Just because he had Rocky in his corner didn’t mean Michael B. Jordan was going to finish filming “Creed” without taking a few lumps.
Sylvester Stallone, who is reprising his most famous role in the “Rocky” spinoff opening Friday, can’t wait to show off iPhone video of his co-star getting punched hard by the film’s heavyweight, played by real-life pro boxer Tony Bellew.
Several sounds can be heard on the behind-the-scenes footage: Bellew’s gloved fist connecting with Jordan’s jaw, then the “Friday Night Lights” alum’s body crumpling to the mat, and finally the crew’s audible gasps.
Welcome to the franchise, kid.
“I just wanted for him to really get hit,” recalls Stallone with a big grin. “And the guy who was in the ring with him is a knockout artist. It doesn’t take much to hurt you.”
“(Bellew) said it was 30% of a regular punch, that didn’t feel like 30%,” interjects Jordan, 28.
“I popped up and was like, ‘Did we get the shot?'” he adds later. “No we didn’t get it. Can you take another one?’ I was like, ‘okay, let’s do it!’ You don’t really feel the effects of that until the next morning – and then you’ve got whiplash and you feel like you’ve been in a car accident.”
Don’t talk to Stallone, who at 69 still looks fit enough to go 12 rounds with anyone, about physical punishment. Just try to take a body blow, even a choreographed one, from the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Dolph Lundgren, like he did during the making of “Rocky IV.”
“He hurt me,” says Stallone. “I wanted Rocky to take a lot of falls, for which I paid the price with four back operations since.”
In “Creed,” directed by Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”), Jordan stars as Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of the late heavyweight champion Apollo Creed – who was played by Carl Weathers in the first four “Rocky” movies.
Giving up a promising office job to make his own name in a sport that killed the father he never knew, Adonis makes a pilgrimage to Philadelphia to convince an aging Rocky (Stallone) to step in the ring again … as his trainer.
Early reviews are labeling it the greatest film in the boxing series since the 1976 first installment, “Rocky,” knocked out the competition at the Academy Awards, winning three Oscars, including best picture.
Coogler is one of the many die-hard fans of the “Rocky” films, having grown up watching them together with his father.
He was punching above his weight class, though, when he approached Stallone with the pitch for “Creed” with just one short film credit under his belt.
Stallone can appreciate an underdog, but the answer was, “no.”
Then came the acclaim from Coogler’s first collaboration with Jordan – “Fruitvale Station,” chronicling the real life story of Oscar Grant, who was shot dead by police at a San Francisco train station.
“Now, he’s being offered everything as the cause célebre in Hollywood and he still wants to do ‘Creed’ at his own peril,” says Stallone.
“This was a big, risky project because right away all the Rocky fans were adamantly against it. They thought it was going to be ‘Rocky 7,’ they thought I was going to fight again.”
It was a lot easier to convince Jordan while they were working together on “Fruitvale Station”: “We were going to set and he said I have this idea about you playing Apollo Creed’s son and I was like, ‘Cool, let’s do it,'” Jordan said.
Jordan’s Adonis may be the new star of the franchise, but “Creed” delivers a dramatic uppercut because Stallone willingly plays a supporting role.
Stallone is in shape to do another tour of duty on “The Expendables” franchise. But this time he plays a Rocky who is up against the ropes battling grief from the loss of his loved ones and the physical effects of a life-threatening illness.
Not that Stallone signed off on that storyline without a fight.
“That was the sticking point, that was the bone of contention,” he says. “When (Coogler) talks about his father being actually sick and that’s what inspired the whole story… I said, ‘Why don’t I help take care of someone else, like Adonis’ father, who is sick? I don’t want to be the sick guy. I want to be the guy who helps the father get well.’ He goes, ‘No, you have to be the guy who’s sick, that’s the whole point.”
It wasn’t about ego: Stallone knows it’s becoming less and less plausible to find an excuse for a graying Italian Stallion to go back into the ring himself. It’s just that he’s still smarting from the reaction the last time he tried to portray Rocky as this mortal.
“Do we go into that one area where I was burned before on ‘Rocky V?'” muses Stallone. “No one wanted to see him brain-damaged or poor or losing everything.
“You have to gamble, though. Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son coming back, Rocky training him? That’s an event,” he adds. “That’s something that can either work or not work, but it’s definitely going make an impression.”
Jordan made an impression with his intense training, having a boxing ring built in his back yard to ramp up his skills a year and a half before cameras started rolling. The intense exercise regimen continued during filming of “Fantastic Four,” making him look a little more like the Hulk than the Human Torch.
“I started busting out of the seams of the super hero suit. It was crazy,” he recalls.
Stallone and Jordan’s trainer-protégé relationship spills off the screen.
During his interview with the Daily News, the action icon demonstrates a right-hook, ducking, right-hook combination that he taught his younger co-star.
“There was a couple of times when I had to catch myself, I looked back and went, ‘That’s f—g Rocky out there … all right let’s go'” says Jordan.
