One of this fall’s most highly anticipated new movies is an A24 film about a Syracuse University alumnus.
Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, plays real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.” The movie, directed by Benny Safdie and also starring Emily Blunt as Kerr’s girlfriend, hits theaters next week.
Kerr got his start as a wrestler in Toledo, Ohio, and proved to be a force on the mat at Syracuse University. He won the NCAA Division I championship at 190 pounds in 1992, defeating Randy Couture.
“I felt like I was relieved of a thousand pains I had suffered,” Kerr told The Post-Standard at the time. “The joy came afterward.”
According to The Post-Standard archives, Kerr’s “pains” included being kicked out at SU for a year. He was arrested in May 1989 on charges of stealing stereo equipment from another student’s apartment. Kerr, 20 at the time, lost his athletic scholarship and used his size to work as a roadie for rock concerts at the New York State Fair and elsewhere with The Rolling Stones, Eddie Money, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and Bon Jovi.
According to Sports Illustrated, Kerr also fell into bad habits, including drinking, eating and experimenting with narcotics like cocaine. His weight hit 245 pounds by the time he returned to Syracuse for a court appearance in December 1989. He pleaded no contest to second-degree criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to a year of probation, a $150 fine and had to pay about $2,700 in restitution.
It proved to be a wake-up call for Kerr, according to The Post-Standard. He enrolled at Onondaga Community College for a semester and got a job loading and unloading trucks for UPS. He earned his scholarship back at SU, won a national championship, and graduated in 1992.
Kerr moved to Arizona after graduating from SU and sought to compete in the 1996 Olympics. He became a senior freestyle champion at 220 pounds in 1994, but lost in the Olympic trials in 1996 to future WWF (now WWE) star Kurt Angle. So Kerr turned to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the biggest name in a then-burgeoning sport.
“When I first started, I had no clue what I was getting into. Then the UFC got a hold of me,” Kerr told Time magazine. “I had this drive to be considered a professional, not a bar brawler, not like [being] the toughest kid scooped up off the playground.”
Kerr quickly made a name for himself with his aggressive style, earning him the nickname “The Smashing Machine” (as well as “The Titan” and “The Specimen”). Kerr was scheduled to headline a UFC event in Syracuse in September 1996, according to The Post-Standard archives, but growing controversy over “combative fighting” disrupted the sport as some politicians and states called for a ban.
New York, the last state to legalize MMA in 2016, briefly legalized MMA in 1996 but outlawed it months later. Time says cable networks started refusing to air UFC fights at the time, forcing some U.S.-based fighters like Kerr to seek fame and fortune with international tournaments in Japan.
Kerr found success in the Pride Fighting Championships, winning Japanese titles in 1997 and 2000. He also won a World Vale Tudo Championship in Brazil and four ADCC World Submission Wrestling Championships in Abu Dhabi.
However, he struggled outside the ring with depression and an addiction to painkillers, suffering an overdose in 1999. Kerr attempted to return to MMA fighting multiple times before retiring in 2009.
Much of “The Smashing Machine” will focus on that turbulent period in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, including his brief marriage to Dawn Staples (Blunt).
The movie, based on the 2002 documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr,” comes as the sport is more popular than ever. Last month, Paramount bought the exclusive UFC streaming rights in a $7.7 billion deal and President Donald Trump has said he wants to host a UFC event at the White House on the 4th of July next year.
Johnson has long wanted to tell Kerr’s story on the big screen. According to Time, Johnson and Kerr actually trained at the same Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach in the ‘90s, when Kerr started in MMA and before Johnson had fully polished his The Rock persona.
“For years, I’ve been dreaming and hoping,” Johnson told CBS. “My desire was to play not only a dramatic role, but something that I felt like I could really sink my teeth into, and rip myself open.”
A lot of attention has been given to Johnson’s body transformation and dramatic turn for the role. CBS reports Johnson underwent hair, makeup and prosthetics for 3 hours every day to look like Kerr, who served as an informal consultant on the project.
Johnson even executed his own fight choreography, according to CBS Sports, and took a real punch from a mixed martial artist fighter for one scene depicting Kerr’s 2000 Pride Grand Prix finals fight with Kazuyuki Fujita.
“It felt like when you get rocked by a real fighter multiple times,” Johnson told CBS Sports. “There’s a moment in the trailer where I’m on my knees in the ring and I look up dazed. That’s real. I got my bell rung. Benny said, ‘Hold on! Stay right there!’ I was seeing three heads of Benny Safdie and 15 heads of Mark Kerr.”
Johnson inducted Kerr into the UFC Hall of Fame earlier this year.
“Mark Kerr was a high-level wrestler who also fought for PRIDE and was one of the early pioneers of the sport,” Dana White said.
“The Smashing Machine” premieres Oct. 3 in theaters.
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