Mickey Rourke: From boxer to “Wrestler”! By Ken Hissner (Dec 27, 2009) DoghouseBoxing
It has been said there have been some Hollywood actors who could have been good fighters. John Wayne and Gary Cooper were he-men who were tough but wouldn’t be good boxers. John Garfield who starred in the boxing role “Body and Soul” was an amateur boxer who could have made the grade. Another that comes to mind is Elvis Presley who starred in the role “Kid Galahad”.
Robert Conrad would train with the boxers and one day got in the ring with Frankie Crawford a good featherweight boxer from Los Angeles. Crawford it is said not only knocked Conrad out once, but twice. Conrad couldn’t believe he was knocked out and asked to continue the sparring session and he went out again. It was a lot tougher than playing Jim West on the “Wild Wild West” and doing those battery commercials putting a battery on your shoulder and asking “bet you can’t knock it off”!
Recently Mickey Rourke won acclaim for his role as “The Wrestler”. He received a nomination for an Oscar after winning a Golden Globe award as best actor. Not a lot of people knew that as Andre Rourke, Jr. he boxed amateur starting at age 12. He trained at the 5th Street gym in Miami where many famous fighters have trained like heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and welterweight champion Louis Rodriguez, both out of the Angelo Dundee stable. It is said Rourke sparred with Rodriguez and receiving a concussion. From 1964 to 1972 he had 26 fights, winning 20 of them, 17 by knockout.
In 1991 he got the fight bug back in him and turned professional at age 38. On May 23rd at the Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale he won a 4 round decision over Steve Powell, of Pompano, Florida. It would be almost another year before fighting to a draw with Francisco Harris, of Miami, in Miami. Rourke fought as a 118 pound amateur and now was fighting at 178.
In June of 1992 Rourke would fight on the undercard of a world title bout between WBC flyweight champion Muangchai Kittikasem and Yuri Arbachakov in Kokugikan, Tokyo, Japan. Rourke scored his first knockout win in stopping Darrell Miller, a veteran of over 50 fights in the 1st round at 2:14.
At the end of 1992 Rourke defeated Terry Jesmer over 4 rounds in Oviedo, Principado de Asturias, Spain. Jesmer was from Winnipeg, Canada, and had over 40 fights to his credit. The main event was a Spanish light welterweight title bout. In March of 1993 it was back to the US as Rourke scored another 1st round knockout over Tom Bentley in Kansas City, Missouri. His weight was down to 169. Bentley was from Port Charlotte, Florida. Tommy “The Duke” Morrison was the winner in the main event with a young Tex Cobb a winner on the undercard.
In July back in Missouri, Rourke stopped Bubba Stotts, of Las Vegas, in the 3rd round, in Joplin. At the year’s end he would again scored a stoppage in the 3rd round over Thomas McCoy, from the US, at the Sporthalle, in Hamburg, Germany. It was on the undercard of a world WBO cruiserweight title bout featuring Nestor Giovannini and Markus Bott. Also, on the card was future world champion Dariusz Michalczewski in the co-feature. His final fight was fighting to a draw with the cousin of Sean O’Grady, Sean Gibbons, 11-3-2, at the Davie Arena, in Davie, Florida. The date was September 8th, 1994.
