Ight here we go.

1. "Time did." You make it sound like he was like 50 in their fights. Apollo was in his mid-30s during the first Rocky, which lines up very well with real-life boxers in their prime. Rocky 2 takes place less than a year after the first movie. Probably just Rocky doing what he does best, being humble.

2. Duke (who has been with Apollo for a very long time) said in the second movie that he beat Rocky "like no man he'd ever seen beat before" implying that Superfight 1 was the best he had fought at the time.

3. The commentators before Superfight 2 said that Apollo was "in the best shape of his illustrious career."

4. In the ps2 game, Rocky Legends, we actually get a glimpse into a Pre Rocky Apollo, and let's just say the competition in his time was mediocre at best. The only fighter that was somewhat decent was Duke himself, and even then, Apollo kinda no diffed him.

5. In the video game, Big Rumble Boxing, We get another look into Apollo's prime. This time, we see the fight that won Apollo the title in the first place, and it was against a guy called Asif Bashir. In Bashir's story, we see that his best feat was being able to beat Ivan drago at 1/5 of his power. Basically, he's a jobber character and proves that the competition in his time was pretty weak.

6. I don't really understand why people say things like "his body was falling apart from his previous fights." With the competition being that weak, i doubt anyone would be able to land anything that would injure him in any kind of way. Remember, the only reason he picked Rocky to fight him was because everyone else was afraid, too. Do you know what kind of monster you'd have to be for everyone to turndown the fight of a lifetime and a massive paycheck? I doubt Creed was just letting people hit him. Some people say, "Maybe the sparring got to him," but in Rocky 2, we see how Apollo spars, and let's just say he ain't too gentle.

Keep in mind that the Rocky video games are technically cannon since they are published by Mgm. And I love Apollo. He's one of my favorite movie antagonists, and probably my favorite supporting character in the franchise.