Here's what happened to Tommy "The Machine" Gunn following the events of Rocky IV, Sylvester Stallone wanted to get back to the roots of the title boxer with the "final" sequel Rocky V. This saw Rocky retire following his punishing bout with Ivan Drago and going bankrupt. He later trains a promising, fighter named Tommy Gunn, who later turns on his mentor when he hits the big time.
Rocky V is commonly considered the weakest of the series - including by Stallone himself. The movie's dour tone and forced melodrama make it something of a slog, and the star later redeemed the series when he returned for 2006's Rocky Balboa. Stallone had also planned to kill off Rocky following his street brawl with Gunn in the finale, but the studio nixed this plan and decided the character was simply too iconic to kill off. In hindsight, this was clearly the right choice.
Rocky V's Tommy Gunn was played by real-life boxer Tommy Morrison, who ed away in 2013. While the subsequent sequel didn't exactly wipe the fifth movie from canon, they only made ing references to it. The fate and career of Tommy "The Machine" Gunn has never been brought up, but in 2010 during a fan Q&A with AICN, Stallone gave his thoughts on what happened to the character.
"As for Tommy Gunn, he was exposed as being a project that would never be fully developed as a man and also succumbed to a life of a mediocre fighter barn storming around the country and eventually transforming himself into Tommy ‘Boom Boom’ Gunn, second rate wrestler performing exclusively in the Midwest in third rate venues."
Stallone painted something of a grim picture for Tommy Gunn's post-Rocky V life, and it's unlikely future Creed movies will elaborate further on the character's fate. While Gunn was a compelling villain in his own right - acting as a surrogate son to Rocky before turning against him - he never became as iconic as other rival fighters like Apollo Creed or Clubber Lang. The latter was once intended to return as a ringside announcer in Rocky Balboa, but that didn't come to .
Creed 2 seeing Ivan Drago acting as coach to his boxer son Viktor. It seems Stallone's image of "Tommy ‘Boom Boom’ Gunn" is likely the closest to an explanation for the character's life after Rocky V that fans will get.
