You may know him from such roles as The Boondock Saints and Powder, but many might not know that Sean Patrick Flanery is an avid UG connoisseur and a black belt in BJJ.
On this week’s episode of The UG Podcast, hosts Kirik Jenness, Chris Palmquist and Jeremy Brand had the chance to dive into the brain of Flanery to talk about his love for the UG, mixed martial arts and of course Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
A funny story he told was being able to utilize his jiu-jitsu prowess on the streets at a night club when a rude gentleman decided to berate a young lady that was attending the bar.
But let us start with Flanery stating, “I don’t support fighting, but I’ll be the first to tell you, everybody should have compassions, but you should be ready to have zero compassion at the drop of a hat should it become necessary,” Flanery told The UG Podcast.
When push literally came to shove however, the man who played Connor MacManus in The Boondock Saints let his BJJ take over in full Gracie form.
“Recently, Sean Apperson who I came up through the ranks with, who is a black belt in judo and a black belt in BJJ at Paragon. He was working a door and I think we were both brown belts at the time. A guy came to the door and me and a bunch of students were on the inside,” Flanery said. “Everybody was scattered out with different chicks. This guy walks up and he says, ‘oh, so is that your husband?’ and she goes, “no.” So he says, ‘Oh so you’re a fucking whore then?’ And I said whoa, you don’t talk to her like that. He said, ‘No, I was talking to her outside and she said she was married. So she’s talking to you and you’re not her husband…’ Anyways, push came to shove and the guy started approaching me with his hands out and I literally just grabbed his collar. I mean, with my left hand, four fingers in, thumb out and I grabbed the right side of his collar and as he came in, my right hand went in and I did a basic push choke. I did a basic push choke on this guy as he was closing the distance. I held him with two locked arms, I mean Gracie’s in action 101 man. Any jiu-jitsu guy would weave his arm in, out and around and maybe shoulder lock him. Oh yeah, I push choked this guy and you could see him panic and he started to swing and scratch at my face. I walked him all the way to the floor until he gurgled. You have no idea what you can do to an untrained person. Here’s the cracker on this story – this guy went to the floor and three of his buddies jumped up, so the bouncers separated everybody and then I realized this guy was at a table with like 15 guys. They ushered all of the guys out because this guy was swinging on me and everything and then when I went to leave, my buddy Apperson had already left and I saw one of this guy’s buddies across the street eyeballing. I’d love to sound like this was an incredibly macho thing, I choked this guy out and I left and held my head up – NO. I left out of the side door and to get back to my car, I was hiding behind parked cars because this guy had 15 dudes out front and I knew they were going to stab me. I was hiding behind cars like a little bitch, because I knew they weren’t going home, I knew they were outside waiting for that dude to leave so that they could poke holes in him with a knife. It took about 45-minutes to get back to my car and I drove home. I don’t need to be doing this shit in L.A. You’re in L.A., when you take a guys self respect away from him in a public setting that guy will go to no ends to get even with you and I knew that.”
Fighting was in Flanery’s blood; the Texas native grew up playing football and dealt with fighting on a weekly basis, whether it was himself or his friends.
“I grew up in Texas, so I was on my first football team when I was six years old,” said Flanery. “So there was a fight every week. I’m not saying I was in a fight every week, but a fight, with one of your friends was happening every week.”
Check out this week’s episode of The UG Podcast which features Sean Patrick Flanery, as well as the hosts talking about the main event for UFC Fight Night and the TUF 23 Finale, as well as give our predictions for the UFC 200 PPV card fights.
