If you haven’t yelled “road house” and kicked over your clothes hamper in a while, consider Ronda Rousey landing her latest movie gig a call to action.
As MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani (h/t Marc Raimondi) reported, the UFC bantamweight champion will play the lead role in an upcoming reboot of the 1989 cult classic Road House.
Rousey’s agent, Brad Slater, said the fighter will be cast in a role that amounts to a female version of Dalton (originally played by the late Patrick Swayze)—a mysterious bouncer tasked with the job of kicking every resident of a small Missouri town in the face until the citizenry is pacified.
It’s not a role Rousey takes lightly, either.
The fighter reportedly reached out to Swayze’s widow, Lisa Niemi, to ask for her blessing before accepting the role. Niemi gave Rousey the green light, and now we all get to witness a feature-length film’s worth of Rousey dodging beer bottles and polar bears falling on henchmen. So that’s exciting.
There’s no timeline for the movie’s debut, and as always, her representatives have made it clear that filming will be fit in as Rousey’s fighting schedule allows.
She’s currently training for her title defense against Holly Holm at UFC 193 on November 14. Tack on the fact that she’s already slated to feature in Mark Wahlberg’s upcoming film, Mile 22, and it’s probably reasonable to assume Road House: Rowdier, Rousier (I assume this is the working title) won’t be coming out anytime soon.
But the important thing is that wheels are in motion. Things such as Road House reboots can’t be rushed. Even for an experienced fighter such as Rousey, perfecting the Dalton throat-rip requires months of training and Daniel Day-Lewis-like attention to detail. Becoming one with Swayze’s specially made combat jeans will take at least a week on its own.
Nonetheless, I’m pumped. Even if the movie is terrible, it’ll still be an excuse to yell “road house” in public, which is a fine thing indeed.
Dan is on Twitter kicking things and losing his deposit.
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