Who’s that guy choking out The Rock? Ex-UFC fighter Jason Day, for whom Hollywood is no longer just a dream
The buzzing began in the late evening hours. It was early October, and after spending another long night on set, Jason Day’s cell phone was lighting up like Christmas had come early, a slow flood of notifications that snapped the ex-UFC middleweight out of his nighttime fog. So Day unlocked his phone to see what the fuss was about, and he couldn’t believe the image staring back at him — the type of once-in-a-lifetime moment that only a few years ago felt like a pipe dream.
Perhaps it still didn’t feel real, but there it was, clear as day, tangible proof of how far Day had come. Not only was he on Instagram choking out The Rock — aka Dwayne Johnson, with whom Day is co-starring alongside on the upcoming 2018 action movie Skyscraper — but The Rock was gushing over Day’s performance. “A real class act and bad ass,” Johnson wrote, thrusting his gargantuan spotlight onto the UFC veteran whose heavy-hearted exit from mixed martial arts has improbably given way to a booming second chapter as a Hollywood stuntman.
“It’s crazy, man,” Day says. “I can’t even describe what it was like.”
“And he went for it,” Day says of Johnson. “He wanted the real deal. He wanted to know what it felt like and what your eyes do, how it feels when you’re starting to go out. It was just me and him and all the producers and the director. It was just a very surreal and very cool moment.”
The snapshot was taken from a fight scene for Skyscraper, the summer popcorn flick which wrapped filming recently and sees Johnson play its leading man. Day has a credited role on the film and also worked with the film’s stunt team. It was the latest addition to an IMDB résumé that has gradually exploded in scope over the last few years. And the most rewarding part is, Day knows exactly how preposterous this new career path really is, because it wasn’t long ago he was faced with the hardest crossroads of his professional life.
Day made worldwide headlines in 2014 when he was forced to give up his MMA dreams after being T-boned on his bicycle in a nasty traffic collision three years earlier. A Range Rover driven by an unaware motorist detonated into the left side of Day's body at a Vancouver intersection, devastating Day’s knees and ankles. After a long and frustrating war against Canadian insurance giant ICBC, Day ultimately received a six-figure judgment in his favor due to damages from the incident, but his athletic career was over. The injuries to his lower extremities were irreparable, and the man who once knocked out Alan Belcher in less than four minutes had no recourse but to abandon his life’s work at the age of 32.
When I first spoke to him in 2014, it was right after Day’s case had been settled, and he had already turned his sights towards a second career in acting and stunt work, landing his big break as a stunt double for Dean Cain of Superman fame. His lifelong love of the silver screen was the truest passion he had left, but, implausibly, despite his dearth of experience and having entered a wholly new profession in his mid-thirties, Day’s faith in himself has paid off better than he ever could’ve hoped.
And he couldn’t be more grateful.
“I came [into the industry] at the right time, for me, in Vancouver,” he says. “There were a couple of big guys who had just retired, so there was a little bit of a hole I could fill. And I’m a little bit unique, as I’m a big guy who can move. I still move like I’m 185 pounds — well, I’d like to think in my head, anyways — but I’m about 230 now. For me, to fight at 185, it took a lot of work to get that light, so I’m back to kinda my natural weight. And I have a little bit of a niche here, where there’s maybe four or five of us big guys who can move like the little guys, so I was fortunate in that perspective, as I had a little bit of a leg up.
“I’ve been very lucky. It takes a long time to build those relationships and build that trust. For me, I think the fact that I was a professional fighter, guys respect that because they know how much hard work it takes to do that, and how much discipline. So I think that helped me get my foot into the door. It’s a snowball effect — you work for one guy, you do a good job, then he tells other guys, other coordinators that he knows. I’ve had nothing but the best luck up here, and it’s just… I don’t even know how to describe it, man. It’s just, it’s been great.”
Day admits that his path is a surreal one, even after three years of navigating it in a full-time capacity. He’s taken a patented slap-to-the-chest from WWE legend The Big Show and been blown up and blacked-and-blued more times than he can count, but his favorite project so far has been his work on Skyscraper.
The physicality of the stunt world is right at home in Day’s wheelhouse, and the toll it takes mentally is surprisingly similar to what Day encountered in his past MMA life.
“It’s crazy. You kind of have to have a strong constitution and believe in yourself that work is going to come, because you can go two or three weeks without a phone call and you’re kinda wondering if you’re ever going to work again,” Day says. “Then all of a sudden you get five or six phone calls all within the same week. So it’s trying at times, but like I said, I’ve been fortunate. Most of the time now, my days are just me trying to stay in shape, hitting the gym, working on some skills. Obviously it’s a very physically demanding job, so I work more on kinda function fitness now.
“I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so a lot more stretching, functional movements, that kind of thing. And also I do a lot of acting training too, because that’s kinda the direction I want to take my career, and it also helps in the stunt world because it makes sure that you’re in the scene. You’re not just standing there waiting for your turn to hit the ground. You’ve got to be in the scene and conscious of what’s going on around you.”
The ghosts of his past still haunt Day to some degree. Some days are better than others, but the Octagon is never far from his thoughts.
His ankles and legs remain bothersome burdens, and although Day is able to manage his day-to-day by avoiding any major high-impact training — like the kind of drills he’d need to do for MMA — the fight game still has a way of bringing back old memories.
It happened again this past month when Michael Bisping lost his middleweight championship to Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217. Bisping was the second man Day ever fought in the UFC, way back at the promotion’s 2008 visit to London. And even though Bisping dispatched Day when they met, Day says he was still thrilled to see Bisping’s late-career resurgence. He has daydreams about doing the same thing himself one day, even if he knows those are daydreams he shouldn’t be holding onto.
“Every day of my life, I want to get back in the Octagon,” Day says. “When I transitioned away from it, it was very hard for me. I mean, it was all I really knew at the time. Like any fighter, I believed I was going to be the UFC champion one day. I think any fighter has to have that mentality. Every single day, still, in my mind, I still have not retired and I still think I’ll fight again one day, even though I know that’s not realistic. I have family now and I have a career in stunts, and to actually train and fight is — it would be almost virtually impossible for me.
“But you never lose it, man. Once you’re into MMA, once you’re a professional fighter, I don’t think you ever lose that edge. You always crave to get back in there.”
Either way, for now, the future is bright for Day. He and his wife were blessed to have their first children during the final weeks of shooting Skyscraper. Twin boys, Theo and Rosco. More than a few friends have asked Day if he’s overwhelmed with his new responsibilities as Daddy, but he swears he’s not. He’s simply happy. Happy that his difficult decisions have worked out and happy with the new life he faces.
Altogether, his story today paints an unmistakably positive picture compared to the one Day found himself painting in the year after his accident, when lost in the throes of injury and depression, he abandoned everything he cared about and took up a job managing a tavern in distant Calgary. That period marked the darkest time of his life, but today the sun is once again shining over the Day household.
“I was in such a weird place, and things are so different now,” Day says. “I’m much happier where I am. I don’t even recognize that guy anymore. It was a weird time in my life, and I think it had to happen. It had to happen to make that transition from professional fighter to professional stuntman and actor. I always wanted to get into film. When I was young, I trained acting, and when I was fighting in the UFC, I was training [acting] because I wanted to switch over afterwards. And it worked out. And man, I’m just on top of the world. This is where I’m supposed to be and it’s definitely been a blast.
“The way it happened, it’s been a wild ride and obviously it’s not the path I would’ve chosen,” Day adds, “but I’m very happy where I ended up and I try to make the best of every situation.”