Despite only arriving in the Premier League for the first time in 2015, AFC Bournemouth have now become English football’s new Hollywood.
A blockbuster takeover by US billionaire Bill Foley in December brought a bright new future for the club, along with glamour in the shape of movie star Michael B. Jordan.
Foley is blockbuster enough having achieved the feat of becoming the first sports franchise owner in Las Vegas after founding the NHL’s Golden Knights, but Jordan is on a whole new level.
Most recognisable for his roles in the Creed franchise as well as Black Panther, Jordan has already traded the red carpet for the red and black of Bournemouth when he attended the Vitality Stadium on New Years Eve.
Jordan did so as a minority owner in the club, due to his role as an investor in Foley’s consortium, and much like many of his movie characters, he will be hoping to guide the underdogs to the top.
Born in California in 1987, he was quickly destined for greatness after securing roles as a youngster on legendary HBO dramas The Wire and The Sopranos.
His part as wantaway young drug dealer Wallace in The Wire came to a bloody end, but set the Orange County native on a path to greatness that saw him named in TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Jordan was praised for his role in bringing increased representation to Hollywood, and Denzel Washington said of his fellow star: “He’s the next generation, and it’s good to know we’re in good hands.”
The red carpet had already been rolled out in the UK when Ryan Reynolds purchased Welsh side Wrexham in 2021, but Jordan and Bournemouth can now rival the Canadian.
Jordan secured his status as Hollywood royalty by landing the role of Adonis Creed in 2015, leading the iconic Rocky franchise’s new era alongside Sylvester Stallone.
Playing the son of Apollo Creed, who was the rival of Stallone’s character Rocky throughout the movie franchise, Jordan received a number of awards and nominations for his starring role, securing two more Creed movies in the franchise.
Part of his success was due to how seriously he took the role, training alongside former cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew who played his rival ‘Pretty’ Ricky Conlan.
Multi-weight superstar Canelo Alvarez will also appear in Creed III, the latest movie in the franchise, meaning Jordan will likely need to be on his best behaviour during training.
That wasn’t the case with Bellew, though, who sent Jordan to the canvas during filming for the first movie.
Extraordinary footage from Creed in 2015 showed the moment Bellew connected with Jordan’s jaw, sending him flopping onto the canvas.
Director and supporting actor Stallone posted the video with the caption: “Michael B Jordan, ‘Young Creed’ and ‘getting KOd for real!’ “But he got up and did it again! That’s called guts!!”
Jordan later claimed on the Graham Norton Show that he wasn’t technically knocked out, but was ‘seeing stars’.
“Sly enjoys putting me through punishment, he really does, he’s so mischievous,” he said.
“In the Rocky films it’s like a badge of honour to take a real punch, and when you do slow-mo shots you can’t fake it because if you did a slow-mo shot and it was a miss, you would see the space and that it wouldn’t connect.
“So you have to take a real punch. Sly gets up and says, ‘Michael, listen, you gotta take a real punch.’ “I’m like, ‘Ugh, okay, did you do it?’
“He says, ‘Yeah, I did it, did it a bunch of times.’ “I’m like, ‘Okay, if you did it, I’ll do it.’
“We ended up setting up the cameras and I took a real punch. See the crazy thing was, I wasn’t technically ‘knocked out’.
“But I got hit, went down and the camera panned in. The first time we did it, Tony’s glove was in the way so we didn’t see it – so we had to do it again.
“So we did it the second time, I got hit and I could feel the energy of the studio. I was like, ‘It must have really looked good because everybody is quiet.’
“I was definitely seeing stars, I was not all there, smelling the canvas and everything. It smelled like Pine-Sol.
“But yeah, I took a real punch, it felt like I was in a car accident for like four days afterwards.
“Tony said he only went 40 per cent.”
Not to be deterred, Jordan later said he was willing to take one of the hardest punches of all time, from the legendary Mike Tyson.
While watching Tyson’s exhibition bout with Roy Jones Jr in 2020, Jordan Tweeted the former undisputed world heavyweight champion saying: ‘let’s do a training session’.
It’s clear that Jordan isn’t afraid to suffer for his heart, and hopefully he’ll be able to do the same for Bournemouth as they attempt to avoid relegation.
