Guys, listen. It’s Monday. It’s the first day back from a four-day weekend. You stuffed your face with food and then stuffed your ears with Christmas music. We shouldn’t have to be at work right now. But alas, here we are. And I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to read this – aka procrastinating your work a bit more. In return, I’m going to stuff your eyes with one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, Michael B. Jordan.
Over the weekend, I saw Creed, the Rocky spin-off movie. If you know me, this may be a somewhat surprising choice for holiday weekend viewing because I usually don’t put sports movies on the top of my list. However, if you do know me, you know I’m a fan of Michael B. Jordan and HBMs in general. On top of that, I kept hearing nothing but good things about Creed, so I caved and went to see it. And let me tell you – I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s just that good.
Preface: Rocky is one of my Pop Culture Blind Spots. If I had planned this better, I would’ve watched Rocky in prep for Creed, but turkey got in the way. I of course knew the basics of the Rocky franchise – Sylvester Stallone, Apollo Creed, Philadelphia, Yo Adrian, the steps, boxing. But not the details. I was basically going into the movie *blind*. While there were a few things that my friend (who watched Rocky for the first time the night before) had to explain to me, they were fairly inconsequential, because overall, Creed is a fantastic film that deserves all the awards. The drama, the action, the writing, the acting, the score, the directing (Ryan Coogler FTW), the cinematography – everything – was a literal knockout. It reminded me of a Friday Night Lights vibe, where you find yourself rooting for the Panthers/Lions/Creed because you’re rooting for the person, not the team. Sport is secondary, personal victory is everything. This is the end of Traci’s Creed movie review (so go see it).
Back to MBJ. I’ve previously discussed how his excellent acting skills make me cry inexplicably (yeah, I cried at Creed a couple times, so what), but on this Monday after Thanksgiving, I’m just going to present you with some pure sexy MBJ goodness.
For Creed, MBJ clearly had to get into a boxer’s shape. Playing the son of a legendary fake boxer, he had to live up to the Creed legacy Carl Weathers started 40 years ago. So my boy called up his boy, trainer Corey Calliet, a former boxer himself. Over the course of a year, MBJ worked out twice a day, drank lots of water, ate boiled chicken and broccoli and brown rice (why does that sound good to me) and gained 24 pounds of muscle. !!
For comparison, a totally still hot pic of MBJ in January 2014 on some beach:
and a year ago:
nine months ago:
eight months ago:
on the cover of Men’s Fitness today:
yeahhhhh. I’m here for all of it. Have I convinced you to watch Creed yet? Well let me add that there’s a romantic component to the story, involving Adonis ‘Donnie’ Creed and his neighbor, played by the beautiful and talented Tessa Thompson. Y’all, there’s a scene in the movie that involves braids that’s not even sexual and I was getting sweaty. I died. Anyways, MBJ knows how to flirt and be romantic and stuff and here’s a video of him doing that.
Have you recovered from that stupid amazing video yet? Me either. Take some time, look up more pix of MBJ in private browsing, then go see Creed. I promise you it’s worth it. If not, come back here and complain to me. But I’ll barely be listening. I have Rockys 1 through 6 to catch up on.
MBJ thanks you for your time.
Cookies + Sangria 