I'm A Celebrity star Tony Bellew's surprising Hollywood movie career

23 November 2023 , 20:30

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Tony Bellew starred in both Creed and Creed III alongside Sylvester Stallone (Image: WireImage)

Former boxing champion Tony Bellew was known for commanding the ring and destroying his opponents.

But after retiring from the sport five years ago, the 40 year old star surprisingly launched an acting career in Hollywood, after being cast in Creed and Creed III, which was a spin-off from the legendary Rocky movies. This meant that the sportsman turned actor starred alongside Sylvester Stallone and Michal B. Jordan. Known in the boxing world as The Bomber, Tony took on the role as Ricky Conlan in the hit film. But it seems that it was a case of art imitating life as Tony actually hit Michael B. Jordan in the face.

Tony was told to actually hit Michael B.Jordan to make the scene look real (Warner Bros)

This was part of a scene while filming but it left the actor seeing stars. Two years ago, Michael revealed while on BBC Graham Norton show: "Sly enjoys putting me through punishment, he really does, he’s so mischievous. In the Rocky films it’s like a badge of honour to take a real punch. And when you do slow-mo shots you can’t fake it because if you did a slow-mo shot and it was a miss, you would see the space and that it wouldn’t connect."

He added: "So you have to take a real punch. Sly gets up and says, ‘Michael, listen, you gotta take a real punch. I’m like, ‘Ugh, okay, did you do it?’ He says, ‘Yeah, I did it, did it a bunch of times.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, if you did it, I’ll do it. We ended up setting up the cameras and I took a real punch. See the crazy thing was, I wasn’t technically ‘knocked out’. But I got hit, went down and the camera panned in. The first time we did it, Tony’s glove was in the way so we didn’t see it – so we had to do it again."

He continued: "So we did it the second time, I got hit and I could feel the energy of the studio. I was like, ‘It must have really looked good because everybody is quiet.’I was definitely seeing stars, I was not all there, smelling the canvas and everything. It smelled like Pine-Sol. But yeah, I took a real punch, it felt like I was in a car accident for like four days afterwards.Tony said he only went 40 per cent."

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And at the time Sylvester took to X and wrote: "Michael B Jordan, ‘Young Creed’ and ‘getting KOd for real!’ But he got up and did it again! That’s called guts!!" When Tony was first approached to take part in the movie he refused to believe that it wasn't a prank and put the phone down on the director twice.

Michael B. Jordan said he felt like he'd been in an accident after punch by Tony Bellew

Back in 2014, speaking about being asked to join the cast he said: "A guy phoned me up and said Sylvester ­Stallone wants to speak to you. I said, ‘F**k off,’ and when he rang a second time 10 minutes later, I told him I would trace the call, find him and beat the s**t out of him. Then he rang a third time and told me to check out the director on the web and we agreed to meet at a hotel. Even then I thought it was a wind-up and expected someone to jump out and say, ‘Ha, fooled you!'"

Lucretia Munro