On Sylvester Stallone’s birthday, 3 times he touched our Indian hearts via Salman Khan, Kambakkht Ishq

Sylvester Stallone will turn 72 on Friday. The Italian Stallion has come a long way from putting everything on the line to make his breakout film, Rocky. He’s now starring in several franchises, including the very successful Expendables series and the critically acclaimed Creed movies.

Stallone is one of the few mainstream action stars who have the ability to deliver emotionally stirring performances, and he’s a two-time Academy Award nominee for acting. Not too many actors could do Escape Plan 2 and Creed 2 in the same year and pull it off.

All this is great, but on Stallone’s birthday, instead of listing his best movies or his cheesiest lines, let’s take a look at all the times he’s connected with us.

Kambakkht Ishq

Who can forget Stallone’s memorable cameo in Akshay Kumar’s 2009 film. When Amrita Arora and Kareena Kapoor put their safety in Aftab Shivdasani’s hands (great idea), a bunch of racially diverse goons come asking for trouble. They speak in vaguely dubbed accents and try to get handsy with the girls, and when they’ve done away with Aftab, in comes Sly to clean things up, and that’s when he delivers the eternal line, ‘Kambakkht Ishq’. But at least Aftab got to meet Stallone and everyone got to visit a cheap Hollywood backlot.

Tiger Shroff’s fandom

A couple of years ago Tiger Shroff announced that he would be starring in a remake of Stallone’s Rambo. Little has happened after that. All this gets even stranger when you take into consideration that Baaghi 2 had more than a couple of nods to Rambo. In any case, Tiger took Stallone’s message - which at best sounded pessimistic - as a compliment, even if it wasn’t intended as one.

He knows who Salman is

Ok, so it took him a couple of tries but he finally figured out who Salman Khan, our biggest hero is. While Salman was promoting Race 3 by releasing one new poster everyday, he reached an agreement with Stallone which would have him reveal Bhai’s poster. That he did, but in a hilarious goof-up that revealed not only his disinterest but also his complete and utter ignorance of the man he was dealing with, he tagged Salman in Bobby Deol’s poster. The error was corrected shortly - although he still seemed hazy as to what Salman looks like - but not before everyone could have a good laugh about it.

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