Dwayne Johnson Recalls Getting Genuinely ROCKED on the Set of The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson worked himself into a shoot while filming for the Mark Kerr biopic, The Smashing Machine. To use the parlance of pro wrestling, a work is a contest with a pre-arranged outcome ala pro wrestling while a shoot is an intentional, competitive from of fighting ala MMA.
The titular figure of the film is ‘The Smashing Machine’ Mark Kerr who is portrayed by Dwayne Johnson. The immersion into this role for ‘The Rock’ has seen him commit to the role more than he ever has in his film career. That includes a physical commitment to capturing the essence of the multi-time UFC tournament winner by asking some of his co-stars to lay it in on him for real.
Sitting alongside Mark Kerr himself and discussing a moment of getting rocked on set while doing an interview with MMA Junkie, embedded below, Johnson said,
“I’m on my knees in the ring and I look up and I look dazed. That’s real. I am I got my bell rung and Benny was like, ‘Hold on, just stay right there.’ And I was seeing three heads of the Director and 15 heads of Mark Kerr at that time. But so, oh my god.”
Dwayne Johnson on the Mark Kerr moment that gave him chills and what he wanted to convey on-screen
Dwayne Johnson had expressed that the moment of having his bell rung captured on-screen was in pursuit of capturing a key moment from Kerr’s career in the Pride FC ring. When experiencing his first loss in MMA, The Smashing Machine exhausted himself against Kazuyuki Fujita and the defeat knocked him out of the 2000 Pride openweight grand prix.
As the TKO board member touch on this poignant moment in Mark Kerr’s career, Johnson stated [via MMA News],
“And Mark [Kerr] is the one who experienced this loss where he couldn’t move in the ring and he was getting rocked. And what’s so moving about that when you see it in the documentary and then you obviously watch it and you pull it up, his fights on YouTube, is that as Mark is getting rocked in that moment, his eyes are open. He’s with it. And he’s not knocked out. He’s getting his bell rung. He’s getting kneed in the guts and in the rib cage. And then also, but he’s not quitting and he’s not tapping and he’s just there.”
“I said to Mark just you and I here. Why couldn’t you move? Why were you… you know I said there’s 30-40,000 people there in Japan. And he goes that’s exactly it DJ. There’s 30-40,000 people there in Japan. They all came to see me. I’m not going to quit. I just could not move my arm. So, the best thing for me to do was just to take it. And I was going to take it until I couldn’t take it anymore or take it until the ref stops it. Obviously, the ref stops. I have chills now thinking as he was telling me that. The man who lived his life so we could all feel it.”
