Joe wondered then if this was how Rocky Balboa felt, getting his face and body plummeted in the fight of his life against world heavy-weight champion Apollo Creed. Rocky was just a working-class Italian-American small-town club fighter, an unknown. The odds were stacked up against him. With a will of steel, hard work and determination, and a coach that cared enough not to let him give up, his shot of a lifetime changed his life when he went the distance. It earned him respect. Not only from those betting against him, but a deep down to the core self-respect in knowing that he gave everything he had to give, and then some. Not just as a fighter from the slums of Philadelphia, a nobody who grew up on the streets, but one whose name became
