Usher is getting ready for his next fight, literally. For their 25th Anniversary issue of Men’s Health magazine, Usher is front and center as he trains for his upcoming role as Sugar Ray Leonard in the upcoming movie, Hands Of Stone. To get fully in the role of Boxing great, Sugar Ray Leonard, Usher had to lose some weight.
To be in the same weight class as Leonard, Usher bi-cycled alot.
“My second day I decided to ride to the gym,” 10 miles from his home in Atlanta. “So I rode there. Boxed. Rode the bike back home.”
“Mentally, I’m the type of person who can ignore the pain. Put it somewhere else and allow my body to just go there,” he says. “But I always suffer. You can’t box, ride a bike for 20 miles in the heat—Georgia heat—and then go to the studio and rehearse. That’s not happening.”
In the midst of preparing for the role, Usher said that learning to “rest” was key for him.
“Now I realize you can’t push yourself all the way. You have to pull back a little bit.”
With Usher being a music star as well, resting is the last thing on his mind.
“My commitment to this character demands that I not only physically get ready, but also become him. The hair, the personality, the manner he conducts himself in—all that. He’s an incredible man.”
Check out more pictures, here.
