Boxer beaten by Mickey Rourke was bribed to take a dive

Hollywood A-lister Mickey Rourke shocked the world when he announced recently that he would be resurrecting his boxing career at the age of 62.

He shocked the world afresh when he blasted his way to a staggering second-round victory against Elliot Seymour, a man 33 years his junior, in an exhibition bout in Moscow.

Upon watching footage, however, the shock turned to suspicion. Seymour appeared to go down outrageously easily, prompting thousands of fans to suggest that the 62-year-old's fight had been fixed.

And now it seems those suspicions are grounded in fact: Seymour told US website TMZ that he did indeed take a dive in the second round and was paid $US15,000 for doing so.

"I was told specifically to go down in the second," he said.

"His team told me to go down in the second. They told me to come out in the first round, you know, feel it out, throw some jabs. Then the second round catch a body shot and go."

Seymour was then asked by TMZ's reporter if it is true that "they specifically said not to hit him in the face at all."

"Correct," comes the answer from Seymour - who then defended his opponent.

"As far as I know Mickey had no knowledge of this. He was in the dark....

"Mickey's a stand-up guy, I think he's a nice man, great actor. He didn't have anything to do with the fix being in, that was all his people."

Seymour also told the site that he was to be paid $US5,000 ahead of the fight, and $US10,000 more for taking a dive on his return to America.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Rourke's decisive blows seemed no more hard-hitting than the average tickle.

As USA Today's Micah Peters put it at the time, "I wasn't there, but if I were I'd probably send a sternly-worded letter to the commissioner, petitioning for some amount of my money back."

Or, as ESPN's Dan Rafael said, "It was pathetic."