The boxer beaten by tough-guy actor Mickey Rourke in a publicized bout last week in Russia was actually a troubled homeless man who was paid to take a dive, sources say.
“Obviously, it was beneficial for Mickey Rourke. It probably made him feel good, boosted his ego, to be able to say he beat somebody half his age,’’ said a family friend of Elliot Seymour, the down-and-out boxer who hangs out at the same LA gym as Rourke and allegedly took the fall against him.
“Yeah, Rourke did [beat him], but you’re not telling them the real story. The real story is [Seymour] is homeless and desperate.”
Another source at the fighters’ Wild Card gym called Seymour, 29, “a professional opponent.”
“Meaning you pay him to lose,’’ the source said. “The fight was a joke. Mickey needs to stop pretending he ever was very good and just keep acting. It’s kind of an embarrassment, really. Mickey throws punches so slow an infant could avoid them.”
The first source produced text messages from a friend of Seymour’s who helped the flailing pugilist get a passport to Moscow, where the fight was staged.
The source said he told the friend that he was worried Seymour wasn’t mentally fit to go to Russia and that the pal “said he’ll be with movie people.”
After the fight, the source said, he sent the pal a link to a news story questioning whether the bout was fixed.
The friend texted back, “They told him to throw the fight I hope he gets home safely and paid. They wanted him down in the 4th total BS.”
Seymour went down in the second round, earning headlines for the 62-year-old Oscar-nominated star of “The Wrestler.”
“Maybe the arrangement changed from the fourth round to the second, but the fact he was saying they wanted him down in the fourth lets you know . . . what the situation was,’’ the source said.
Seymour was once an aspiring boxer but never managed to break out and is now a homeless drifter, spending most of his time at the gym, a Starbucks and on benches at Memorial Park in Pasadena, sources said.
“One of the well-known boxing reporters writing about the fight said they might as well have got somebody who was sleeping on the subway and it would’ve been a better opponent,” the family friend said. “Well, what he doesn’t know is that’s pretty much what happened.”
Rourke’s agents did not return multiple messages Sunday seeking comment.