Did movie star Sylvester Stallone say that he will cover all the expenses of Chuck Norris' funeral and "fulfill these three wishes on his behalf"? No, that's not true: The viral clip about this on social media used AI to alter Stallone's words. The opening frame of the purported statement predated Norris' passing by ten days.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here and here) uploaded to TikTok on March 20, 2026. In it, Sylvester Stallone appeared to be saying the following words:
I will cover all the expenses of Chuck Norris' funeral and fulfill these three wishes on his behalf. When I heard the news of Chuck Norris's passing, I was deeply saddened. Chuck was not only my partner in career but also my friend in real life.
First of all, what Chuck cared most about during his lifetime was his charitable martial arts education program, which has been carried out in more than 50 middle schools in Texas. I will expand it to more schools and provide financial support on his behalf.
Secondly, Chuck kept many collections about Bruce Lee during his lifetime. Chuck once said that Bruce Lee was not only his close friend but also his mentor. I will set up a museum specially to display the collections of Bruce Lee and Chuck and fully preserve the precious memories of these martial arts legends.
Finally, I will set up a spiritual inheritance fund in his name to promote the spirit of martial arts and inherit his tough spirit of perseverance, justice, and never giving up. Let Chuck's martial arts legend and personality inspire future generations forever and continue his love and responsibility for martial arts in the world.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @bikini.bottom.cele on TikTok.)
In the clip, Stallone's lip movements look a little out of sync with the sound. Furthermore, he repeatedly changes outfits throughout the speech, which lasted only one minute and 11 seconds:
(Image source: screenshots of post by @bikini.bottom.cele on TikTok.)
Also, the bottom of the video showed an AI disclaimer:
(Image source: screenshot of post by @bikini.bottom.cele on TikTok.)
When Lead Stories tested the thumbnail image from the video with the InVid verification plugin, it suggested that the clip was 86 percent likely to have been generated by AI:
(Image source: InVid.)
Lead Stories separated the audio from the video in the post and ran it through the DeepFake-o-Meter audio detector. Six out of seven models available via this AI detection tool, hosted by The University of Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, found that the likelihood of the audio being a product of generative AI is between 90.2 and 100 percent:
(Image source: DeepFake-o-Meter.)
The opening shot from the video came from Stallone's authentic announcement made on March 9, 2026, on his account on Instagram (archived here). In it, he discussed producing a prequel to the Rambo franchise -- 10 days before Norris died, making it impossible for the speech attributed to him to be authentic.
(Image source: post by @officialslystallone on Instagram.)
When the news about Norris' passing broke on March 20, 2026, Stallone expressed (archived here) his condolences on Instagram but did not say what the post reviewed in this fact check attributed to him.
(Image source: post by @officialslystallone on Instagram.)
