Comments Thread For: Burt Young Reflects on 'Rocky' Series, Career, 'Paulie' Character

[alexguiness]

I always liked Paulie.

[yoshik]

I was also undefeated under a number of different aliases before.

That was the silliest thing I've read today.

He went 17-0, and his manager, Cus D'amato, kept allowing him to change his alias? Why?
Maybe he changed his name 17 times to trick the local commission into allowing him to beat-up the same guy over-and-over.

Why do dumbasses like you find something negative about everything?

[Dramacyde]

17-0 my a$$. This Ofay is lying through his rotten teeth

[landotter]

Loved to hate that Paulie character. Which, honestly, is the ultimate compliment to a character actor. He was such an important part of the first movie, a symbol of all the negativity in life a person like Rocky had tot overcome. Must be nice to be a big part of an enduring bit of American film.

[Marvlus Marv]

Paulie was such a key part of the whole Rocky vibe. The role was played so brilliantly that I never thought of it as acting. It was just 'Paulie'. As someone else said, it's the highest compliment you can give to an actor.

[bigjer88]

In 1989 I was a teenager working after school and on weekends in an ice cream store in Indianapolis. One afternoon when I was working...it was just before the Indy 500...Burt Young came into the store (which was empty at the time) with a lady friend. Being a huge Rocky fan, I was probably one of the few 16 year-olds who actually knew his name. So I asked him if he was Burt Young and he and the woman he was with were a little tickled by the question. He said, "yea," and ordered some ice cream in a waffle cone. I picked up the next cone from the stack (we made all of the cones in the shop) and it was a little chipped...so he asked if he could have a "stronger" cone. The woman he was with chuckled at his request - as if to say, "the kid knows your name and you're going to give him a hard time?" -- and told him to just take the one I had given him, which he did.

Even though I gave him a crappy cone, he still gave me his autograph.

[McNulty]

His Wiki page doesn't peep a word about his boxing past.

Mmm....

Try Google then.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-17/sports/sp-3745_1_burt-young

[MachoPower]

There is another article, in thesweetscience.com, in which he claims he was a pro boxer but he refused to provide the the aliases. Also, he claimed he managed David Sears for a tittle match against Michael Spinks??

Here is the article: http://www.thesweetscience.com/artic...g-likes-pacman

[Gigantes]

I had a patient who was a movie director and directed a couple of movies with Burt in it. He told me Burt was one tough sob. Also always came to work drunk (no wonder he played Paulie so good). My patient said Stallone was actually afraid of Burt. Pretty cool hearing stuff like that.

[La_Vibora]

I was also undefeated under a number of different aliases before.

That was the silliest thing I've read today.

He went 17-0, and his manager, Cus D'amato, kept allowing him to change his alias? Why?
Maybe he changed his name 17 times to trick the local commission into allowing him to beat-up the same guy over-and-over.

I dont know if his story is true or not, but it wasnt unusual for fighters to fight under aliases back then. Hell, even Ray Robinson did it. He fought Willie Pep under the moniker Ray Roberts. Anyways, the best way to find out the truth is to ask some of Cus' proteges like Teddy Atlas and Mike Tyson. I am pretty sure that Cus would have told them about that at some point if he really did manage Burt.