“Kickboxer: Vengeance,” an update to Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1989 breakout hit “Kickboxer,” arrives in theaters, on VOD and Digital HD September 2nd from RLJ Entertainment. With such an all-star line-up of some of the world’s top martial artists, we have to ask, of the five prominent fighters in the movie, who would you least like to meet in a dark alley? Why you would be in a dark alley, in the middle of the night, by yourself, is not my concern but for hypothetical reasons, of the five fighters, who do you think you might even stand the smallest chance against? Let’s have a look…
Alain Moussi plays the lead role of Kurt Sloane (played by Van Damme in the original) who sets out to avenge his brother Eric’s death at the hands of the brutal and intimidating Tong Po (Dave Bautista). Alain is trained in jujutsu, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts. In addition to stunts and acting, Moussi owns and operates the NX Martial Arts and Fitness Academy in Orleans, Ottawa, Canada.
Dave Bautista is not just a towering and imposing guy, he was signed to WWE and is a six-time world champion, winning the World Heavyweight Championship four times and the WWE Championship twice. He is also a top mixed martial artist and played the henchman Hinx in the latest James Bond movie “SPECTRE.”
Georges St-Pierre is a Canadian mixed martial artist (MMA) and a three-time former Welterweight Champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), having won the title twice in 2006 and 2008, as well as an Interim title in 2007, and is frequently cited as one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. He had a small part in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” as Georges Batroc and will appear alongside Max von Sydow, Rutger Hauer and Brian Blessed in the upcoming supernatural epic, “Victrix.”
Cain Velasquez is a Mexican-American wrestler and mixed martial artist. He is a former two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion and as of January 26, 2016, he is #15 in official UFC pound-for-pound rankings and is ranked the #2 heavyweight in the world by Sherdog.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is a Belgian actor, martial artist, screenwriter, film producer, and director best known for his martial arts action films. He got his big break with the low-budget 1986 martial arts film “No Retreat, No Surrender,” in which he played a Russian bad guy. His career then headed into the stratosphere as he continued to make bloody and gritty action movies like “Bloodsport,” “Kickboxer,” “Double Impact” (a personal favorite of mine), “Universal Soldier” and John Woo’s first American feature, “Hard Target.” As he headed into the mid-nineties, his career began to fluctuate but he managed to knock out two more big hits, “Timecop” and “Sudden Death,” at which point he gradually began to disappear from mainstream movies and was relegated to direct-to-video titles like “Legionnaire,” the enjoyable “Replicant,” and “Wake of Death.” In 2008, he played a fictionalized version of himself in the highly regarded “JCVD” which brought him back to mainstream cinema and he teamed up with Sylvester Stallone as the villain in “The Expendables 2.” He will also appear in “Kickboxer Retaliation” scheduled for release in 2017.
You don’t have to make your decision yet, just wait until September 2nd when “Kickboxer: Vengeance” hits theaters, VOD and Digital HD. Then you can tell me why you were down that dark, lonely alley, all by yourself.
