A few years ago, Strikeforce Women’s Middleweight Championship challenger Gina Carano figured out that she was pretty and people liked her, so she stopped getting punched in the face for a living and started doing MMA fight scenes in movies like Haywire. UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey’s is currently going through the same thing, starring alongside 40 60-year old men in The Expendables 3. One of the many conspiracy theories about Chris Weidman’s Middleweight Championship victory is that Anderson Silva threw the fight so he’d have more free time to make horrible-looking MMA movies. Hell, even Ken Shamrock was in Champions back in the day.
MMA has proven to be a surprisingly-easy springboard into mainstream movie stardom, so it shouldn’t surprise you that UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon ‘Bones’ Jones suddenly wants to be an actor. Or that he wants to be like The Rock, who is in, like, 65 of the 67 movies released this year.
“I’d like to model my acting career on Dwayne Johnson, the way he came out of [WWE] and started off tough guy roles and then moved over to doing ‘Tooth Fairy,'” the 24-year-old Jones told MMAjunkie.com during an appearance at the UFC’s “World Tour” in Los Angeles. “That’s when you really saw that he could act, and he’s the one I admire and respect a lot, so I know I’d love to model my acting career after (him).”
Yes, we all really saw The Rock’s acting chops in Tooth Fairy, because being tough and wearing a tutu means “acting.” We saw Hulk Hogan’s acting ability in Mr. Nanny.
But don’t think it’s all tough guy roles and then ballerina costumes for Bones. He’s going to ply his craft!
“As an entertainer, I think acting is one of the highest levels you can get, and right now, I’m doing pretty well in my field, which is the martial arts world. To branch out a little bit and get my feet wet there and maybe prepare myself for a career after this career, I think it’s all part of the plan.”
The ability to morph from a tough guy to dramatic actor might be the toughest skill Jones has to learn if he decides to jump into a new field, but he said he’ll take it as seriously as fight camp.
“I’ll definitely take a lot of classes,” he said.
I’m going to get to work on that Tapped 2: Tapped 2 Tha Bone script right now, just in case.
In a related story, Chael Sonnen hates movies.
