And did they have any names of who they did want to star?

Well, yeah.

So the way this—this has been kind of reshaped and twisted over the years.

The studio, United Artists, did offer Stallone a lot to buy the script from him.

And I'm almost certain it got into six figures.

The problem is that every time Stallone gives an interview about this, the number gets higher and higher and higher.

Like he told Sports Illustrated in 1990 that he was offered $360,000, which is ridiculous.

I

What do you think's going on

here? First of all, Kevin Weiss is an analyst for ESPN.

He's not a blogger.

That's a pretty weak attempt by Taka to deflect that, I think.

I'm going to use a name here that I think is a good analogy for what the Flyers are going through.

A.J. Brown.

And here's what I mean by that.

0-8, that means they went 0-15.

What do we have for to look forward to in the book? So I

wanted to give you the book.

I did sign it for you in Kelly Green there for you on the inside.

Yeah, it's an inside look at the making of Rocky.

It's all about the connections between the movie and the city.

It's got Sylvester Stallone's early life and everything that influenced him.

It's got a ton of new stuff that I think people don't know.

wonder if that's why he killed him off.

funny.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, I mean, there's, look, he lived in Northeast Philly for a while.

He lived in Rittenhouse Square.

But he had been away when he wrote the script.

He was on the West Coast when he wrote the script.

Mike, how would you answer the question, what does Iriani need to

All right.

Well, awesome.

What do we have for it to look forward to in the book? So I wanted to give you the book.

I did sign it for you in Kelly Green there for you on the inside.

Yeah, it's...

It's an inside look at the making of Rocky.

It's all about the connections between the movie and the city.

It's

interesting little email

thread, Mike.

Yeah.

So here's what happened.

I got his personal email from a source, sent him an email, told him I was doing the book, and I got no response for several weeks.

So I continued doing research.

I spoke to Erwin Winkler, for instance, who was one of the producers of the movie, 95 years old, still sharp as a tack.

And

I would love to know other people's careers that that did the same exact thing to condition their bodies, because that's what Rocky would do.

That's a great question.

There's a lot of speculation that Stallone got the inspiration for shooting that scene where he's punching the frozen sides of beef from Joe Frazier, the heavyweight champion from Philadelphia, Olympic gold medalist.

But there's no evidence at all that Frazier ever did that.

And if you think about it, of course there wouldn't be any evidence that Frazier did that.

Like the idea of a...

You know, a budding heavyweight champion or Olympic gold medalist risking breaking his knuckles, punching frozen sides of beef just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, isn't that weird how that affects us like that? It does.

How did that come about?

So Stallone meets he's he's a nobody in Hollywood.

The most notable thing that he's done is he appears in a 1974 movie called The Lords of Flatbush, which.

Film buffs will know he plays kind of a greaser guy.

It's the whole premise of the movie is it's a group of greasers in in New York City and kind of their travails.

And he actually gets a lot of critical praise for that movie.

But at the same time, nothing is really happening for him on screen.

In what ways did the original film capture the city at that point in time and keep resonating all these years later?

Is it working better than you thought it would be and better than most people thought it would?

Yes, it is.

LeBron seems to have completely embraced the idea that he's going to be a leader and a facilitator.

Jalen Brown has fit right in.

I think one of the concerns, you know, such as they might exist when the Sixers traded for a guy like Jalen Brown is, you know, he's coming off a season in which he set career-high points and shots, and he was the centerpiece of a team that still won 56 games without Jason Tatum.

Will he be okay with being one of many on the Sixers? And so far, he has been.

And Embiid has been healthy, relatively speaking, so far, and Tyrese Maxey and D.J. Edgecombe are two of the rising, if not already established, stars in the league.

So what's the crux of the book? It's obviously the making of the movie, right?

So could you tell me, number one, about your book and number two, about this movie and how based on your research, how well does it stand up? How good of a biopic is it?

All right, so what's funny about this, Jay, is that my book and the movie I play, Rocky, cover virtually exactly the same ground, even though each project was totally separate from the other.

It's not like they bought the rights to the book or anything like that.

I did my thing.

Peter Farley and the cast did their thing.

And my book is basically like, look, here's how they made Rocky.

Here's Stallone's early life and how he got to the point where he would be in the position to make Rocky.

you

So what were the inconsistencies in the movie that weren't accurate to the real story?

Well, this is going to pay me to say it because it's some of the most adorable scenes in the movie, like when Rocky gets Butkus and then has to sell Butkus and then gets Butkus back.

That's all baloney.

None of that happened.

The entire storyline with Butkus, and the reason I mention that is because it has led to Stallone telling certain stories about someone involved in the movie.

I don't want to give everything away, but it's been damaging and hurtful to this person involved in the movie for more than 30 years.

And I get into that.

And I think it's begging for Danny to make a move.

So nice job.

Thanks.

I tried a bit of a gambit.

I rolled the dice and it worked.

I had a source who gave me his personal email address and I sent Stallone an email there and he didn't respond.

And a few weeks went by and I was really starting to get concerned, like I'm not going to get him.

And this book is going to be lesser for my inability to get him.

