Decades after the first movie in the "Rocky" franchise was released, the movie retains an iconic status among sagas of underdogs rising to sporting glory. The unmatched grit and glamor of this legendary character led to the state of Philadelphia celebrating the day of December 3 as “Rocky Day” every year. During one such celebration of Rocky Day in 2023, Sylvester Stallone came across a miniature version of his character Rocky Balboa, who re-enacted his famous “Sunshine and Rainbows” speech. Stallone loved the little boy’s powerful, gut-punching reprise of his speech so much that he posted its footage on his Instagram page. “This kid is a real-life Rocky,” he wrote in the caption.
Actor/filmmaker Sylvester Stallone attends the opening of the 'Rocky Shop' as the City of Philadelphia declares December 3 “Rocky Day”. (Image Source: Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images)
On that day, Stallone was at the opening of the Rocky Shop at Parkway Visitor Center Outpost, as part of the “Rocky Day” celebrations, as per NBC Philadelphia. He was standing with his crew members in front of the famous stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art which Rocky Balboa climbed in the movie as part of his training. Just then a 9-year-old boy from Alabama, named Ro Knight, walked towards Stallone and started performing his legendary Rocky speech. Ro was wearing Balboa’s signature tiger jacket.
American actor Sylvester Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, punches American actor Carl Weathers, during a boxing match in a still from the film, 'Rocky.' (Image Source: Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
“Let me tell you something that you already know,” the little fan told Stallone, standing before the bronze Rocky statue. “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.” In the movie, Rocky delivers this gritty dialogue to his son who feels frustrated about navigating life. In the re-enacted version, Stallone was seen joining the speech with Ro at times. “Me, you or nobody is not going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”
Ro told the outlet that he had prepared for this performance in advance. “It was fantastic,” he said. “He was surprised, I guess. It was awesome.” He revealed that he started watching a lot of “Rocky” movies ever since he was a toddler. An aspiring actor and wrestler, Ro rehearsed Balboa’s lines over and over. The boy however is not as unknown as Balboa's character was before he won the heavyweight championship.
In the summer of 2021, Stallone shared an Instagram video of Ro performing the same speech while wearing Balboa’s red, white, and blue trunks, and holding dumbbells in a gym. “This very young fan is amazing!” Stallone wrote of the 6-year-old Ro in the post. “It makes me incredibly proud The ROCKY character has been passed down through several generations. It’s quite humbling. Keep Punching young man!” Now the young Rocky Balboa may even appear in the next “Creed” movie, but it is not yet known which one. “Whatever Rocky wants,” Ro said. “He’s the director.”
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.