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Sylvester Stallone wasn’t about to let a muscle injury keep him from another shot at his star-making role.
The Academy Award nominee, 77, revealed that he tore his pectoral muscle ‘off the bone’ during a training accident before filming Rocky II, which influenced a key plot point in the 1979 sequel.
He recounted the story to pal Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harvey Levin for TMZ Presents Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons, noting that the injury occurred while working with his and Arnold’s mutual trainer, the late bodybuilding icon Franco Columbo.
Stallone said that the ‘very eccentric’ Columbo challenged him to a bench-pressing competition one day.
‘So, I go down, and it’s maybe only 200 [lbs]. I’m just warming up, and I hear a POW!’ he recalled, re-enacting the pain.