Training and fighting scenes in Here Comes the Boom. From the very beginning, says stunt coordinator Garrett Warren, James and Coraci had a vision about how they wanted the film’s fight sequences to play out.
“Kevin and Frank were very clear: they wanted fight sequences that were comical, but also realistic in nature,” he says. “Each one, they knew exactly how big or how small, or how funny or how realistic it was going to go. Kevin had a very active role in the choreography – in many ways, he made us all look pretty good.”
As for the on-camera fights, Garner says, “Kevin was adamant that the fight scenes were going to look as real as we could possibly make them. He wanted it to feel as if the audience was inside it.”
“The main part of our approach was, ‘What is it like to go into the ring?'” says Coraci. “Everyone’s seen it on TV, where they use certain objective camera angles. I felt we had to get the audience to experience what it was like to actually step into the Octagon. Garrett was as passionate about this idea as I was. We were strapping cameras to fighter’s bodies to get angles literally inside the grappling. It’s funny at times, but the hits are big hits. Kevin worked extremely hard and because he did a bunch of his own fighting, it really paid off. The MMA in this movie is like no other movie anyone’s ever seen before. It’s really awesome and fun.”
To make the fights feel real, stunt coordinator Garrett Warren called on the experts. “One of the most important things we did was to enlist the help of real MMA fighters,” he says. “We approached it as if it were real. Looking at Kevin’s character, a former collegiate wrestler, if this were a real fight, he’d punch into the clench, take him down, and pound away the victory. That played into every fight – we were constantly asking ourselves what his character would do, what his strengths were, and going from there. It was great working with Kevin and Frank, because for each fight, they knew exactly what they wanted – how big or small or funny they wanted it to go.”
Another way the filmmakers kept it real was to ask themselves what the likely result of each fight would be. A good example is his first fight: “We build it up to be this amazing fight, only to have Scott take a knee to the face and it’s over in one move,” says Warren. “Scott drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
The funny thing is, when we were rehearsing it, we had to come up with three or four different ways that a person can get kneed in the face and hit the ground. We came up with falling flat forward, backwards, sideways, how to shoot it from the top and from the side. After all that, I’m one of the world’s biggest experts in getting kneed to the face and hitting the ground.”
Eight Fight Styles
James’s character has eight fights in the film. In each, the actor takes on a real-life MMA fighter. The filmmakers also sought to set each fight in a unique location.
Fight #1 – Abandoned Factory – MMA fighter James Robinson
Fight #2 – Boston Docks – Former MMA fighter Rafael Cordeiro
This fight takes place outdoors, in the rain. “Todd Garner actually saw that in one fight – it starts raining and the fighters keep going,” says Coraci. “It was like a Slip-and-Slide. When we saw that, we thought, that is pure comedy. We had to put that in the movie.”
Fight #3 – Community College Gym – the character of “Lucky” Patrick Murphy – played by MMA fighter Jason “Mayhem” Miller
This is the fight in which Scott experiences his first success – even if it’s mostly a fluke. “He throws a Hail Mary – we can all relate to it,” says Warren. “You put your head down, throw the punch and pray that it hits. And in the movie, it does – Scott catches the guy on the button and he goes down. That was actually an idea that Kevin came up with when he was writing the script -he’d seen it in an MMA fight years ago and wanted something like that to happen.”
Fight #4 – High School Gym – Chael Sonnen
Fight #5 – Topsfield Fairgrounds (collapsible stage fight) – MMA fighter Satoshi Ishii
Fight #6 – Horse Arena – Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighter Romulo Barral
Fight #7 – Lombardo’s – UFC fighter Mark Munoz
Fight #8 – UFC Fight – the character of Ken Dietrich, played by UFC veteran Krzysztof Soszynski
In all the fights, Warren had the dual goals of making the fight look real while also making it look like a schoolteacher has found his way into a fight – but the ante was upped with the UFC fight, as these are the fighters at the top of the game. “We took small cameras, and we’d place them on Kevin’s head, or stomach, or chest, to put the audience right in the middle of the fight,” says Warren.
However, creating the fights wasn’t necessarily about actually creating a real fight, but making it look real – a fight that felt real, even if it’s not how real fighters do it. “One of the most important things was not hitting a guy,” he says. “When you are in a real fight and get hit for real, you tense up your neck and lean your head into the punch. But we had to create the illusion: we had them throw their heads to the side and react to the punches, telegraphing to the audience that the character just got hurt. In between the punches, that’s when we sought to have real movement, real choreography around the ring.”
What About Training Scenes?
To train for his role, James worked with a number of real MMA trainers who taught him each of the different disciplines he would need to show on screen. “Ryan Parsons, the film’s fight consultant, organized all of my training,” he explains. “We went with guys like Danny Perez, who’s a professional boxer; Mel Menor, a Thai kickboxer; and Jason Lambert, who also played my double in the movie. They all worked with Garrett Warren, our stunt coordinator and second unit director, to block out all the fight scenes.”
“We treated preparing for the movie as a fight camp,” says Parsons. “Kevin sparred with world champions in boxing and kickboxing. I mean heavy sparring – he had real experience. He dove in and treated it as if he was going to have an actual fight.”
Along the way, James says he picked up some of the little things that make a big difference. “Danny Perez taught me a lot of head movement,” he says. “Mel Menor helped me with my movement. And Mark DellaGrotte got the part of my trainer in the movie after I worked mitts with him – I honestly felt that nobody could do a better job in the part and that I wanted him to hold the pads for me because I did it better with him than with anybody else.”
Perhaps his proudest moment during training was when he knocked out trainer Mel Menor. “We were working out in a hotel banquet room – we were on the road and that was the only place we could do it,” James says. “We were mixing it up and I went for a hip throw and I accidentally landed all my body weight on Mel. He’s a little smaller than me, and he went out for a second. It was an accident, but I’ll take the knockout.”
Related Link: View the Full Production Notes for Here Comes the Boom
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