Creed II comes out in two weeks, which seems impossible. The trailer just came out the other day! Except, no, the trailer came out in June. FIVE MONTHS AGO. Even on a good day, I don’t have a great sense of chronography, and I always feel like things just happened only to be reminded when something happened years and years ago. But we’re currently living in a nightmare vortex where everything is happening all of the time, and it has completely destroyed what little sense of relativity I do have and now I don’t know when anything is. Thanksgiving—the real one—is in two weeks. That’s crazy, Halloween was yesterday and Christmas is in six months. This is to say, the only reason I remembered Creed II is coming out in two weeks is because Michael B. Jordan is out here promoting it.

He surprised an advanced screening in Atlanta—the only people who surprise my advance screenings are ballerinas and f-cking clowns—and he is starting to make the network rounds, along with director Steven Caple, Jr., to promote the film. I just can’t wrap my head around this being the time to promote Creed II but I also think it’s November Marchteenth, so clearly MBJ is the one on the ball and being where he needs to be. And he does need to be promoting Creed II, because while it is part of a beloved franchise, and Creed was very popular, on Thanksgiving weekend it’s going up against Green Book, the TIFF 2018 People’s Choice winner and a movie that is playing very well in advance screening and festivals. Green Book will appeal to a similar, adult-oriented audience, and it also has potential as the family-friendly, non-cartoon option. So MBJ’s hustle is important.

Adding to the hustle is a new featurette about the legacy fight at the center of Creed II. Adonis wants revenge for his father, but Ivan Drago also wants revenge, because losing to Rocky ruined his life, and he’s using his son to get that revenge. This featurette gets points deducted for lack of Bianca, but overall it is doing a good job on hyping this fake boxing match. I continue to be DEEPLY WORRIED for Donnie because Viktor Drago is twice as big as Donnie, and I’m already cringing in anticipation of that fight being BRUTAL. For the next couple weeks we’re living on Creed time, counting down to the biggest (fake) boxing match of the century.