With Atlas King, Michael Bisping plays a role close to home. The UFC Hall of Famer and first British champion in UFC history embodies the titular role as a former fighter skirting the edges of organized crime in a twisty action thriller centered on the world of mixed martial arts fights in Los Angeles.

“I have a lot in common with Atlas King,” he says. “As crazy as that sounds. I mean, I’m a former mixed martial arts fighter, so I spent most of my life doing that, so I understand that side of things. And then, sadly, in the world of mixed martial arts, in the early days, there were a lot of unsavory characters, shall we say. So I certainly had a lot of experiences that I could draw upon to put myself in his shoes.”

Nika Agiashvili directs with a real flair for capturing the gritty side of L.A. In the film, Atlas (Bisping), a former champion who’s been gone from the scene for 10 years, returns to Los Angeles for the funeral of Dutch, his mentor and father figure. He’s pulled back into the violent underworld he tried to escape while trying to protect Tommy (George Finn), Dutch’s talented fighter son. But the scene is now run by ruthless boss Clay (Cuba Gooding Jr.), leading to a final, violent confrontation.

Atlas King is being sold at EFM by Highland Film Group.

Why did you get involved as producer on this film?

Nika, [exec producer] Johnny [Edward Lee] and George and I created a production company called Punch It Films. We were trying to get this project off the ground for quite some time, and a lot of people were coming on board and wanting to make changes. It slowly started to become the film that we didn’t want to make. So we put on our big boy pants on and made it ourselves. I think it turned out really great, and we’re very proud of it.

What was it like to work with Cuba Gooding Jr?

I remember the evening before I’m working with Cuba, I felt quite a lot of pressure. I think I had three pages of dialog on set with Cuba, who’s won an Academy Award for crying out loud! And I hadn’t felt any pressure whatsoever, and then, because I just want to represent the project, I didn’t want him showing up and thinking, what’s this garbage? This guy’s awful! So that brought a lot of pressure. But I tell you what, as soon as I got on set, he was so nice and warm and down to earth.

How much were you involved in choreographing the fight scenes?

So of course, we had a tremendous choreography team. But anything that I was involved with — I wouldn’t say controlling — but I want to make sure it’s good, because if there’s people tuning in from the mixed martial arts world, it’s got to be believable. So I choreographed a lot of my own fight scenes with their help and assistance, of course. Because, as I said, I’ve done martial arts since I was 8 years old.

I want to make sure that the brand, shall we say, is represented well. A lot of effort went into the fight scenes, but I think they turned out amazing.

Were you involved in making sure your co-stars were authentic-looking fighters?

George trained for months and months and months. You know, that guy really showed tremendous discipline. I mean, he was in the gym lifting weights. In the evening, he was learning martial arts. He was training with real life mixed martial artists and UFC guys just trying to understand the sport and move like they do.

What’s next for Punch It Films?

We have a bunch of projects that we’re going to try and get off the ground. We want to make movies that or shows that get us excited and make the kind of projects that we want to be involved with. And of course, sometimes in this day and age, if you want to get those things made, you got to do it yourself.

By Carole Horst, Variety