Sage Northcutt didn’t get the role of Ivan Drago’s son in the upcoming movie Creed 2. But that doesn’t mean the Team Alpha Male lightweight is giving up on thoughts of an acting career.
Northcutt let slip a few months ago on The MMA Hour that he was trying out for the role of the son of the legendary Rocky 4 character. This past week, Northcutt returned to The MMA Hour and laid out what happened.
“I did not get the part, unfortunately,” said Northcutt, who meets Thibault Gouti on Feb. 18 at UFC Austin. “But that’s okay. It would have been super cool to get that. I think things worked out the way they worked out, and hopefully we’ll see something big coming, maybe as a main part of a main role in the future.”
Northcutt says he doesn’t have bad feeling about the experience, and even said he’ll go see the flick when it hits the theaters.
“I thought a lot of my fans and friends thought I looked just like him,” Northcutt said. “You know what? I wasn’t upset at all. I guess was supposed to happen happened. I’m still going to see the movie I’m excited to see it. It would have been cool to get it, of course, but there’s always things in the future to look forward to.”
The ever-smiling 21-year-old also downplayed the idea he isn’t cut out to play the role of a bad guy, since, after all, he’s able to put on a serious face when it comes time to fight.
“When you go out there and fight, I’m not like a stone-cold killer or something, but it is acting, so you can play a part,” Northcutt said. “I am serious when I go out there and fight, even though I’m not.
“If you’re acting and you’re in the role and you get some coaching, you can do whatever you like.”
While he wants for his chance at the big screen, we’ve already see Northcutt on the small screen, in a well-received Metro PCS ad in which he works together with UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson.
In the ad, the flyweight picks up the larger Northcutt and slams him to the ground. Northcutt insists that this was a real show of strength on the part of “Mighty Mouse,” and that no trick editing or stunt men were used in the shot.
“Demetrious Johnson is so strong,” Northcutt said. “For the commercial, I like fake shot on him, and we had to shoot on each other and he had to pick me up and slam me on the ground. Man, he had some strength. Because he picked me up at an angle and just put me down. I was just like, wow.
“That one part, I think we probably did like 10 takes,” Northcutt added later. “Different things. One time, he picked me up like to show like, Newton force, ‘If you slam Sage on the ground who weighs like 170 pounds,’ and then me faking a shot at him. Or me messing with him and taking the back. It was definitely fun.”
All of this acting talk is well and good, but it serves to take the focus off something that’s fast becoming obvious: After being put on a fast track and being placed in high-pressure situation a bit too soon, Northcutt’s UFC trajectory has changed, and it appears he’s starting to come around at the correct pace.
Northcutt attributes this to dropping out of classes at Texas A&M — saying he can always go back to school when his fighting days are done — and leaving Houston to go to Sacramento’s Team Alpha Male. No longer is he trying to pursue a fight career part-time while also trying to keep up with classes.
“Before, I know I had multiple fights in a certain period of time, but I guess the part where I made a mistake was, I was going to school at the same time, and I wasn’t training at an actual camp,” Northcutt said. “So now that school isn’t in the way, I’m training at an actual camp, Team Alpha Male, I’m getting so better and so much faster too. Every single day that goes by, I’m improving. And I’m so young that even years down the line I’ll still be getting better and better.”
The next stage in his evolution comes on Feb. 18, when he’ll look to make it two straight wins and three out of his past four.
“I’m always focusing on making every part of my game better,” Northcutt said. “There’s such a variety of training partners at Team Alpha Male. Everybody is the best wrestlers, Olympians are there, kickboxers, people from Russia, Ireland, kickboxing champions, boxing champions; there’s such a variety of stuff that every other day you’re doing one thing or another and your game is always improving.”
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