Sean Patrick Flanery Brings Passion For Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu To The Screen With ‘Born A Champion’

Emmy winner Sean Patrick Flanery has two passions in life outside of his family: acting and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He combines these two art forms in Born A Champion, an inspiring, action-filled drama he wrote and stars in, based partly on his novel Jane Two, a coming-of-age story inspired by personal experience.

The Louisiana-born, Texas-raised actor brings this passion-project to the screen nearly 14 years after he began writing the story of Mickey Kelley, a past-his-prime fighter who gets a second chance to prove himself in the ring, complete with flashbacks to a fight that changed his life. While categorized as a mixed martial art, Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) is a combat sport that focuses on grappling and submission holds and, unlike other MMA fighting styles, does not include kicking and punching.

The film, directed by Alex Ranarivelo (American Wrestler: The Wizard, The Ride), also stars Dennis Quaid (The Right Stuff, The Rookie) and Katrina Bowden (The Bold And The Beautiful).

Born A Champion opens in theaters and will be available on Digital, and On Demand Jan. 22 from Lionsgate. The film also will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on Jan. 26.

 At his ranch outside of Houston, where he runs an academy where he teaches students (children and adults) Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Flanery is eager to talk up his new film and his passion for BJJ. Seated before a large bay window in his office, he proudly displays his well-worn black belt and its significance to him. He earned his black belt in BJJ in 2008, seven years after he began training at the Renzo Gracie Jiu-jitsu Academy in Manhattan. He trained and competed while juggling his busy acting career.

An actor for more than 30 years, Flanery’s early claim to fame was playing the title character in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series. He later notably played an albino with extra-sensory powers in 1995’s feature film Powder, and later played the fraternal twins with Norman Reedus in which they played sibling vigilantes in The Boondock Saints, a film which has since achieved cult status. Other credits included a recurring role on Showtime’s Dexter and as a guest performer on The Bay, in which he earned a Daytime Emmy in 2019.

Angela Dawson: Born A Champion is an intense drama with visceral fight sequences. Was that the intention—to make the audience feel the pain of what Mickey goes through?

Sean Patrick Flanery: Yeah. That’s kind of what I write. The most pungent moments in my life are the ones that move me furthest away from center. Sometimes that’s positive and sometimes that’s negative but those are the moments I really grow from. Without getting too psychotherapeutic about it, those are the moments that change me for the better. Those are the stories that resonate with me. If I can make a story inclusive of those jumps in the timeline, then at least I’ve been true to myself. Those are the moments I hope to put into any realistic organic story. The ones you can’t shake away. Everybody has a handful of those moments; hopefully, I stuck a couple in this.

Dawson: You co-wrote this with Alex Ranarivelo, the director. What was the process of your writing?

Flanery: I wrote this in 2007 as a full story. I also was writing my first manuscript at the time. The book came out in 2016, Jane Two. While I was in the final stages of writing my manuscript, I contacted a producer friend of mine, Paul Alessi—one of the most creative producers I’ve ever worked with who had a part in Boondock Saints as well—and told him I needed someone to help me convert it into a final draft. All the source material was there. He turned me on to Alex, and we converted (the manuscript) into a script together. It took (four more years) to finally get it on the screen.

It was a good experience to see that same idea transposed into the visual realm with no burps or hiccups. I attribute that to it being a tiny film as opposed to a big studio venture, where you have a thousand different opinions trying to change things. Seeing it from inception to screen was a pleasure.

Dawson: The film incorporates how advances in communication/technology are what bring Mickey’s story to light. These kids who happen upon old VHS tape of Mickey’s life-changing fight post it on the Internet and get it to the people who can reveal this for the world to see. It’s kind of like a new generation rediscovering your earlier films.

Flanery: Yeah, (much of) the story’s a period piece. It’s about when jiu-jitsu and MMA first came to the U.S. in the early 1990s. When I first started jiu-jitsu, the Internet wasn’t around. Well, not like it is now. I certainly didn’t have a computer back then. So, you couldn’t even Google search where to train, where to find out about this martial art. I stumbled onto it accidentally. Although I’d been searching for authentic Brazilian jiu-jitsu for some time, you couldn’t find it in the Yellow Pages and there was no Internet. That’s the way things organically changed. I remember seeing it kind of take over the world in real time.

Dawson: You star alongside Dennis Quaid in this film. Did you know him or worked with him previously?

