The biopic from writer and director Benny Safdie tells the story of one of the top fighters at a point where the sport was nowhere near what it is today.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s performance has left legends stunned by his portrayal of Kerr<\/a>, with high-scoring reviews ahead of the film\u2019s global release.<\/p>\n \u2018The Rock\u2019 may be acting as a mixed martial artist in the movie, but there was a point in time where he considered becoming a full-time fighter.<\/p>\n Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson had his reservations about taking on the role<\/a> of former fighter Mark Kerr before beginning the project.<\/p>\n This challenge ended up being what motivated him to pursue it, with Johnson doing whatever he could<\/a> to really capture the UFC<\/a> Hall of Famer\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n There was a decision that he made in his life that could have made him one of the characters in the movie rather than an actor due to his interest in fighting in Pride<\/a> before his WWE career really took off.<\/p>\n He said on the Joe Rogan<\/a> Experience last year that the life that he thought the fighters were living was appealing to him as an up and coming professional wrestler.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this thought of Pride because it felt like, \u2018Oh, those guys, they\u2019re making money. They\u2019re putting on big shows. There\u2019s 20-30,000 people in these shows, this looks incredible\u2019. Not only that but then I think when you\u2019re talking to guys, and they\u2019re in it, and they\u2019re saying, \u2018Yeah, you could do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018The Rock\u2019 went on to say that it was the regular conversations that he had with UFC legend and former WWE star Ken Shamrock that talked him out of this idea.<\/p>\n \u201cShamrock was very smart by the way which I really appreciate about him. At that time, we were wrestling each other every night so I got a chance to get to know him very well and work out with him. He was just like, \u2018You might just want to stick with this first. There\u2019s a real shot here, like you got something here. Stick with this.’\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Kerr made it clear to Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson that he didn\u2019t need to do \u2018The Smashing Machine\u2019<\/p>\n In the same conversation, Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson<\/a> referenced Mark Kerr<\/a> as one of the other fighters that he had spoken to about competing in MMA.<\/p>\n This then led to them, as Kerr revealed on the Joe Rogan Experience, starting to speak about doing \u2018The Smashing Machine\u2019 movie all the way back in 2019.<\/p>\n The former UFC fighter said that he had made it clear to Johnson that he didn\u2019t need to do this project and take on all of this responsibility.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s at a place in his life where he can just keep doing blockbusters and be perfectly fine with it,\u201d Kerr told Rogan. \u201cI mean he says it himself, there\u2019s always a place for that. There\u2019s always going to be a place for blockbuster movies and that. But he needed to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortunately for the fans, Johnson didn\u2019t listen to the fighter that he has now brought to the big screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson swaps WWE for MMA in his latest movie, though he did consider this change…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,72275,786,2765,72276,785,16726,85,72277,23904],"class_list":["post-175622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dwayne-the-rock-johnson","tag-fighting","tag-joe-rogan","tag-mark-kerr","tag-mma","tag-pride","tag-sports","tag-the-smashing-machine","tag-throwbacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dwayne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2222358843-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Chris Unger\/Zuffa LLCDwayne \u2018The Rock\u2019 Johnson said that UFC legend and fellow WWE star Ken Shamrock talked him out of fighting<\/p>\n![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233858838-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Earl Gibson III\/Deadline via Getty Images<\/p>\n