"I must break you."
It's the iconic, definitive line from one of the definitive, iconic boxing movies in history, as Dolph Lundgren talks smack to Sylvester Stallone as they step into the ring in 1985's Rocky IV. It's a ridiculous line in a movie that's also pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but Ivan Drago makes his sinister return in Creed II, which came out earlier this month to plenty of fanfare.
Of course, Dolph Lundgren is super old now, so he won't be fighting anyone - instead, the responsibility of fighting Adonis Creed (played by Michael B Jordan) falls on his son, Viktor Drago, who's played by Florian Munteanu. Dolph Lundgren is not a small man by any stretch of the imagination, but Munteanu is just as big, weighing a whopping 220.
Even more terrifying - Munteanu (who's a fitness model as well as a boxer) told GQ actually had to lose weight in order to make 220 pounds. "It's a heavyweight bout, so I was trying to lose, like, 20 pounds to drop to 220," he explained. So, how does a man mountain like that possibly satisfy what must be a constant lust for nutrients?
Well, Florian Munteanu was kind enough to explain what exactly it is he eats in a single day. You can bet your bottom dollar it's a lot. Now usually, Munteanu - also known as the Big Nasty - stands at about six feet four inches and weighs 250 pounds before shooting Creed II, so he had to cut down a little.
"Obviously when we started to shoot, I had to hold myself back from pizza and put myself on a strict diet," Munteanu explained, but what did that mean in practice? "It was pretty monotone," Munteanu admitted, saying he doesn't like cooking too much. So if you want to follow Vitkor Drago's diet, it's actually pretty simple, for the most part.
"I'm not the guy who loves cooking that much. I try to keep it as simple as possible: chicken, rice, and vegetables, all day, all night. I mix it up with some tomatoes and avocados. Maybe some hummus, if I had a good day and I thought I was losing a lot of body fat."
Yep, folks. Chicken and rice for days. But if all of that beige protein and carbs fills you with dread, then I've got some pretty good news - when it comes to the first (and most important) meal of the day, Florian Munteanu likes to get a bit more sophisticated with a giant bowl of cereal.
Okay, you got me: I was being sarcastic.
"I like milk. I like drinking milk," Munteanu explained when talking about the mammoth bowl of cornflakes he has for breakfast, with as much as 500ml (18 fl oz) of milk per bowl. "If you want to gain muscle, you've got to increase your protein level," he added, which is why he mixes two scoops of protein powder into his bowl of cereal.
Breakfast of champions, indeed.
But when he's not punching Michael B Jordan in the face, Munteanu subsists on a diet of mostly fast food. So strong is his lust for greasy junk food, he gets free pizza for life in his native Romania at Domino's - because he was reportedly spending too much time at Pizza Hut.
"So they [Domino's Pizza Romania] called my manager and said, 'Hey, your guy, he's eating at Pizza Hut all the time.' My manager said, 'if you want him to come to Domino's, you know, do something about it,'" he explained. But when he's in America, he goes to one fast food joint in particular.
"Shake Shack burger, bacon and cheese fries, and then this huge salted caramel shake with whipped cream on top of it. When we were shooting the movie, after all the boxing and montages were out of the way, I think I was ordering $400 or $500 worth of Shake Shack every week."
I'm not sure what's more terrifying - Florian Munteanu's Goliath physique, or his weekly calorie intake. Dude likes to eat.