Mark Kerr’s rise and fall was captured in a cult MMA documentary. Now Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has brought his story to Hollywood with A24’s The Smashing Machine
I
t started with an affirming nod of heads between two tough guys at a Santa Monica Gold’s Gym in the summer of 1997. One-time Olympic wrestling contender Mark Kerr was training for his first Ultimate Fighting Championship fight, having dominated in a three-fight, one-night tournament in Brazil two months earlier. Dwayne “Rocky Maivia” Johnson, a former NFL prospect sidelined with a knee injury suffered during his second year with the WWE, approached him.
“Can I take you to lunch?” Johnson asked Kerr, who obliged him at the Firehouse restaurant in Santa Monica. The conversation inevitably drifted to mixed martial arts, as Johnson peppered the 1992 NCAA champion with pointed questions about the unregulated sport. MMA was gaining popularity in Japan, where multiple promotions hired pro wrestlers for “crossover” fights.
“How’s this organization to work for? How’s the pay and do they pay on time? How’s the work schedule? I could tell from what he was asking that he was seriously contemplating his options,” said Kerr, age 29 at the time. “I asked him why he’d leave the WWE, which seemed much more of a stable choice than fighting. When he told me he was losing money on the road, touring 250 days a year for $150,000, I got it.”