Dolph Lundgren Invoked A Famous ‘Rocky IV’ Line While Revealing His Eight-Year Cancer Battle

When The Expendables star Dolph Lundgren reprised his Rocky IV role for 2018’s Creed II (which functioned like a Rocky IV sequel), the audience had no idea that he’d already been battling cancer for a few years. As Lundgren recently discussed with the host of In Depth with Graham Bensinger, however, he was told by one doctor that his cancer was terminal. That (fortunately erroneous) declaration happened around 2020 when surgeons discovered six new tumors on one of the actor’s kidneys.

Yes, six. That was when Dolph realized that his remission had come to an end, and at the time, his doctor told him that he only had a few years (at the most) left to live. Dolph didn’t agree, so he found a different doctor, who diagnosed him with a form of cancer that should be treated in a manner similar to lung cancer. And he began to make a miraculous recovery. As seen at the beginning of the Bensinger interview above, Dolph is initially seen in the hospital discussing those six surprise tumors, and he echoed his most infamous Rocky IV line, “If he dies, he dies” by changing it up to “[i]f it dies, it dies.”

Fortunately, those tumors did die, and Dolph is going strong. He’ll soon be seen in several movies, including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Expendables 4.