If you’ve been a hardman wizard for your entire adolescence, becoming a cage fighter really is the next logical step. This is something actor Josh Herdman, who played Gregory Goyle in the Harry Potter Series, took wholeheartedly on board when he started his amateur MMA cage fighting career last weekend.
Magic was definitely in the air when he beat Polish fighter Janusz Walachowski in Bromley, east London. The wizard-turned-warrior won on points after three rounds (29-28, 29-28, 29-28) in the amateur catchweight (80kg) category.
Fans of the fantasy franchise (by which we mean Harry Potter) will know that miscreant Goyle alongside his equally devious friend Crabbe were the two hardest thugs at Hogwarts. And bizarrely, he’s not the first of the two to embark on a distinctly in-character bad boy lifestyle. Jamie Waylett, who played the latter, has previously been charged with possession of cannabis and violent disorder and did not appear in the final two films.
Herdman has spent the last few years in training (plus an extra ten if you count his time spent as a lunatic at Hogwarts), but he insists he hasn’t given up on acting. Speaking to Addictedotr.com, he said: “I haven’t fallen out of love with it, I still have an agent and still go for auditions… It’s just a little big like playing the lottery for a living.”