So maybe we'll get, I'm hoping we'll get a part two, but I hope when you get to it, you'll enjoy it.

And you did that.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, I mean, look.

Not only that, you know, in terms of defending the Big Five and explaining that I understand why Villanova is doing what it's doing and I still hate what Kevin Willard did, I was also standing up for my friend and my colleague, Jeff Nyberg, who got that story as right as you can get it and was made to be humiliated by Kevin Willard.

And sorry, no.

No, you're not getting away with that.

And this is something, I don't know how much, I know you guys deal with this in the show, you know, and you've dealt with it over your years in media.

And Jalen

I don't know how you find out his potential th- the way they're using him right now.

It's a great question, and I'm sure it's gotta be something that they're talking about internally, VG.

I hope it is.

And that's why my inclination is to say, let's see how this plays out over 30 games, 60 games, 84 games.

Because anything you do right now, to me, with the exception of going after a star, you know, waiting until a certain point in the season where maybe another franchise is maybe not struggling as badly as the Flyers are, but not reaching expectations, things are bad, and a star player says or makes it clear through back channels, "I don't wanna be here anymore," and then maybe you make a big-time trade to do something like that.

You know, again, back in the day, that's how they jump-started things in the mid-'90s, was they were running in place, they weren't going anywhere, they make a big trade for John LeClair and Eric Desjardins, and all of a sudden they're contenders.

So maybe something like that can happen.

Yeah, that was bigger to me than the kickoff

Um, you just can't, you can't run a football team that way, um, at least at this point in the season.

My feeling heading into these couple of games, Jeff, and by the couple of games, I mean, uh, two weeks ago against the Rams and then the other day against the Jaguars, and even heading into the next couple of weeks at home against the Carolina Panthers and the Dallas Cowboys was, I was gonna judge the team as a whole, and Nick Sirianni in particular, by whether...

N- not necessarily by whether they won or lost these games, but by how they played.

Were they still together? Were they still playing hard for Nick? We've seen in the past where, I- I'm thinking primarily of the 2023 season where you get a lopsided loss like they had against the Bears, and it snowballs, and all of a sudden they're getting blown out in one game after another, or they are burping up games at the end after being in control the entire way.

And, uh, if you want to be encouraged and be encouraging in evaluating the Eagles, I think you can look at the Rams game and the Jaguars game and say, even though they were short-handed, even though there are obvious problems schematically with the offense, the Eagles showed up and played for Nick Sirianni in each of those games.

Now, the question going forward, I think, is, does the way that each of those games ended affect how they handle themselves against the Panthers and the Cowboys? If they had managed to hold on and beat the Jaguars, I think the team would be feeling pretty good about itself, right? Like, you, you came back as you said, you were able to beat a team, uh, that's rolling, that's considered one of the best teams in the NFL.

You were able to hold Trevor Lawrence, a top-notch quarterback, to what would've been 16 points, and now you're heading home, and you've got a couple of intra-conference games, and you can feel pretty good.

They're gonna turn around in the second half." And then we just saw more of the same in terms of what, what Sean Mannion had to bring in terms of the play calling and, and what he was deciding to do there in the second half.

And you weren't really good to begin with.

Yeah.

It, it...

On the one hand, it makes it a little hard to evaluate everything that's going on, whether you're talking about Sean Manning as a play caller, whether you're talking about Jalen Hurts as a quarterback, whether you're talking about the adjustments that the defense has to make, uh, how much time the defense is spending on the field.

And you're right.

Like, they're so short-handed that, you know, I...

You kind of throw your hands in the air and say, "What can you do?" You know, I wrote this before the Rams game and before he had those moments that had everybody questioning him.

Yeah

[whistles]

... hasn't it? [laughs] Um, he's been tremendous, and I think your point about having to watch him over these two weeks to appreciate how good he's been is on the money.

Uh, look, bad interception on the first drive.

We all get that.

But the rest of the way, you know, with the exception of him not being able to step into that throw, the other one that gets picked off on its way to DeVonta, he was tremendous on Sunday.

And this bodes, obviously bodes well, and it's, it, it's interesting to me because I th- I'm thinking of it in terms of the arc of other quarterbacks we've seen in the league.

And [sighs] I'm not comparing Jalen Hurts to Tom Brady, but I am saying that the arc of Brady's career was he got carried a little bit by defense and special teams early on, and then grew into becoming the all-time greatest.

No.

You know, what did you make of how Jalen performed?

To me, Jeff, the striking thing is the difference between what the Eagles are asking of Jalen Hurts and need from him right now compared to what they were asking from him the year they won the Super Bowl in 2024, where they were a team that had him throwing the ball 30 plus times a game through the first four weeks of the season, decided this is not the way we need to go about winning games.

and put him in a position where he could help them with their legs, and they would need him to make certain throws at certain times, but went on to win a Super Bowl as the team that threw the ball less often during the regular season than any other team in the NFL.

And now you've got a situation for these first two games where they don't win these games without him as a passer.

And I think your point about having to watch the way Jalen played in these two games to appreciate how well he has played in these two games is key.

