ROCKY Balboa
Just for the sake of continuance, this is a new monthly expose on who I consider, after every two fortnights, the person who most closely exemplifies the meaning and purpose of the Overman. It could be a very famous person, a real person, an imaginary person, or the stranger in the super-market. What this means is...anyone can be an Overman, anytime, anywhere.
And the first award for the month of March, year two-thousand and six, goes to....
Yes. Rocky "The Italian Stallion" Balboa.
Rocky Balboa was a dead-end, "bottom of the barrel" guy from Philedelphia who was going nowhere in life. He worked days as an enforcer for a loan shark and as an amateur boxer at night. When the nation's bicentennial came around, and scheduled contender Mac Lee Green was injured, the undefeated heavyweight champion Apollo Creed searched for a new opponent for the match on the nation's birthday. With all the deserving competitors unavaliable for one reason or another, Creed came up with the perfect bout: he will fight the local underdog "Italian Stallion" Rocky, and by doing so give him a chance at the world title. Creed saw the whole thing as a big joke, a spectacle, rather than a fight. In the time leading up to the fight, Rocky trained with crusty, 1920s-era bantamweight fighter Mickey Goldmill. At the same time, he fell in love with his best friend's sister, Adrian. After intense training and with a newfound focus and determination, Rocky took his thousand-to-one shot at the title. The night before the match, Rocky admited to Adrian he knew he couldn't win but he was going to go the distance (i.e., make it through all 15 rounds of the bout).
Rocky explained, "It really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head either, 'cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."
In the first round, at the Philadelphia Spectrum, Creed treated the match as a joke, until Rocky caught him with a left hook that threw Creed on his back and nearly knocked him unconscious.
In his entire professional boxing career no one had ever knocked Creed down...let alone in the first minute. From that point on, Creed took the match seriously, and the fighters beat each other bloody. Neither man would back down, even when Rocky's eyes had swelled shut and Creed's ribs had been broken. Creed hit as hard as he could, but Rocky refused to stay down and fought Creed for all fifteen rounds, only to lose on a split decision.
Though Creed was declared the winner, Rocky's accomplishment garnered him fame worldwide. He proved himself to all those who had doubted him before, including his trainer Mickey, and his feat demonstrated that one man can stand in the face of overwhelming odds.
Still struggling from poverty, and now a local hero, Rocky went on to fight Creed in a rematch in which Rocky won by knockout in the last seconds of the fifteenth round, launching him into international stardom and earning him millions of dollars as the new Heavyweight Champion of the World. After his defeat, Creed grew a great respect for Rocky and the two became the best of friends. Rocky continued for fight for several years, eventually defeating Ivan Drago, a russian boxer who killed Apollo Creed during a publicity fight.
Rocky Balboa has long since retired from boxing after retaining severe brain damage in his fight with Drago and subsequently losing his fortune due to a crooked lawyer. Forced to move back to the slums, he now owns the restaurant Adrian's in Philadelphia, named after his now deceased wife. However, almost twenty years after his retirement, news is out that Rocky is having trouble making ends meet and has been seen participating in small charity fights for money, and is even scheduled to fight an exhibition match with the current heavyweight champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon, on February 9th.
Even having lost partial sight in his right eye and still suffering from the effects of brain damage, Rocky Balboa -- now almost 60 years old -- is going to fight again.
Note: I'd like to mention that all parts describing the first Rocky film in this article have been taken almost directly from the wikipedia article on that subject, and that any changes made to it have not effected the subject, content, or meaning of anything previously written.
