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Rocky actor, former NFL linebacker Carl Weathers dead at 76 | CBC News

Carl Weathers, a former linebacker who became a Hollywood action movie and comedy star, playing nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies, facing off against Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and teaching golf in Happy Gilmore, has died. He was 76.

Weathers went on to 1987's Predator, where he flexed his pecs alongside Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and a host of others, and 1988's nouveau-blaxploitation flick Action Jackson, where he trains his flamethrower on a bad guy and asks, "How do you like your ribs?" He later added a false wooden hand to play a gold pro in the 1996 comedy classic Happy Gilmore opposite Adam Sandler and starred in Dick Wolf's short-lived series Chicago Justice in 2017, as well as in Disney's The Mandalorian, which earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 2021. Others he idolized included actors Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and athletes Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, stars who broke the mould and the colour barrier.

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