Schwarzenegger Admits He Felt He Was ‘Always Trailing’ Stallone’s Fame

Netflix’s documentary Sly, chronicling the life and career of Sylvester Stallone, dropped on Friday. Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in the film to discuss his infamous rivalry with Sly, and admitted it was partially due to a feeling he was “always trailing” the Rocky star.

At the time, Schwarzenegger felt that Stallone was stealing his niche. He didn’t see enough room for two muscular action stars in Hollywood, and figured one would ultimately cannibalize the other’s career. “Sly, all of a sudden with Rambo, he stepped into my arena,” Schwarzenegger said in Sly (per People). “All of a sudden he was ripped with muscles and everyone [was] talking about his body. So that created competition, of course.”

While many saw Stallone as the poor man’s Schwarzenegger, the Commando star didn’t see it that way. “I was always trailing Sly, I was always a step behind,” he revealed. “He was always making bigger grosses. Then a year later I made the same grosses, but by that time, he made bigger grosses again.”

Schwarzenegger reports this resulted in the two warring “like little kids” over a variety of “stupid stuff,” including but not limited to: “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?”

With time, though, all of those rivalries have fallen away. Stallone and Schwarzenegger long ago buried the hatchet, going on to appear together in the first three Expendables movies. “Now we look back and we laugh at the whole thing,” Schwarzenegger said in the documentary.

Sly is currently streaming on Netflix.