“…it is going to be a free-for-all.”

A brawny Sylvester Stallone got in the ring against a monstrous Dolph Lundgren during the filming of Rocky IV, and the Italian Stallion, wanting to pump some brutal realism into the scene, told the Soviet madman to hit him as hard as he could.

Lundgren obliged, and Stallone spent the next four days in a West Coast ICU.

Prior to the hospitalization, the star was all-in on the new installment of the Rocky franchise, which took some hits after the third film  focused more on Hollywood formula and less on defeating the adversity dished out by the human condition.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, on the day of the fight scene, Stallone said he told Lundgren to forget the choreography. “Just go out there and try to clock me,” he told his fellow actor. “For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all.”

Here’s what happened next, per IMDB:

After three takes of Rocky taking shots to the ribs, Stallone felt a burning in his chest, but ignored it. Later that night, he had difficulty breathing and was taken to a nearby emergency room. It was discovered that his blood pressure was over 200, and he had to be flown on a low-altitude flight from Canada to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where he remained in intensive care for four days. Lungren had punched him so hard in the chest that Stallone’s heart slammed against his breastbone and began to swell, cutting off the blood supply and restricting the oxygen flow throughout the body.

The film received mixed reviews when it premiered on Nov. 27, 1985 (the montage scenes didn’t help), but moviegoers flocked to theaters to see the Balboa/Drago brawl, and the film ended up grossing more money ($300 million) than any other installment in the franchise.

So in the end, you could say Rocky was once again the people’s champ.

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