Review of Creed III (2023) by Siss0Rmetimbers — 04 Apr 2023

Honestly, the movie is OK, but there are just a lot of parts of it that kinda just don't work. Right off the bat though, I'm just gonna throw out there the part that drops my rating two letter grades, there is not a Rocky montage. There's montages, sure, but how can you have a rocky movie that doesn't play the Rocky music while Creed battles through training camp? It REALLY made the ending not hit for me, I wasn't hyped for the climactic fight like I would be in any other Rocky movie. Hell, I was more hyped for Rocky to fight at the end of Rocky 5, and that movie sucked.

That said, there are some other problems. One of my biggest is without spoiling too much, giving a character a title fight with 0 professional fights, to make that happen requires a fundamental misunderstanding of boxing. For a title fight to happen, a sanctioning body has to sanction the bout, and the commissions have rules about how you have to be ranked in order to be involved in a title fight. Now the commissions do whatever the hell they want a lot of times, but what they would NEVER do is back an unknown name or any name with 0 professional fights in any combat sport. Even Lomachenko, the most heralded amateur ever down in a weight class that title shots are given much sooner than the upper weight classes, didn't get a shot until his second bout and that's a man with 7 gold medals across different amateur tournaments.

Other than that, I mean, the story just isn't believable. How are we supposed to believe Creed's wife didn't know about his past in Juvi over like, an 8 year relationship? If you've ever been with a girl, you know that it's like volunteering for a federal background check but worse, she'll get that info out of you. And apparently Creed ran from the cops but his friend got caught? How did he run, the flashbacks show him surrounded and surrendering to the po po. And as cool as it was to see long guard and cross guard in the fight scenes with this movie's rival, it just doesn't make much sense. Nobody has taught the cross guard since Archie Moore in professional boxing and nobody has used it since old Big George days. It just doesn't make sense anymore, the Philly Shell is a natural evolution of the cross guard that keeps its strengths while minimizing its weaknesses. So the question arises, who the hell taught this dude the cross-guard? And lastly, the movie gives no indication the bad guy of this movie retained any fighting skills in prison. No mention of prison fights or flashbacks, so how the hell are we supposed to believe he could compete at a championship level? Its ludicrously baffling. The first fight sets him up to be a dirty fighter and he had already injured the first champ, so maybe you could skate by with that one, but going 11 and a half rounds with Creed? Get the hell out of here. He doesn't even fight dirty in the final bout! Its ridiculous and stupid, it has to be said. These are just things that seem like mistakes from people that don't truly love the sport and just want to make a movie, something that didn't happen with Stallone's movies.

Anyway, that's generally how I felt about it, I love boxing so I'd watch it no matter how bad it is, but this one wasn't great. A poor entry to the Franchise, I'd probably place it right between Rocky 5 and Rocky Balboa in the series so far.