Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson felt legitimate strikes were the only way to bring authenticity to one of the most important scenes in his upcoming “The Smashing Machine” movie.
The retelling of early 2000s documentary on UFC Hall of Famer Mark Kerr releases Oct. 3 in theatres, with Johnson starring alongside Emily Blunt, former Bellator champion Ryan Bader and other notables from the combat sports world.
Reviews for the film, including one from MMA Junkie, have been largely positive. Johnson’s performance as Kerr is a huge part of that, and it’s because his commitment to the role, including the fight scenes.
Johnson said it was important for him to take a blow when an important scene required it – and he felt the impact.
“It felt like when you get rocked by a real fighter, multiple times,” Johnson told MMA Junkie and other reporters on a recent media roundtable. “Then there’s a moment in the trailer where I’m on my knees and I look up and I look dazed – that’s real. I got my bell rung and Benny was like, ‘Hold on, stay there.’ I was seeing three heads of Benny Safdie and 15 heads of Mark Kerr at that time.
“To bring it back to authenticity – Mark is the one who experienced this loss where he couldn’t move in the ring and he was getting rocked. What’s so moving about that, and when you see it in the documentary one when you pull it up and see his fights on YouTube, is that as Mark is getting rocked in that moment, his eyes are open – he’s with it. He’s not knocked out, he’s getting his bell rung, he’s getting kneed in the guts and in the rib cage, but he’s not quitting and he’s not tapping.”
Johnson recalled an engage with a coworker when he expressed his demand to get hit for real. It took some convincing, but eventually he accomplished what he felt was a necessary part of the film.
“Benny said, ‘I would never love to never cut away from you in these fights. We have a great stunt double. We have two. I’d love to just use you.’ And I know what that meant,” Johnson said. “So at the end in that scene we just had to tell our scene partner who is a fighter, and I said to him, ‘Hey bother, you’re pulling your punches. You’ve got to lay it in and you’ve got to hit me.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Benny’s not cutting away, this is the end of the movie. You know this really happened to Mark. You have to lay it in. Just don’t hit me here, you’ll break my jaw. Don’t hit me in my temple, you’ll kill me. But you can hit me here in the cheek bone.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ I said, ‘I need you to hit me.’ He goes, ‘I respect you, I’m not going to do that.’ I asked Benny to come over and Benny had asked him and he goes, ‘You have to hit him because I’m not cutting away.'”
