Liam Neeson Quit His Amateur Boxing Career After Being Freaked out by a Brain Injury
Actor Liam Neeson once starred in a feature that saw the Star Wars star portraying a down on his luck boxer. But he already had real life experience with the sport that helped inform his performance.
Liam Neeson once opened up about his brief boxing career
Neeson was no slouch when it came to the world of boxing. The Taken actor asserted that he entertained the sport at a very young age, and won his fair share of matches.
“I started when I was 9 and I fought until I was about 16 or 17. I was juvenile champion of Northern Ireland three times and Irish runner-up a couple of times in my weight division. I was OK, I was competent. I was a jabber, I had a good jab. I had about 40 fights and I won about maybe 30,” Neeson once told ESPN.
Although he had a decent record, Neeson would eventually hang up his gloves for good after one of his last matches. He won the bout, but sustained concerning head trauma that made him reconsider his path in life.
“It was maybe close to my last fight. I must have been 16. I actually won the fight, but I came out of the ring and I had obviously got a concussion because my trainer said to go downstairs and take my clothes off and stuff, and I couldn’t figure out what downstairs meant. It kind of freaked me out a bit. It lasted for about three minutes or so. I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to get out of this. It’s not comfortable anymore,’” Neeson remembered
Liam Neeson starred in his own boxing movie with ‘Crossing the Line’
Neeson’s familiarity with boxing came in handy for the 1990 feature Crossing the Line. He played an impoverished miner in the film who engages in bareknuckle fights to financially support his family. Despite knowing himself around a ring, Neeson was reminded that there were stark differences between fighting with gloves on and off.
“I know for a fact there are frequent bare-knuckle fights run by a loose sort of underground. Huge amounts of money are bet by people who want to see two men almost kill each other with their fists. It’s very different from boxing,” Neeson once told UPI. “I saw two such fights in England when I was preparing for the role. They are so brutal they only last two or three minutes. In one of them a fighter repeatedly beat his opponent over the head with a wooden chair.”
Even though the Batman Begins star was an amateur fighter himself, that didn’t mean he could take it easy for the film. His background in the sport would still pay off when he had to face an actual professional fighter in the feature.
“As an amateur fighter for eight years I learned to box a bit. And I’ve managed to stay fit ever since, but I had to train hard to play this role. We spent five weeks choreographing the fight and then shot it all in a week’s time,” he said. “It paid off. When the fight scenes were over I didn’t have a mark on my body. Neither did Rab Affleck, who played my opponent. And a good thing, too. Rab was Scottish light-heavyweight champion at one time. I wouldn’t have lasted 60 seconds with him in the ring.”
Why Liam Neeson turned down playing a boxer again in a Spike Lee movie
Neeson has become one of the most recognizable action stars in the film industry, but he ruled out playing a boxer ever again. He felt, at his age, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the physicality portraying a fighter might require. This would lead to him turning down an unrealized Spike Lee project that would’ve had Neeson return to the ring.
“I’m 60 years of age, man. I can’t, really. Spike Lee was interested a few years ago in me playing Max Schmeling because he wanted to tell the Joe Louis story. I hope he does at some point. Even then, that was 10 years ago. I said to Spike, ‘You’ve got to get somebody younger,’” Neeson said.
