Sylvester Stallone’s musclular mash-up The Expendables is still a fair few months off, but Sly isn’t wasting any time in revealing just how rough and tough his action opus really is.
Speaking with this month's FHM , he says that he and pal Dolph Lundgren never held back in their all-out fight scenes. And Sly now has a metal plate in his neck after a particularly hefty bust-up.
“Man, it was seven guys, kicking each other's ass, one guy tougher than the next. No joke, our stunt guys were begging for mercy,” Stallone says.
“Actually, my fight with Stone Cold Steve Austin was so vicious that I ended up getting a hairline fracture in my neck. I'm not joking. I haven't told anyone this, but I had to have a very serious operation afterwards. I now have a metal plate in my neck.”
It's not the first time Stallone has been seriously injured on set. Back when he was making Rocky IV, co-star Dolph Lundgren, who also appears in The Expendables , gave him a bit of a battering;
“Dolph Lundgren and I always went for it. I gave him orders to try to knock me out while the cameras were rolling.
“At one point, he hit me so hard on the top of the head I felt my spine compress. He then hit me with an almighty uppercut.
“That night my chest and heart started to swell, and I had to be helicopter-ambulanced from my hotel to a nearby emergency room.
“I was told that Dolph had punched my rib cage into my chest, compressing my heart. If it had swollen any more, I would have died. After that, I was like, ‘Dolph, it's only a movie, bro...’”
The Expendables - which unites action heavyweights Sly, Schwarzenegger, Statham, Lundgren, Rourke, Willis and Li - is released on 20 August, 2010.
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