Satire: Rocky XX Starring Evander Holyfield

A burble in the space-time continuum results in a script from the future sent back to today. The script is for Rocky XX. As the film begins...

Rocky Balboa finds himself in a retirement home. It turns out to be a meeting place of former opponents who are roughly the same age, though Rocky, brain-damaged from his previous bouts, is the one in need of the most urgent care.

Remarkably, Apollo Creed, Mr. T, Drago, and Tommy Gunn all maintain housing at the same place. No that it matters. They’re just “chillin'.” They know better.

Enter the only real boxer in the group. At first he isn’t recognized. But the secret can’t be kept forever. While one of the nurses removes a bandage over a portion of the man’s head, the unmistakable sign of a partially torn ear emerges. Of course, it’s Evander Holyfield.

One day, Rocky bumps his wheelchair into Holyfield’s. Rocky mumbles an apology but Holyfield, whose hearing, like his career, is not what it once was, interprets it as a challenge.

The match is brutal. Dentures careen from walls, injuring a staff member from the center. Rocky, borrowing a tactic from Tyson, attempts to gum Holyfield’s ear until it drops off. Like Rocky V, it doesn’t work.

The match ends with the Center’s doctor administering a heavy dose of thorazine to the “fighters” and the two fall asleep in much the same way the audience did in the last Rocky motion picture.

Sure, the plot is lame. But so is Holyfield’s apparent decision to step into the ring again.

As if James Toney and journeyman Larry Donald had not been convincing enough in reminding Holyfield that his career was deep-sixed long ago, we hear that Evander will be in a match with another punching bag; Jeremy Bates. Shame on the Texas Department of Licensing.

Like Stallone, who can’t stop making the Rocky movies (yet another movie deal pending), Holyfield can’t hang up his gloves. The retirement home movie could be fun, but none of the alternatives will be.

Article Author: George Richards

Sports are not a terrible thing, but the idea that sports are a terrible thing, is a terrible thing.

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