ESPN Films "The Real Rocky": Is Chuck Wepner's Story Better Than the Movie?

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Before we even bother to address that question, ask yourself this: Did Chuck Wepner live his life in awesome montages that included him running an absurd distance around the city of Philadelphia, punching frozen meat, and running up the Art Museum steps in a practice that has now been copied by tourists approximately 45,873,325,125 times?

No?

Then his story probably isn't better than Rocky's.

But it is pretty compelling. From the Los Angeles Times:

But he's equally at ease looking back at a tumultuous past that included a loss to Muhammad Ali (complete with a broken nose), a legal bout with Sylvester Stallone, a hard-partying lifestyle that cost him his first marriage and a drug-related arrest that landed him in prison for almost two years in the late 1980s.
Wepner's past is on full display in “The Real Rocky,” airing Tuesday on ESPN as part of its “30 for 30” documentary series. The title of the film refers to the fact that Wepner, a former New Jersey state heavyweight champion, served as the real-life inspiration for Stallone's Rocky Balboa character, the hard-luck boxer at the center of an Oscar-winning film and numerous sequels in a franchise that producers say has earned more than $1 billion.

One of the interesting things that will be shown in the film will directly relate to his inspirational fight with Ali. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Among the film's unsurprising revelations: Prior to the 1975 fight between Wepner and Ali presaging that between the film's Rocky and Apollo Creed, Ali advised Wepner to fling "the N word" at him at a press conference.
"We're gonna pump this fight up and make it look like a racial thing," recalls Wepner, quoting Ali.

Still, ask yourself: Did Wepner ever scream out his wife's name after winning a fight? Did he chase around a chicken in his training? Did his trainer ever say this?

Of course not. But it would appear that "The Bayonne Bleeder" has a compelling story that will stand on its own legs.

My name is Timothy Rapp, and I put the "grrrr" in Swagger.