Why Conor McGregor Punched Jake Gyllenhaal In The Face On The Road House Set
The most memorable fight in the 1989 "Road House" ends with James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) ripping Jimmy Reno's (Marshall Teague) throat out with his bare hands. Knowing this, it was probably always an untold truth that the "Road House" remake needed all the brutality it could afford to match the original. The 2024 version achieves this with Jake Gyllenhaal, who got ripped to play the MMA fighter protagonist Elwood Dalton. Despite his prime physical condition, filming wasn't easy for the star. Gyllenhaal suffered a gruesome injury on the set thanks to a glass mishap — and perhaps even more terrifyingly, he got punched in the face by MMA star Conor McGregor, who plays the film's antagonist, Knox.
"It was late, because we shot a lot of these fight scenes at night, so it was like 3 a.m.," Gyllenhaal recounted during an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." "And he was talking to me real close and he was like, 'Yeah, that left hook looks good, but then when you do it, boom!' And he hit me by mistake." The actor mentioned that he and McGregor were equally shocked by the accidental cheap shot.
Fortunately, the two maintained a great working relationship throughout filming, and McGregor gave his co-star plenty of pointers to make things more believable. "We would do a take fake fighting, and then we'd go watch the monitors ... to see what worked," Gyllenhaal explained. "He was always great with me. He would tell me to do things like, 'Oh, you know, turn your hand, move a little bit more this way to try to make it look more real.'"
Conor McGregor had extra motivation to be as professional as possible
Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't the only person taking real hits during the "Road House" shoot. He also ended up accidentally hitting Conor McGregor in the head with a car door, though Gyllenhaal told Fallon that the fighter just shrugged it off. "He was like, 'Pfft.'" As such, while there's been plenty of drama around the "Road House" remake, the two stars did their part to keep things civil.
McGregor had extra motivation to bring his A-game to the set. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the star recalled Meryl Streep's unsavory comments about mixed martial arts at the 2017 Golden Globes. "Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts," the legendary actor said during an acceptance speech.
Streep was making a point about acceptance within the arts, but McGregor understandably didn't care for the three-time Academy Award winner turning MMA into collateral damage — especially since he has a radically different interpretation of fighting. "I was really taken aback because fighting is an art," he said of Streep's speech. "It's brutal also, so I can understand. It's not for somebody to make a mistake; it's real artistry for those who do what we do, so I came in with maybe a little chip on my shoulder and wanting to represent my sport and my art, give my best in this arena."