Frank Shamrock: ‘Mickey Rourke is obsessed with fighting’
Recently, famed actor Mickey Rourke returned to the boxing ring where he scored a controversial TKO in a bout that many believed was staged.
Rourke’s camp has maintained that the bout was in fact real, and even MMA legend Frank Shamrock is saying that Rourke trained long and hard for the bout.
He spoke to MMAMania about the time Rourke broke the news to him, the same time he was getting in shape for a film.
“About six months later he told me the same thing and he looked totally different because he was training his butt off. I figured okay, he is probably going to do it.”
“It was amazing. He really took to fitness and really switched his body up and his whole health approach because of that rugby movie, because he was going to play a guy that was like 35 or 33 or so. He knew this was the last time he was going to look like that and take his body to that level. He said he was going to call me and I was going to go with him, but he didn’t call me.”
“It’s just amazing what he has done with his body and his health. It’s what real serious actors do. They can become something else. I have all the respect in the world for him, because there is no way I’d get in there. No way I’d be in there.”
“He was always a big fan of fighting and we never met, we just circled each other. He was doing The Wrestler and one day I’m in the gym training for who knows? Nick Diaz or somebody and he calls me up and says ‘I want to use your move.’ I go, ‘what do you mean?’ He had his stunt coordinator put him on who was a friend of mine and he said ‘listen, I want to use your move, but I don’t want to use it without asking you. I have a lot of respect for you and I want to use that move you did on Baroni where you gave him that sleeper thing,'”
“I go ‘yeah Mickey, I would be honored.’ So he did it and then he invited me to the movie premiere and he just started hanging out after that. He is obsessed with fighting so it’s like every conversation we get in begins or ends with something about fighting.”
What are your thoughts on the bout? Which you can see HERE.
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