Town
Rocky’s town is heavily shown throughout the movie, with him taking walks around it. This town symbolizes Rocky’s humble beginnings and shows a stark contrast between his life before the fight with Apollo Creed is signed.
Mickey
When Mickey learns about the title shot that Rocky is getting, he immediately comes to become Rocky’s manager. In his attempts to convince Rocky he mentions his prime days as a boxer. We see Rocky become agitated as Mickey keeps talking about his prime. Later on, we hear Rocky yelling, after he refuses Mickey’s management offer, that he didn’t even have a prime time that he can talk about. Here we see Mickey symbolized as the opposite of Rocky, someone who has had a prime boxing time and is now a coach. Whereas Rocky still hasn’t gotten anywhere with his boxing.
Rocky Steps
When Rocky first starts training after he has been given a shot to fight Apollo Creed, we see him not taking it as seriously. He smokes and drinks. And when we first see him go jogging for the fight, he’s running slow and at the end of his run he barely makes it up to the steps which are now known as “The Rocky Steps”. But near the end of his training, we see him sprint up the steps. The steps here symbolize his progression and his belief in his chances of winning.
Broken Nose
Rocky mentions, on his date with Adrian, that he has had 64 fights but his nose never got broken. But when Rocky fights Apollo, he gets his nose broken in the first round. This symbolizes all the previous fights Rocky has had were not testing him to his full potential. His broken nose symbolizes his fight with Apollo Creed as his hardest and toughest fight yet.
