The battle for box office and genre supremacy between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone was heated to put it lightly, with the two bulky behemoths holding an active disdain for each other as they set about trying to outdo the other at every turn.
Things got so heated that the aging icons are happy to admit they hated each other’s guts for a long period of time, but those fences have long since been mended after they ended up becoming the best of friends. However, time appears to have mellowed Stallone even further, after he reflected on the rivalry in Netflix documentary Arnold by admitting he came out on the losing side, going so far as to say “I got my ass kicked constantly.”
“We were incredibly antagonistic. We couldn’t even stand to be in the same room. People had to separate us.”
It did act as the great motivator, though, with Schwarzenegger revealing that the competition ended up driving him to new heights.
“We were competing about everything. The body being ripped and oiled-up. Who is more vicious. Who is more tough. Who uses bigger knives. Who uses bigger guns. Sly and I were at war. Without Stallone, I maybe wouldn’t have been as motivated during the ‘80s to do the kind of movies I did and work as hard as I did.”
Asking which one of the two can be deemed the king of action cinema is capable of stirring up debate to this day, but it appears as though Stallone has come to terms with being second best at long last.