Dave Murphy pointed this out in his column today.

Maybe the key play on that final possession, that great drive where they take the lead and go on to win the game, capped by the touchdown pass to Darius Cooper, is the one where Hurts is hit and has to get rid of the football and has to throw it far enough that he doesn't get hit with an intentional grounding penalty that maybe pushes them out of field goal range.

But other than that, I didn't see many mistakes from him.

The fact that he, who does not like to dial up pressures, need to dial up all those exotics against Washington.

Yeah.

You know, I said this to Dave Murphy or Marcus Hayes, who I was sitting next to during the game, that their, their outside guys weren't getting the push that you would've thought they would get with those three defensive tackles, right? Especially with those three guys having a pretty good game.

You know, Davis and Carter and Ajomu.

And you know, the... [laughs] That's not supposed to happen.

Now, maybe that changes when Grenard comes in and is, is really ready to go, but Vic talked about that yesterday, right? He didn't think that the outside rush guys had a particularly good game.

And they were...

Right.

Yeah.

Uh, I, I don't think you have to worry about that just from a personnel standpoint, just from a Vic Fangio standpoint, I think they're gonna be really good.

Like everybody says, high, high floor for this team because of the defense.

Um, the, the offense, we don't know what Sean Mannion's gonna look like as a play caller.

Uh, a lot of people say a lot of great things about him, about how smart he is, smartest guy in the building.

Jordan Mailata keeps saying that.

Okay, still haven't seen it.

It's gonna be a fun ride.

So you've seen Eagles draft wide receivers and kind of force them into roles or, or take their time with these guys, you know, just upon what you've seen from a Kai and what you heard from Howie, what do you think is going to play out with him here or here early in the season?

I think early in the season, it's going to be a struggle.

Um, For all the reasons you cited, the hamstring injury, the rough start in the preseason game, the rough start in training camp, we've seen stories similar to this.

And I don't mean to suggest that Makai Lemon is destined to be a first-round bust, but it's not as if Howie Roseman has an unblemished track record when it comes to drafting wide receivers.

We've seen Jalen Rager.

We've seen even one that would qualify as a win in Nelson Aguilar.

Be a guy who really struggled as a rookie and continued to have problems with dropping passes over his career with the Eagles.

What do you think they need to do, Mike, in terms of that area to offset what happened to them last year when defenses focused so much on stopping Saquon Barkley and the Eagles just couldn't get out of stopping that?

I mean, you name it, the Phillies are just cooking right now.

It's insane.

It really is.

I mean, from 9-19 to this, I mean, you're talking, what, 28 games over .500 with Don Mattingly as your manager.

All of a sudden, neither Christopher Sanchez nor...

Zach Wheeler is the best pitcher in your starting rotation, which is, you know, if you're a Phillies fan, you take that every day of the week.

I mean, you know, Jesus Lizardo showed last season against the Dodgers that he can pitch in the playoffs.

That's it.

Sure

... and more importantly, October.

And I still have some questions about their pitching depth.

Um, I still feel like...

I, I don't know if anybody's asked Don Mattingly this or asked people in the upper levels of the organization.

I wonder if they are trying to prep Sanchez, Wheeler, and Luzardo for what might be the reality of October, which is, "Guys, you got to get us seven to eight innings to get us to Johan Duran.

Um, because we're, we only have so many arms in the bullpen that we can trust." And it seems to me their clearest path to victory is to ride their starting pitching and an incredible closer, and hope they score enough runs.

He was like, "Yeah, being around a hitter like Luis Arize, you start to pick up on things and, like absorb some stuff." It's almost like the Tony Gwynn effect of like, you just get around somebody that's such a great bat-to-ball player that you kind of like, through osmosis or watching him, pick up on stuff.

Right

... all over the years and all the Embiid videos over the years and all the times where it's looked like he's been in great shape and for one reason or another, whether it's because he gets injured and it's not its, his fault or he's not in prime physical condition because he didn't do enough, it doesn't work out.

I, I wanna believe that having LeBron there and having someone of LeBron's habits and the, the demands and pressure that LeBron places on teammates to be at their best, uh, has already started to push Joel to be at his best.

You know, I reported about this last week about, you know, Embiid was a reason LeBron came here.

Their experience together in the Olympics, I think the guys on that team looked at Joel's experience there a little bit different than everybody in Philly did.

I think the guys on the team, and I was there for it, looked at it like, look, he's giving us what he can give us, and the Olympics really, really matter.

Like, winning the gold for the US really matters.

Yeah.

Downtown areas were not proud areas back then.

Stallone's timing and the producer's timing in making this movie could not have been better.

In this sense, Mark, Philadelphia had been exactly what you described in the early 70s.

You know, high crime, racial tension, you know, kind of a rough place.

It's people seeing themselves as kind of downtrodden, but full of spirit and heart.

And by the time November and December of 1976 roll around, And Rocky comes out.

The city is on kind of an upswing.

As you start doing a deeper dive into the movie and the characters, and I don't know if I was shocked, but you're right, he and Carl Weathers didn't get along, did they?