Rob Lowe Recalls When Tom Cruise “Completely Knocked Me Out” During Sparring Match

What might teenage boys do when they’re stuck in a hotel while filming 1983’s The Outsiders ? Well, if it was Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise, they’re going to have a sparring match.

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The 9-1-1: Lone Star actor was asked on Monday’s episode of The Rich Eisen Show about his favorite memory with Cruise, and their time working together on the iconic Francis Ford Coppola-directed movie was the first thing that came to mind, especially when they were just messing around.

“He’s [Cruise] so competitive that we used to box in the hallway of the hotel we were staying at during Outsiders ,” he recalled. “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 noted that the Mission: Impossible star was “jacked” at the time compared to him because he wasn’t focused on working out.

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“Tom is like this beast,” he explained. “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 West Wing alum believes Cruise’s defensive instincts kicked in at that moment because “I hit him hard and his eyes went black.” Lowe later quipped, “But that’s the stuff we did, that’s what guys do, it’s like Fight Club .”

Cruise and Lowe starred alongside C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez and Patrick Swayze in The Outsiders , based on S. E. Hinton’s book of the same name. The film, set in a small Oklahoma town in 1964, follows the rivalry between two gangs that heats up when one gang member accidentally kills a member of the other.

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