After the death of Rocky’s trainer, played by Burgess Meredith, Rocky’s friend and former rival Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers, calls on him to get back “The Eye Of The Tiger,” meaning his sharpness, his hunger, the predator instinct, that edge he had lost. That is where the song’s central image came from. The “eye of the tiger” was a phrase taken directly from the film’s script, tied to the need for Rocky to return from comfort to the thirst for confrontation.