Flanery: No. What’s crazy is that he’s also from Houston, which is where I grew up. (Flanery was born in Lake Charles, La.) He’s an icon. So, when he agreed to say my words, I was tickled pink, and he didn’t let me down. When you meet people like that who you’ve seen on screen, you hope they’re half what you hoped, and he was 125 percent. The dude is top to bottom. He’s a gentleman, a professional and charismatic. He checks every single box. It’s good to see people in this industry that haven’t been tainted or ruined because he’s about as big as they get. So, that was a highlight of my career, getting to work with him.

Dawson: Was it the interest in Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Dubai that helped popularize it because it wasn’t considered a legitimate (sport) in the U.S.? Did the athletes have to go to places like Abu Dhabi for tournaments?

Flanery:  In essence, yes. In the early ‘90s, there was heavy legislation, they were trying to outlaw MMA competition, or “human cockfighting.” The New York State Assembly tried to outlaw it. It was only about five years ago that we managed to change the law in New York, where you could have MMA fights. But in the early ‘90s, there was a sheikh in Dubai, Sheikh Tahnoon, who was training early adopters of Brazilian jiu-jitsu Rickson and Royler Gracie (of the notable Brazilian Gracie family, synonymous with MMA and BJJ). When he went back home, he started the Abu Dhabi Combat Club.

So ADCC, which is basically the Olympics of submission grappling, was one of his first endeavors because of his love for this martial art. So, it’s now mandatory learning—jiu-jitsu in the school system there. They were some of the early adopters who found the magic and the authenticity and the effectiveness of this martial art. So, they brought it home and said, “you have to learn it” to all of the schoolkids.

Dawson: Since it took nearly 13 years to get this made, were you physically ready to go or did you have to do a lot of preparation, especially because you don’t want to actually get hurt while making the film?

Flanery: I didn’t. One of the few changes I made in the script by the time we got it shot was that Mickey originally going to be 40 years old. He was going to be considered an old man fighting in a young man’s sport. So, we made him 49 or 50 in the final script. But I wanted to stay very true to the elements of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is when somebody they don’t look like a chiseled, steroid-riddled superhuman. They look like an age-appropriate guy who trains every single day and tries to eat healthy. That’s what a dad-bod who trains every day looks like. So, I didn’t change my workout regimen. I still taught jiu-jitsu classes twice a day. I still trained with my students every day. For self-serving purposes, I didn’t want to go to the gym and try to get a 12-pack, as opposed to a “dad 8-pack.” I wanted it to look authentic. This is what doing it every day produces. Since that’s what I do on a daily basis, I just left it as is.

Dawson: Have you been able to continue training your students during the pandemic?

Flanery: Yes, we’ve continued training. I have a facility on my property where I teach Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We have a kids’ group that is outside of the city, which has kind of been on lockdown/sequestered to themselves already. We didn’t separate them during quarantine; we kept that collection together. We haven’t brought any new participants in, but we’ve never stopped training because we were in a dogpile when it happened. We thought, we’re outside of the city. None of us are traveling to or from the city, going to the same local stores, and that’s it. So, we haven’t really changed anything.

When I say the martial arts academy is a family, it truly is. We roll together. So, when they say, you’ve got to quarantine with just your family alone, we’ll my family might be a little bit bigger. We’re being as safe as possible with doing something that we know nurses our soul, and also provides the physical fitness that kind of keeps that stuff (illness) away. Hopefully, we’ve had a good, healthy recipe.

Dawson: What are you currently working on?

Flanery: I have Assault On VA-33 coming out soon. That’s another Lionsgate film that I hope everybody checks out. I also have an opportunity coming up to be on a really cool TV show that’s on Amazon Prime. They’re going into their third season.

Dawson: Do you consider yourself a jiu-jitsu athlete/instructor who acts or vice versa?

Flanery: Certainly the preponderance of time that I spend makes me a martial artist who dabbles in acting. When I first started participating in it, I was a martial artist who dabbled in acting. What puts food on my plate is being an actor who dabbles in martial arts. I truly love and adore both of them, but if I had to leave one thing that changed my life profoundly to my kids, it would be all the things that are encompassed in this black belt. (He points to a black belt on a shelf) This is a retired black belt. You can see it’s beat up. I don’t even wear it anymore. All the relationships I’ve forged in this, all the confidence that I have, the way I walk through and exit a door, is inside this belt. If I have to keep one thing to give my kids, it would be the character, the integrity, the discipline that I got from that belt.

Dawson: Your kids are interested in mixed martial arts as well, right?

Flanery: They are. The youngest version of my son (in Born A Champion) is played by my youngest son and the older version is played by my oldest son. In the credits, where the split screen shows the training, that’s my oldest son. They train four days a week, at minimum. It’s one of the joys of my life. Born A Champion is truly my love letter to a martial art that’s done more for my life than just about anything else, and I hope people will give it a shot.