Rob Lowe Says Tom Cruise Once 'Completely Knocked Me Out' During Sparring Match

Boys will be boys -- and sometimes they will get knocked out!

That rings true for Rob Lowe , who recalled the time he was knocked out cold by his The Outsiders co-star, Tom Cruise .

On Monday's episode of The Rich Eisen Show , Lowe, 60, was asked about his favorite memory with Cruise, 62, and he went back to their time working together on the '80s cult classic film.

"He's so competitive that we used to box in the hallway of the hotel we were staying at during Outsiders ,” he said. "So much testosterone. We're 18-year-old guys stuck on location. So we would wear headgear, and we'd have mouthpieces in, but we would legitimately spar."

Lowe recalled that he wasn't working out at the time, but Cruise was and he was "jacked" compared to him.

"Tom is like this beast," he said. "And I hit him real clean and I rang his bell. And the next thing I knew I woke up and I was coming to on the floor. He like completely knocked me out."

The Parks and Recreation star said that he believes Cruise's defenses came into play because, "I hit him hard, like his eyes were black."

"But that's the stuff we did, that's what guys do, it's like Fight Club ," he quipped.

Cruise and Lowe starred in 1983's The Outsiders with C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez and Patrick Swayze. The film is based on the 1967 novel byS. E. Hinton, and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

In November 2023, Lowe spoke to ET and looked back on his breakout role in which he recalled being "among the coldest and wettest I've ever been."

"We didn't have places to get warm, we just had a bonfire," he shared as he watched an old clip. "So we would just huddle there with our soup for like five straight nights, and it was freezing.We're all best friends but also really competitive, so everybody had their own fight they'd choreographed with their stuntman [and] everybody wanted to outfight everybody else. And I just remember that being super-secret, like, 'My fight's this, oh what's he gonna do with his stuntman?' It was like a big deal."

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