Stallone reveals who would win a fight between Steven Seagal and Van Damme

The 1997 incident in which Jean-Claude Van Damme chased Steven Seagal around Sylvester Stallone’s Miami home has been told a thousand times.

And now, this peculiar episode between the two actors finally has come to a - at least hypothetical - conclusion. Stallone has commented that it was clear to him that Van Damme would have beaten up Seagal without much trouble for one main reason: he was in better physical shape.

In an interview for FHM magazine in 2008, Stallone reminisced about the episode that marked the high point of the Van Damme-Seagal rivalry. In 1997, the ‘Rocky’ star held a party at his Miami mansion and invited several distinguished personalities such as Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Don Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Madonna. JCVD and Steven Seagal also attended.

According to Stallone, “Van Damme was sick of Seagal going around saying he could kick his ass whenever he wanted, so he sought him out and told him to go out in the yard so he could prove his point. But Seagal made excuses and left.”

“Seagal went to a nightclub on Ocean Drive in Miami, but Van Damme, who was furious, went after him and told him again that he wanted to fight him. Seagal ran away, Houdini-style. Who would have won? I have to say Van Damme was very strong and Seagal didn’t want to fight. That’s my opinion,” Stallone said.

Keep in mind that in 1997, Steven Seagal was 45 years old, while JCVD was 37. Another major factor in the physical confrontations is height; Seagal was an imposing 193cm, while Van Damme was just 177cm. Finally, it should not be forgotten that in addition to being actors, both were genuine martial artists: Van Damme was an expert in karate and kickboxing; Seagal remains a 7th-dan black belt in aikido.

Sony Pictures CEO offered Van Damme and Seagal $20 million to fight

Bearing in mind all these factors and relevant circumstances, it was Sylvester Stallone himself who considered that Jean-Claude Van Damme could have defeated Steven Seagal fairly easily for one main reason: his superior physical shape. While it is true that at that time he was not the same JCVD of ‘Bloody Contact’ released ten years ago, the Belgian would have come out of this hypothetical fight with flying colours, according to Stallone.

In a 2023 interview in The Telegraph, Van Damme revealed that in the first half of the 1990s, based on the rivalry between the two actors, then Sony Pictures co-president and CEO Peter Guber proposed to both of them a sporting event fight in Las Vegas in which each would be paid twenty million dollars.

Steven Seagal refused, and only Van Damme’s version of events is known. This, if the stories are to be believed, was the third occasion in which Seagal refused to fight against Jean-Claude Van Damme, something which leaves him in an awkward position as it was Segal who initiated hostilities against the Belgian.

Chronology of the rivalry between Seagal and Van Damme

The rivalry between the two actors dates back to 1991: it was Steven Seagal who first made negative comments about Jean-Claude Van Damme on the Arsenio Hall show, where he commented that Van Damme’s legitimate career as a martial artist was “fabricated”, questioning his real experience.

Seagal went so far as to comment “I think the fact that Van Damme has been champion anywhere is a matter of opinion,” wanting to discredit Van Damme and trash his legitimate record of 18 wins and 1 loss as a federated kickboxer in Belgium. “I wish him the best, but there are a lot of people who claim that what Van Damme says is not true,” he said.

A few months later, Warner Bros. considered both to star in ‘Demolition Man,’ offering Seagal the hero role and Van Damme the villain. But both wanted to be the hero, and as they could not agree, the producers decided to dispense with both and the roles eventually went to Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. This action movie was released in 1993.

It was in 1997 when the boiling point in the relationship between the two came, at Stallone’s Miami mansion, where the two almost came to blows.

Van Damme’s revenge took place fifteen years after this last episode: after rejecting a role in the first ‘The Mercenaries’, Stallone wanted to continue with Van Damme for ‘The Mercenaries 2′, released in 2012. The Belgian accepted the offer but under a condition: that Steven Seagal was not in the film. And so it came to be: Van Damme got the role of the antagonist and Seagal was not included in the project.

Today, Jean-Claude Van Damme has buried the hatchet. The actor claimed in the Daily Mail in 2023 that if he met Seagal in person he would have no problem, justifying the American’s negative comments against him during the 90′s as “age stuff”, reasoning that “when you’re young you want to be the most macho”.