Rocky Balboa 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 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!