Never Back Down' star spoiling for a fight -- with 'Horton

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Sean Faris is ready for a fight. His new film, "Never Back Down," is opening against some big competition." 'Horton Hears a Who!' -- I got a little story for you," says Faris. "It's called ' "Never Back Down's" Coming Knocking on Your Door.'"Actually, I think 'Horton's' gonna blow us out of the water, but it doesn't matter 'cause they've got a different audience than we do."A big chunk of that audience will be fans of mixed martial arts, described by director Jeff Wadlow in the film's production notes as "the fastest-growing sport in the country."Long before Faris knew what kind of box-office showdown he'd face, he had to get ready for "Never Back Down's" climactic tournament, "The Beatdown," and the other MMA sequences in the fight-heavy film. Faris and co-star Cam Gigandet trained with some of the same fighters-turned-action-choreographers who prepared the cast of "300" -- the team at 87Eleven, an "action design" company in Los Angeles.Under the tutelage of such experts as Damon Caro, Jonathan Eusebio and Danny Hernandez, Faris and Gigandet learned Muay Thai, jujitsu and tae kwon do along with the fight choreography for the movie. A multisport athlete in high school, Faris, 25, found MMA to be a whole new ball game."I was in great shape," Faris says. "There's nothing in this world that can get you ready for fight training, though. There was many a time that I ran out the back door and threw up and came back and finished the day."In "Never Back Down," Faris plays Jake, an Iowan who moves with his mother and brother to Orlando. Jake tries to keep a low profile at his new high school, but when a video of a fight he had during a football game in Iowa starts circulating, he's pressured to take part in the underground MMA fights that serve as his classmates' main entertainment.He's soon humiliated by the school's best fighter, Ryan (Gigandet), so he heeds some good advice and joins the program run by Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou, trained by Eric Paulson), an MMA master who's strongly against fighting."The message is really clear," says Faris. "The character at the beginning of the film is full of a lot of anger, a lot of rage, a lot of fear and insecurity, and those are the reasons why he fights. And as he trains in MMA, he learns discipline, self-control; learns to fight for the right reasons, which are to defend himself and to defend those he loves."Faris is no stranger to the brawl."I've been in plenty of fights," he says. "The scar on my nose is real; that was there before we filmed. But I'm not an advocate of it. I don't think that it's cool or anything like that to get into fights."If fighting is fate, Faris' career is a mix of destiny and self-determination. He lived in Texas until he was 12, when his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Ohio. He "fell into" acting in projects shot in Cleveland after his dream of flying jets for the Air Force was dashed when he learned he had astigmatism in his left eye and after he did the math on the cost of college versus his future earnings as a marine biologist.Not long after he moved to L.A., he landed a small part in "Pearl Harbor." Says Faris, "I felt like I was the king of the world!"My ego got so big I couldn't fit through the door half the time. Eventually, I had to have my ego burst and brought down to earth. I didn't work for six months after that. ... I ran out of money in two."After "Pearl Harbor," Faris did mostly guest shots on TV shows before going through the frustration of starring in two series, first ABC's "Life As We Know It" and then Fox's "Reunion," that were scheduled against "CSI" and didn't make it through a full season. He's leery of signing on for another series."I don't want to be the sacrificial lamb anymore," he says.Faris, who learned hockey and rugby for other acting gigs, plans to continue training in MMA."Once it gets in your blood, it kind of stays there," he says. "It becomes an addiction."Every sport that I've had to learn for the sake of filming, I've fallen in love with. ... This one affected me in a different way. It's really affected my life in a positive manner."(Contact Betsy Pickle of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)