"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Darren Shahlavi

shahlavi
I’m afraid it is being reported that Darren Shahlavi, the martial artist best known for playing Twister, the arrogant villain of IP MAN 2, has died. I haven’t found any explanation of a cause of death or confirmation from a news organization, but several people who have worked with Shahlavi, including Jesse V. Johnson (who directed him in THE PACKAGE) seem to believe it’s true. Shahlavi was quite active on Twitter, so I imagine if it was a hoax he would’ve seen it and cleared it up by now.

Fans of DTV and late period Seagal would recognize Shahlavi even if they didn’t know his name. He was in BORN TO RAISE HELL, TACTICAL FORCE and episodes of True Justice. He played Kano in the newer incarnation of MORTAL KOMBAT, and also was in an old movie called LETHAL COMBAT, where he played… Twister? I didn’t know that.

He had been filming the new KICKBOXER movie (possibly called KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE now, but I think it’s still a remake). He plays Eric Sloane, who in the original was Van Damme’s brother who got paralyzed in the ring by Tong Po so he had to get revenge for him.

I learned to get excited whenever Shahlavi showed up in a movie, usually as a smug bad guy. I really did believe he was on the rise. He will be missed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 at 4:24 am and is filed under Blog Post (short for weblog). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

9 Responses to “Darren Shahlavi”

  1. Terrible news. He’ll be missed.

  2. I really hope you are wrong since this is the only place I have found on the internet to say this.

  3. His brother has posted that he passed away in his sleep. That’s all that is known at this time.

    Awful news.

    Rest in peace, Darren.

  4. He was always great as a villain, especially in BLOODMOON.

  5. Yeah, BLOOD MOON is an awesome display of Shahlavi. Man , what a bummer, he really seemed like a nice guy the way he interacted with his fans on Twitter. He actually thought it was funny when I wrote to him suggesting my hypothesis that the reason no one heard of Richard Grieco anymore was because he changed his name to Darren Shahlavi.

  6. I kept hoping this guy would get another good showcase for his skills.

    Like the other guys said, his fighting in Bloodmoon was incredible. You could believe him as the guy Gary Daniels was a little afraid of.

  7. Imdb has a link to a lot of news article about his death, mostly used that his roommate found him, and that he passed away from a sleep. And TMZ’s law enforcement source says it appears he overdosed on prescription meds, but it’s TMZ so I wouldn’t put much trust in it specially, as a toxic report takes a long time to be ready.

  8. Is this the curse of Kano, as Trevor Goddard died in 2003, 8 years after playing Kano, from suicide by drug overdose. He was 40 years old.

Leave a Reply





XHTML: You can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>