Arnold Schwarzenegger Remembers 'Stupid Stuff' He and Sylvester Stallone Competed Over: 'Who Has More Muscle?'

In the Netflix documentary ‘Sly,’ Arnold Schwarzenegger recalls how he and his now-friend “were like little kids” competing in their 1980s movies

Arnold Schwarzenegger is revealing the “stupid stuff” he and Sylvester Stallone have done in the name of competition.

In Stallone’s new Netflix documentary Sly, the bodybuilder-actor-politician sits down to talk about how the two movie stars “would be fighting over” who could outperform the other on and off screen throughout the 1980s and ’90s.

“We were like little kids,” says Schwarzenegger, 76. “Who uses bigger knives? Who uses the biggest guns and holds them in one arm? Who has more muscles, who has more muscle definition, who has less body fat?”

Six years after the overnight success of Stallone's Oscar-winning Rocky, which he wrote and starred in, Stallone, 77, invented another character who would inspire a hit movie franchise: lone wolf Vietnam War veteran John Rambo, in 1982’s First Blood.

Related: Arnold Schwarzenegger Turned Down an Invite on Sylvester Stallone's Yacht: 'I Can Get My Own' (Exclusive)

As Stallone became synonymous with explosive, fast-paced action blockbusters, as critic Wesley Morris explains in Sly, “Arnold Schwarzenegger was his only competition.” 

“Sly, all of a sudden with Rambo, he stepped into my arena,” says Schwarzenegger in the documentary of Stallone’s transition to action-packed films not unlike The Terminator and Commando.

“All of a sudden he was ripped with muscles and everyone [was] talking about his body,” he recalls. “And so that created competition of course.”

But, Schwarzenegger adds, “Now we look back and we laugh at the whole thing.”

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Stallone and Schwarzenegger eventually went on to star together in another action film that launched a franchise, 2010’s The Expendables, and have spoken of “goofing around and being crazy” as friends. But in 2021 Stallone revealed the two “truly, truly loathed each other” in their earlier career days.

"We couldn't stand to be in the same galaxy together for a while," Stallone said on U.K. talk show The Jonathan Ross Show, according to Insider.

The pair’s rivalry was also a topic of discussion in Arnold, Schwarzenegger’s three-part documentary, released in May. “There was only room for one of us," Stallone recalled in an interview for that docuseries.

"He was superior. He just had all the answers," he continued. "He had the body. He had the strength. That was his character." Stallone even admitted that if a winner had to be declared between the two of them, it would be Schwarzenegger. "He wanted to be number one… Unfortunately, he got there."

In Sly, however, Schwarzenegger remembers their dueling action-hero eras differently. “I was always trailing Sly, I was always a step behind,” the True Lies star says of his now-friend. “He was always making bigger grosses, then a year later I made the same grosses, but by that time, he made bigger grosses again.”

Related: The Biggest Revelations from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s New Book: From Making 'Amends' to Shock Surgery

Earlier this month in a conversation about his book Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, Schwarzenegger told PEOPLE that his relationship with Stallone these days is “fantastic.”

“I really admire him. I love him. He’s just a different person than me. He’s much more raw, and he’s much more vulnerable and in touch with his emotions… It makes him good in acting, because he feels things immediately.”

Sly, directed by Thom Zimny, premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It's now streaming on Netflix.

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