Here's the advice Apollo Creed performer Carl Weathers believes the boxer would have given to son Adonis in the Creed movies. While the titular boxer is the icon of the Rocky series, the legacy of Apollo Creed himself has loomed large over the series. In the original movie, he was the World Heavyweight Champion that Rocky found himself facing off against in the ring and the two returned for a rematch in Rocky II. The two rivals later turned into fast friends when Apollo became Rocky's trainer in Rocky III, and the latter is left heartbroken when Creed is later killed during a fight with Soviet boxer Ivan Drago.
Fans felt the same way, with Apollo Creed's Rocky IV death being one of the most defining moments of the entire franchise. Weathers' multilayered turn as Apollo throughout the first four entries left a huge impact on the series, and the character remains a firm fan favorite. This was only reinforced with the Creed spinoff movies, which focus on Michael B. Jordan's Adonis, the son of Apollo. The first movie followed Adonis as he tried to make a name for himself in boxing, with Stallone's Rocky acting as his trainer as the latter tries to make peace with his part in Apollo's demise.
Creed worked as both a worthy follow-up to the Rocky movie franchise and a great movie in its own right. While Carl Weathers doesn't physically appear in either Creed or its 2018 sequel, the presence of Apollo haunts both. Adonis has to learn to step out from his iconic father's shadow to make his own name, while also trying to connect with a man he never even met. Likewise in Creed 2, Adonis essentially feels he has to avenge Apollo's death by fighting Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan. During a 2015 interview with THR, Carl Weathers spoke of the advice Apollo Creed would have given Adonis about going into boxing.
“If Apollo Creed was there to counsel his son, it would probably be, in my mind: ‘Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. The reason I sweat and bled the way I did was so that you didn’t have to. And then if his son insists and is going to do it come hell or high water, then who better to show his son the ropes than the greatest.”
On the surface, Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed could be brash and egotistical, but there was more to him than the simple desire to be the best. Weathers' Apollo Creed advice to Adonis makes total sense as the boxer would want a different life for Adonis, and would know better than anyone there was little his son could do about being compared to his legendary father. Retrospective comments from Stallone reveal he now regrets killing off Apollo in Rocky IV, and that if he was to remake it, Creed would have survived the fight but been left in a wheelchair.
This would have made for a very different take on 2015's Creed - which featured an incredible single take fight - had it been Apollo training Adonis and connecting with the son he never really knew. It's hard to say if this would have made for a stronger movie, since the death of Apollo weighs heavily on both the characters and the story. That said, it would also have been great to see Weathers and Michael B. Jordan interact on-screen too. This will likely never happen, even with the upcoming Creed III, which Jordan will direct. There was once a plan to include Carl Weathers Apollo in Creed 2 in ghostly form, which (thankfully) didn't come to pass.