for a two-second piece of he and Rocky boxing. We couldn’t afford it. Whatever happened to loyalty? Apollo Greed?”
Stallone later changed his tune, saying, “I was so blessed the day I met Carl” calling him “a fantastic actor.”
Now following Weather’s death, Stallone says: “I’m so torn up, Carl Weathers was such an integral part of my life, my success.”