One of the lesser-known facts about Robert Downey Jr. is that he’s a highly accomplished martial artist, having been training in Wing Chun for almost 20 years. Known as the ‘martial art of the mind,’ the actor initially used it as an outlet to focus his energies having conquered his well-publicized personal issues, and he’s stuck with it ever since.
It was even folded into the fight choreography of the first two Sherlock Holmes movies, and while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation was proficient in Bartitsu, Downey Jr.’s preferred techniques were incorporated to make the hand-to-hand combat look that little bit more convincing. There’s been no official word on the third installment in the series since director Dexter Fletcher admitted it was on the back burner for now, but as you can see below, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s former Iron Man is still keeping his skills sharpened and appears to be back in training for the role.
A couple of weeks back working out with the great Sifu Eric Oram! #WorkoutDowneyJr pic.twitter.com/1VJb5Y1TJa
— Robert Downey Jr (@RobertDowneyJr) April 7, 2021
While the 56 year-old has been dabbling in the discipline for close to two decades, it’s notable that he decided to share this particular video with his army of social media followers. After all, alongside him in the clip is Eric Oram, RDJ’s longtime Wing Chun trainer, who was a fight consultant on Sherlock Holmes and sequel A Game of Shadows, not to mention Iron Man 2 and 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War.
Not only that, but Oram developed a brand new style of fight choreography for A Game of Shadows, which saw the actors and stunt team throw real strikes at each other at full speed, which were then replayed at 500 frames per second. As such, all the signs certainly point to Sherlock Holmes 3 being the reason Downey Jr. is getting into fighting shape here and hopefully we get an official update on the project soon.