As is so often the case with the Creed series of movies, and the Rocky movies that came before, Felix Chavez was played by a real professional boxer. 

Jose Benavidez Jr. is a top-ranked super-welterweight boxer who has challenged for titles and comes from a boxing family (his father, Jose Sr., is a trainer, and his brother David is a top pro as well, and a former champion). Nonetheless, he said in an interview that he had to audition for the role of Felix Chavez in "Creed III" (2023) — against more than 200 applicants, much to his surprise. 

He was surprised because he didn't know how big the role would be. "When they told me about this, I thought it was just going to be, you know ... it would be something like a little background [role]," he told EssentiallySports.com. "I feel right now like I still can't believe it."

It was not just a background role. Instead, he played a protege of the now-retired Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan, "Black Panther," 2018), whose defeat at the hands of the villainous Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors, "Lovecraft Country") convinces Adonis to give up retirement and gain vengeance (a plotline that echoes 1985's "Rocky IV"). That made for a lot of screen time for the rookie actor.  

Of course, as I said, the Rocky movies have been doing that all along (for those who don't know, the Creed movies are continuations of the Rocky ones, with Sylvester Stallone reprising his Rocky Balboa role in the first two). This tradition reaches all the way back to the first film, "Rocky" (1976), which featured a cameo from legendary heavyweight Joe Frazier. 

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