“I must break you”. Decades later, and we still remember the roided up superfreak who was engineered in a Soviet laboratory to take down Rocky Balboa. We know that he did not succeed in that task, but this was the man who killed Apollo Creed in the ring and was married to a then hot Brigitte Nielsen, before she became the grotesque trainwreck that once pined over Flavor Flav. Sure, he was symbolic of “Communist evil” and the movie aged quickly with the spirit of Glasnost, but tell us you won’t watch it when it comes on cable!

Diggstown was a movie that we loved, though it failed to get a large audience. Nevertheless, we loved watching “Honey” Roy Palmer (Louis Gossett Jr.) box ten men in a twenty-four hour period. Although Louis Gossett Jr., may have been a little long in the tooth to pull that off, when you have an actor as compelling as Gossett Jr., we seemed to have no issue with it. Were we the only ones?

Clearly inspired by Mike Tyson’s real life incarceration the decade before; George “Iceman” Chambers (Ving Rhames) plays a bad ass former Heavyweight Boxing Champion who winds up in jail. The normally likable Rhames, turns that switch off and he finds himself in a contest with the prison champion (Wesley Snipes). Although the film was not critically respected, we did like it, though we found Rhames miscast, as he was 43 when the film was out, and looked significantly older. He may have still resembled a bad ass boxer, but one who was at the prime of his career? Not a chance.

At what point did any casting agent look at Ryan O’Neal and think that he could be a credible boxer? Actually, we are still trying to figure out who thought he was a credible actor in the first place? We have no problem stating that this is one of the worst fictitious boxers we have ever seen, but “The Main Event” was a box office success, so maybe we are in the minority here.