‘Bloodsport’ 30 years on: how a Jean-Claude Van Damme punch helped a Hong Kong actor pay his university fees in one of Donald Trump’s top-10 movies
Bernard Mariano is proud of his cameo role as Sadiq Hossein in the cult classic film that launched the ‘Muscles from Brussels’ Hollywood career
They had choreographed the scene several times and were ready to shoot. The misogynistic Syrian fighter, Sadiq Hossein, was to rise angrily from where Frank Dux – played by Jean-Claude Van Damme – had flattened him and challenge the movie’s hero a second time.
Dux would let fly and Hossein would go down again. This time, though, he wasn’t acting. Van Damme had actually caught him with a pearler on the lip and Bernard Mariano, who played Hossein in the cult classic Bloodsport, was out cold on the mat.
Last week was the 30th anniversary of the release of Bloodsport – the movie with a Hong Kong backdrop that would launch Belgium’s “Muscles from Brussels” Van Damme’s career as a major Hollywood star – and is seen as the inspiration for modern mixed martial arts.
Born in Hong Kong of Filipino descent, Mariano was picked for the role of Hossein after being spotted working out in a gym in Wan Chai. At the time, all he was thinking about was earning extra cash.
“I actually needed the money to pay my way through university. I was paid HK$1,000 a day in 1987 and the movie was released in 1988,” said Mariano, who graduated with a degree in English Literature and History at the University of Hong Kong. “That was a lot of money. I was earning HK$3,000 a month at Clark Hatch Fitness Centre and this was a chance to earn HK$1,000 a day for a 10-day shoot.”
