Ding ding!
It's the sound of the boxing ring; the echo of a bell encouraging two fully grown, testosterone-fuelled, muscle-clad, short-wearing athletic men to beat seven shades of shit out of each other. Boxing is bloody awesome, and a great way to overuse hyphens in a sentence. Ding ding!
We're not talking about real boxing here though, not strictly at least. We're talking about an even better, condensed form of boxing, free of the seedier side of the sport and one that doesn't involve staying up 'til 5am to watch two men artfully scrapping in Las Vegas. We're talking about movie boxing, the best kind of boxing.
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Credit: Warner Bros./Creed
The best kind of movie boxing, as we all know, is the Rocky franchise, which spawned six movies between 1976 and 2006, before star and creator Sylvester 'Sly' Stallone returned in 2015 with a spin-off movie entitled Creed.
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And Stallone's online activity this week has raised suggestions that Creed (which most definitely put to bed the suckerpunch to our souls that was Rocky V) is about to get a follow-up - Sly posted a tantalising image of the recent movie's titular hero, Adonis Creed (played by Michael B. Jordan) squaring up to one of the Rocky series' notable villains, Ivan Drago, with Stallone himself standing outside the ring.
He also posted a caption reading: "HISTORY WILL ALWAYS REPEAT ITSELF IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER, JUST GOT TO BE READY! ... Sins of the Father.... #creed2." Looks like he's been reading the President's Twitter account for inspiration.
For those who haven't seen it, the first Creed movie followed Adonis Creed, son of Rocky's former foe turned best pal, killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. That film, made in the latter years of the Cold War, saw Rocky climb mountains and train like hell in preparation for vengeance against Drago, the Russian boxer played by Dolph Lundgren.
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With Creed, we saw Jordan train as an underdog to fight world champ and prison-bound 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan at Goodison Park, losing on points much like Rocky did to his father in the first Rocky film.
Hopefully, the film won't see 30-year-old Jordan face a 59-year-old Lungren - that would be ridiculous, undoing all the good work director Ryan Coogler did in the first Creed film, with a tightly woven script, plausible fight scenes and a main character fans could get behind. If he ends up beating the crap out of a Swede nearing the age of 60 in order to get revenge for his father's death, it's probably not going to be a very good film.
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That said, both Sly and Dolph do look in good shape for a pair of leather handbags.
Words: Ronan O'Shea