American actor-filmmaker Mel Gibson admits he was knocked out cold in a street fight when he was 20.
69 year old Gibson recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he shared his love for the UFC – Bordering on obsession.
Gibson told Rogan that he felt sorry for UFC fighters, admitting that he felt as though Brian Ortega was his son when he fought Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 266.
Later in the podcast while sharing an anecdote about meeting Muhammad Ali, Gibson revealed the shocking details that he had been hospitalized in a street fight in his younger years.
Mel Gibson reveals being hospitalized in a street fight
On the topic of Muhammad Ali suffering from post-traumatic Parkinsonism, Gibson segued into a story of him being knocked into the hospital in a street fight when he was younger.
“He [Ali] was all in there, but I guess he had the damage of being punched,” Gibson said. “It’s not good. I got knocked out in a fight,” Gibson revealed. “When I was like 20. And it was like, knocked out! Like, out! And I woke up in the hospital — not good.”
Rogan glossed over the topic, “No [not good]. A few of those will explain a lot.”
Mel Gibson has martial arts training
While Gibson isn’t a lifelong martial artist, he’s at least had some rudimentary training on the sets of some of his most popular films. Most notably, BJJ royalty Rorian Gracie helped coordinate fights in Lethal Weapon, and Gibson can be seen throwing up a triangle choke against the movie’s main antagonist in the final fight scene.
Gibson can also credit fighting as a big factor in landing the role of Mad Max.
“[…] I got into a brawl and I didn’t come out looking too pretty,” Gibson told ScreamFactoryTV. “I took on half a rugby team and it didn’t work out too well on my end. … They took polaroids because I was every color of the rainbow… And they said, ‘Man we need freaks like this in this film.'”