Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a struggling Philadelphia boxer who is scorned by his gym's owner, patronized by a local loan shark and rebuffed by a shy "plain-Jane," whose butcher brother keeps engineering a romantic match. Rocky would have remained in this rut had not heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) come up with the Bicentennial gimmick of fighting a sure-ringer...by touting the fight as a chance for a "nobody" to become a "somebody" and easily winning the bout himself. But someone forgot to tell Rocky... To everyone's surprise, Rocky trains earnestly. And in the climactic fight sequence, the "Italian Stallion" gets his wish: to go the distance...against all the odds! Talia Shire, Burt Young and Burgess Meredith also co-star.