Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey is keeping the art of the random amusing athlete tweet alive. The peak example of the form will always be Will Hill (a former Ravens DB, coincidentally), but as many other athletes have become more buttoned up on social media, Humphrey is still known to drop humorous thoughts out of the blue on his Twitter feed. Take, for example, this tweet from Friday in which Humphrey admitted that he did not know the Titanic was a real ship.
Was today year old when I found out the Titanic was real….that’s wild lowkey
— marlonhumphrey.eth (@marlon_humphrey) May 12, 2023
It’s one of the most infamous disasters in human history, but it somehow eluded Humphrey’s radar.
Humphrey was in a sharing mood on Friday, so he also confessed that he thought Rocky was based on a true story.
At one point I thought Rocky was based off a true story so I’m all messed up
— marlonhumphrey.eth (@marlon_humphrey) May 12, 2023
But here’s the thing: Rocky really is based on a true story! There never was a boxer named Rocky Balboa from Philadelphia, but Sylvester Stallone was inspired by the story of Chuck Wepner when he wrote the script for the movie. Known as “The Bayonne Bleeder,” Wepner was 35 when he earned a title fight against Muhammad Ali in 1975. He worked a full-time job as a liquor salesman in New Jersey and his company gave him seven weeks off so he could train for the fight. Ali won, but Wepner lasted 15 rounds against the champ and Stallone was so inspired by his performance that he turned his story into a movie.
“It was like a bolt of lightning from some Greek god in the sky, and, almost instantly, Wepner became the crowd favorite—in a matter of seconds,” Stallone told GQ in 2008. “Suddenly, he went from being a complete joke to being somebody whom everybody watching could identify with—because everybody’s thinking, ‘Yes, I’d like to do that! I’d like to do the impossible, even if only for a moment, and be recognized for it—and have the crowd cheer.’ So it made everyone think to himself, ‘If this totally inept guy can put down Muhammad Ali, who knows what I can do.’ So I’m sitting there watching all this, and at some point I realize that the whole thing’s a metaphor, and I realized that it wasn’t really about boxing. Actually, Rocky was never really about boxing, it was about personal triumph.”
If Humphrey wants to learn about the guy who inspired Rocky, this Sports Illustrated profile from before the Wepner–Ali fight is a great place to start.
