Franchise fuels success for Rocky impersonators

What they're saying: Monforto tells Axios he was once at a party where a man asked him to record a Rocky video for his sick kid.

• "He changed," Monforto recalled the father telling him a year later. "You have no idea the impact you have on people."

Meanwhile, Kunda worked odd jobs for years before winning a Rocky look-alike contest in 2006 that changed his own life.

• He started serving as an unofficial understudy for Monforto whenever he couldn't make a gig, then parlayed that into a full-time job running Rocky tours around Philadelphia.
• Along the way, Kunda met and earned Sylvester Stallone's stamp of approval.

Flashback: As a young kid, Kunda tells Axios that the Balboa persona was a "coat of armor" to keep him from being bullied in school.

• Later, he grew out his hair to resemble Stallone in "Rambo" — which helped him meet his wife — amassed an extensive wardrobe of the actor's get-ups and was featured in a documentary, "The Pretender."

The ultimate Rocky superfan, Kunda painted portraits of the boxer, sent Stallone a copy of his self-published memoir and traveled to movie sets around Philly hoping to meet the actor.

• After befriending the owners of the Victor Cafe, one of the filming locations in the 2006 movie "Rocky Balboa," Kunda found himself sitting next to Stallone inside the restaurant for the actor's 60th birthday.
• Kunda's wife, Sue, snapped a photo of the two that the cafe owners later submitted to a Balboa look-alike contest.
• After beating out thousands of people, Kunda earned more Rocky work, and the tours became lucrative — a dream his high school teacher said would never come true.

The bottom line: "Mr. Kunda, you were right," he says the teacher told him when they ran into each other years later. "I was wrong."