Jake Gyllenhaal was accidentally punched in the face by UFC star Conor McGregor during a fight scene for the reimagining of the movie “Road House,” in which Gyllenhaal plays a former UFC middleweight fighter turned bouncer.
Jake Gyllenhaal got more than he bargained for while prepping for his scenes with UFC star Conor McGregor. This was all in the name of the movie “Road House” remake.
The film’s set to premiere on Amazon Prime this week. Gyllenhaal’s cast as an ex-UFC middleweight fighter turned bar bouncer in the Florida Keys.
Just like the 1989 original, trouble doesn’t take long to find him. Enter McGregor, the villain of the piece.
During filming, Gyllenhaal and McGregor had to shoot several fight scenes. There was this one time, McGregor accidentally landed a punch on Gyllenhaal.
Gyllenhaal shared this incident with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show”. He said, “We’d be fighting, fake fighting, then check the monitor to see what worked. McGregor was always great with me. He’d guide me, tell me to adjust my moves to make it look more real. We shot a lot of these fight scenes at night.”
He continued, “So it was like 3 a.m., and he was talking to me really close. He was like, ‘Yeah, that left hook looks good, but then when you do it like, boom (showing fake punch),’ and he hit me by mistake. It was almost like … and I was like, ‘Oh!’ And he was like, ‘Oh!’”
Gyllenhaal had to get in top shape for the film. The movie features fight scenes shot with ex-UFC fighter Jay Hieron in the octagon before the UFC 285 main card.
Working with McGregor was a thrill for Gyllenhaal. He knew the former two-division champ would push him to his limits.
“When I heard he was going to be doing it, I was super psyched,” Gyllenhaal admitted. “They chased him for a long time to play the part. But then I got totally terrified and I thought, ‘Oh God, I actually have to fake fight this guy and I got to look like I can.’
Gyllenhaal added, “I stay in pretty good shape, but we trained for two months pretty hard — grappling, and a lot of MMA.”