Schwarzenegger Confirms He 'Started' Rivalry With Sylvester Stallone In Joint Interview

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone still vividly remember their rabid rivalry.

The elder statesmen of high-octane Hollywood action famously competed throughout the ’80s and ’90s and sat down to dish on the extreme lengths they went to for a joint interview released Tuesday titled “TMZ Presents: Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons.”

“As soon as I saw him, it was like, ‘Bang, two alphas hitting,’” Stallone told moderator and TMZ founder Harvey Levin. “If we walked into a party, we’d be staring at each other for a few seconds, and then, ‘I got to get that guy. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he will.’”

While Stallone said Schwarzenegger’s rise helped “motivate” him, and the “Terminator” star agreed Stallone “was very helpful” as someone he could “chase” after, Schwarzenegger admitted he “started this whole thing” by “saying stupid things” and “being competitive.”

“It was kind of like, ‘Well, what was your body fat?’” he recalled asking Stallone. “And I was down to 7%, so I said I was down to 10%. So it became a competition with the body. Then he started using machine guns that were huge machine guns.”

“I was running after him,” Schwarzenegger continued. “He was not running after me. So I said, when we did ‘Predator’ — you got to get a machine gun that is normally mounted on a tank or in a helicopter — I said … I got to have a bigger machine gun than he used in ‘Rambo.’”

Their competition had started much earlier at the 1977 Golden Globes, however, when Stallone’s “Rocky” won Best Film after Schwarzenegger claimed the New Actor of the Year award for “Stay Hungry.” Stallone said that he “lost it” when “Rocky” won.

“I literally went and picked up this entire bouquet of flowers and tossed them straight up in the