The Ultimate Underdog: On the Legacy of Apollo Creed | Black Writers Week

Apollo Creed's ego is as repetitious a theme throughout these movies as Rocky's indomitable will. Having already dug into that well twice already, "Rocky III" excavates another tried and untrue trope, the Black brute vs. the white man’s pride. It's “Black Peril" by way of white insecurity, this time in the form of erotic degradation of the white man’s prize, and in his face no less! The besmirching of Rocky’s woman is meant to further the certainty of Rocky’s "right" to win. What's interesting here is that in aspects of both poverty and wealth, Apollo and Rocky are often presented as equals, with "Rocky III" suggesting Apollo came up the hard way himself. However, by parts three and four, Rocky Balboa is quite wealthy, leading one to ask how his whiteness distinguishes him from Creed. 

In "Rocky III," Balboa is trained by Creed to move, to be stealthier, and to be a bit faster, because Clubber Lang (Mr. T) is the more powerful boxer. This is without a doubt the most sound strategy in any case where a fighter gives up pounds and strength to another. But eventually Rocky will abandon Creed's strategy for his own of staying inside the “phone booth” as it is called and trading punches with the superior Lang, something not only Creed but even his own trainer Mickey advised him not to do. To understand the inherent meaning of this, one must understand the history of boxing especially as it pertains to Black fighters who historically have been known for using movement, stealth, defense, and speed to become champions. Despite their dominance in the ring, the persistent perception of these fighters was as dodgers and runner. You then only have to connect this perception to its ultimate conclusion of a lacking in will, desire, and heart, which is not in comparison to any known reality, but in comparison to an ideal forged and created by whites after the fact that they couldn't come up with any other reason or tactic with which to knock or beat most Black fighters. Rocky is the strongest and deepest representation of a long-standing idea that there is a "right way" to play sports, and that the right way is the white way. 

Creed is portrayed in the series as a preening and showboating court jester whose skill seems to decrease with every film even as Rocky gets older, richer, sometimes showier, and still wallops the competition. It should also be understood that historically, boxing has always engaged in superficial racial politics, so that even many of the most educated fighting pundits and enthusiasts end up voting along color lines. Many of the greatest fights ever have at the very least implicitly advocated for the fight to be drawn along these lines. Rocky Balboa is not based upon his namesake Rocky Marciano, a well-known and skilled fighter. He's not even based upon Jake LaMotta. For it is not enough for a white man to beat us from a position of equality or even near equality. He has to beat us from a position of mediocrity and ineptitude. The struggle or the paradox for the intelligent Black viewer, from a standpoint of knowledge of our own existence, is to engage in a cognitive dissonance where the signifiers and iconography of the underdog is accepted for a time being, putting aside our own recognition of a truth. It is almost only a white person who could watch another white person defeat a Black person in the ring and believe that they were the underdog. The main reason we hoop, hope, and holler over the victories of a Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, or Muhammad Ali over white men, is because we know in reality it is only there that we are allowed such complete and unchallenged victories (and sometimes just barely). It amplifies Apollo Creed's loss in the ring and his loss of life that it is in a place where reality has shown us is one of the few places we can win. 

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