Sylvester Stallone once caught Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to sabotage his entire career.
Now at 80, Stallone just appeared on a podcast and revealed exactly how Hollywood's greatest rivalry really started.
What he revealed about that night explains why Commando's ending was secretly rewritten to beat Rambo's kill count.
The 1977 Golden Globes Night That Started the Stallone Schwarzenegger Feud
It started in January 1977 at the Golden Globe Awards, with Rocky up for six awards and Schwarzenegger – fresh off Stay Hungry – seated at the same table.
Stallone watched Schwarzenegger win New Star of the Year, then watched Rocky lose five of its six nominations while Schwarzenegger gave him dirty looks across the table.
Stallone's answer was to fake a victory celebration – "like, yay," he said – and throw a bowl of flowers directly at Schwarzenegger.
"The gauntlet was thrown," Stallone said Thursday on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, "and it was on."
It stayed on for the next 20 years.
The Rambo and Commando Box Office War That Defined 1980s Action Movies
Every time Stallone released a movie, Schwarzenegger went to work trying to top it.
Rambo: First Blood Part II came out in 1985 and obliterated the box office, so Schwarzenegger made Commando – and the ending was rewritten specifically so his body count would beat Stallone's.
"Who has the biggest gun," Schwarzenegger said later. "Who kills more people. Who kills people more creatively. Who makes more money."
Stallone compared it to Ali versus Frazier – two men who made each other better by refusing to let the other win.
"The madder I made him, the madder he made me," Stallone said, "the more we fought to make the next action film – bigger knife, louder gun, more body count."
That competition gave America Rocky IV, Rambo III, The Terminator, and Predator. Hollywood hasn't produced anything like those since.
The worst thing Schwarzenegger did wasn't at the box office.
He had read the script for a buddy cop comedy and knew it was garbage – then leaked word to the press that he was considering taking the role himself, and watched Stallone sign on to beat him to it.
Stallone made Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, which holds 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Schwarzenegger later admitted the sabotage on Jimmy Kimmel Live! – and told the story with a grin.
"At least I wasn't pregnant in a film, Arnold," Stallone said when he found out – a shot at Schwarzenegger's 1994 romantic comedy Junior. "We're even."
How Stallone and Schwarzenegger Finally Ended Their 20-Year Feud
When Schwarzenegger entered politics and ran for Governor of California in 2003, Stallone ran into him at a cigar shop.
The competition that had driven them both for two decades was gone – they sat down, smoked cigars, and that was it.
Today Schwarzenegger carves pumpkins at Stallone's office like two men who can barely believe how much time they spent hating each other.
"Thirty years ago," Schwarzenegger wrote recently, "you would have never caught us dead doing this."
Stallone, now 80 and still grinding through Tulsa King Season 4, doesn't regret a minute of it.
"It's something that'll never happen again," Stallone said, "where you have two actors in the same genre, literally going for it – on-screen, off-screen."
The price he paid to prove it was steep: he told Fox News Digital that The Expendables shredded both his shoulders and left him with nine back surgeries and three neck fusions.
"I think I'm an idiot for doing that," he admitted.
A man who broke his own body trying to be the best at what he did is not an idiot. That is what genuine competition between two people who refuse to lose looks like.
Hollywood today has no equivalent – not because nobody tried, but because the studios decided focus groups, diversity mandates, and superhero franchise math were safer than letting two competitive men drive each other to greatness.
Every Rocky, every Rambo, every Terminator that came out of that competition, people still watch forty years later.
Just Stallone and Schwarzenegger, 80 and 79, still talking about a feud that made American movies the greatest on earth, while the people who replaced them make movies nobody remembers six months later.
Sources:
- Antoinette Bueno, "Sylvester Stallone Reflects on 'Very Contentious' Arnold Schwarzenegger Feud," Page Six, November 5, 2026.
- "Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls Sylvester Stallone His 'Enemy' During '80s Hollywood Rivalry," Fox News.
- "Sylvester Stallone Warns Actors Not to Do Their Own Stunts After On-Set Injuries," Fox News Digital.