One More Round

When people speak of inspirational sports figures, they often are quick to list names like Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, or Brett Favre.

Edit: Whoops, forgot Favre completely murdered his legacy by becoming a prima donna, playing for the Packers’ archrivals, and allowing his dong to be seen by the entire world.

People don’t often immediately say the name of an athlete who was born in April 6, 1947 as the only child to a Roman Catholic Italian American Family. They forget about the Philadelphian who ended Apollo Creed’s unbeaten run, knocked out Clubber Lang in the third round, and ended the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago in Moscow. Yes, I am talking about the Italian Stallion – Rocky Balboa.

How many other movie characters that date back to the 1970s have stayed culturally relevant as Rocky has?

I’d argue that it is because we want to believe that grit, toughness, and determination can beat talent. We want to believe that, if given our chance, we wouldn’t shrink from the spotlight. We want to believe that we’d have the courage to go one more round…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOpUSSpGoWw

Note: I couldn’t embed this video, but I would highly, highly suggest you click on it.

The scene that has always resonated with me the most from the Rocky franchise starts at the 1.08 mark from the video above.

I know that I will never be a great distance runner. Moreover, I will probably never be half as good as my father was. But, like Rocky says in the scene, it doesn’t matter if I ever become a good distance runner. I just want to go the distance - 26.2 miles.

“You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya 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!” – Rocky Balboa