Vin Diesel enjoyed his time working with both Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey for the “Fast and Furious” series of feature films.
That’s why Diesel sought out Conor McGregor for his latest “xXx” feature.
When McGregor lost to Nate Diaz, “Notorious” pulled out and left Diesel on the search once again.
He found his fighter in Michael Bisping, who is now the UFC middleweight champion. During a recent interview in Brazil, Diesel explained why he wanted someone like McGregor or Bisping for the role.
“I wanted to have an English accent in the movie,” Diesel said (thanks to MMA Fighting for the quotes). “I had created a role for Conor McGregor and after he lost to Nate Diaz, he had to go to a dark place, he had to go get his manhood back to fight the second time, so he wasn’t able to do this film at the time. But I needed that accent, I wanted this English accent to be speckled in the movie. But I also wanted someone that could do fight sequences. A lot of the UFC guys do great fight sequences in movies. You saw when I put Gina Carano in 6, and Ronda Rousey in 7. I had great experiences when putting UFC fighters in the movie, so I wanted someone that had that English accent, they talk like this, and I got Michael Bisping to come and do that.”
Bisping actually received his call to be the challenger to Luke Rockhold when Chris Weidman was injured while filming his scenes for the movie in Toronto.
“xXx: Return of Xander Cage” stars Diesel, Bisping, Ruby Rose, Samuel L. Jackson and is set to be released in theaters January 20.
