My Tommy Gunn analysis

for all we know tommy could have changed himself quickly after the street fight and might have been ready for forgiveness even as the street fight ended. i doubt he ended up hating rocky after the street fight myself.

as we know he was just a messed up young adult. he didn't start out bad or anything. another reason why i somewhat preferred the originally ending to rocky v. it makes more sense especially if nothing else in sense of rocky's character. he never held grudges and if he could in ways forgive drago then heck i cant see why he couldn't do that with tommy. but we didn't get that with the ending of rocky v.

it was also closure to tommy's character as well. after all most people usually want to know what becomes of rocky's opponents after they fall.

This points to one aspect about the majority of Rocky "villains" that I've always found compelling. They all have back-stories. You could totally understand Apollo's indignation at wanting to set the record right with his only "non win." When Clubber said "You don't know where I've had to come from" it all made sense. He was a guy who had seen a horrible life of poverty, and probably worse, who was fighting to make something of himself and lift himself out of poverty. Drago was just a puppet for the Soviet machine who probably greatly resented that, and his breakdown before the 15th round in Rocky IV, where he screams "I fight for me" was telling. Tommy was another person who had been severely damaged by his upbringing. And then there was Mason Dixon, who wasn't a villain at all and was actually pretty sympathetic. What distinguishes all of them from Rocky, and what makes Rocky super likable, is the fact that he had seen truly rough times but didn't let that turn him sour. That's what made his character special.

Yes tommys character is good-hearted, like rocky, but unlike rocky, did not have enough heart to stay true to himself nor to meet the adversity, as Adrian points out.

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