Friday Book Snippets: 'Fights Worth Fighting'

Happy Friday Saturday, fellow readers!

I apologize for being a day late with this post, but I have a good reason. I initially had a Friday Book Snippets (hosted by Anne @ My Head is Full of Books and Olivia @ Bemused and Bookish) post ready featuring a library loan title, so I decided to delay it for a week because I knew I would be receiving a review copy of Dolph Lundgren's new memoir, Fights Worth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle, courtesy of Harper Horizon. The book arrived late on Friday afternoon. To my surprise, the publicist also included an unrequested copy of Idle in Provence: A History of Thyme by Eric Idle.

For those who may not know, Dolph Lundgren is an actor best known for his roles as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV (1985) and Creed II (2018), as well as He-Man in 1987's Masters of the Universe and Gunner Jensen in The Expendables franchise. Lundgren announced in 2023 that he has been battling kidney cancer since 2015, which is the inspiration for the memoir's title and likely its main subject. According to the blurb on the book's jacket, Lundgren discusses his upbringing in Sweden, his journey from a chemical engineering student to a martial arts champion, and his eventual transformation into an international movie star.

Book Beginnings:

Even before my first cancer diagnosis in 2015, I had begun to realize the way I had spent so much of my life in the extreme, or, as I later learned, in "escape behavior" wasn't very healthy at all—overworking, overtraining, sexual affairs, combat sports, as well as the drinking and drugs I had done during the 1980s.

— Lundgren, Dolph. Fights Worth Fighting, Harper Horizon, 2026, p. 2.

The Friday 56:

For some reason, I ended up taking a few classes with Warren, and afterward he pulled me aside and said, "Did you ever think maybe you're a frustrated artist and not going to be happy working as a chemical engineer?"

— Lundgren, Dolph. Fights Worth Fighting, Harper Horizon, 2026, p. 58.

〜B.J. Burgess