Hulk Hogan reveals what ‘psycho’ Sylvester Stallone asked him to do in Rocky 3

Steve Hopkins

‘No brother, you don’t want that’

Hulk Hogan has revealed how Sylvester Stallone really wanted him to beat him up as the pair got in the ring ahead of the wrestler’s turn in the Rocky franchise.

Hogan played the role of Thunderlips and fought Stallone’s Rocky Balboa as part of a charity event in 1982’s Rocky III.

The boxer’s business handlers had set-up the match against the seven-foot-tall wrestler, who billed himself as ‘The Ultimate Male’. At first, it wasn’t much of a contest, with Rocky being body-slammed against the ring and thrown about like a rag-doll, but as with all Rocky movies, as the fight went on, he gained control.

Appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, this week, Hogan told how Stallone “took all the hits and bumps” after asking him to go at him as hard he could.

Hogan said he kind of “messed up” Stallone’s collarbone after the pair got into the ring, ahead of filming.

At the time, Hogan had just returned from Japan and had a broken nose, “for like the second or third time”, and was “enamoured” with movie star Stallone.

“I flew out and talked with him and got in the ring with him,” Hogan told Rogan.

“He was like, ‘let’s just get in the ring and move around’, and I had jeans on and cowboy boots and he was like, ‘let’s just go in the ring like this’.

“And he says, ‘I’m going to try and hit you’.”

Sylvester Stallone asked Hulk Hogan to beat him up

Hogan told Rogan that he suggested Stallone hit him in the nose “because I saw the camera and I thought it would be cool if he splattered my nose, that’s how crazy I was.”

After the pair climbed under the ropes, Stallone wanted Hogan to hit up, but the wrestler didn’t want to, so just grabbed the actor instead.

He told Rogan: “I was like, ‘I don’t want to hit you.’ He was like, ‘hit me, give me everything you’ve got.’ And I said: ‘No brother, you don’t want that, there’s certain places I can hit you harder than others, but I hit you as hard as I can, it’s not going to be cool.’ SO he was like, ‘give me 50%’, and I was like, ‘I really don’t want to’.”

As a compromise, Hogan suggested Stallone try and hit him, and he would “grab you and hammer you between the shoulders.”

Hogan told Rogan: “And I hit him. I probably gave him 50%. But as soon as I made contact his face made contact with my cowboy boots. And when he came up his lips were bleeding. And they were like, ‘that’s perfect.’ He was all excited because I hit him.”

Rogan replied: “What a psycho.”