Dwayne Johnson Reveals Jon Jones & Dana White’s Advice for MMA Training for ‘The Smashing Machine’

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has been part of several sports blockbusters, including the football film ‘Gridiron Gang’, one of his early hits, instrumental in establishing him as a box-office star, as well as playing hockey star Derek Thompson in ‘The Tooth Fairy’ among others. And now, he will try his hand at MMA. Johnson is gearing up to play legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr in an upcoming biopic titled ‘The Smashing Machine’, which is scheduled for a 2025 release.

Although the A24 film is still in pre-production, Johnson is going all out to prepare for the role. The 52-year-old, one of the biggest stars and one of the hard-working actors in Hollywood, spoke about his MMA training and workout regimen in a recent Instagram video. ‘The Rock’ revealed his training regimen and the support he has received from the UFC world for the upcoming biopic.

Dwayne Johnson thanks Dana White and Jon Jones

‘The Rock’ took to his Instagram account and spoke about the relentless workout regimen he is on to gear up to play Mark Kerr properly. The WWE superstar has started training MMA, which he is enjoying a lot. In addition, he thanked the UFC, Dana White, Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, and Jorge Masvidal for their support and advice throughout the process.

“I go down to my MMA training and I’ll get in the cage and for about the next hour, 90-minutes or so. I’ve become a student of the game and I’m having a f***ing blast by the way. Can’t thank all my coaches enough and everybody in the UFC from Dana to Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, and just everybody. Thank you so much Jorge Masvidal. Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate it and I hope to make you proud. And so back-to-back training camps, from pro wrestling to MMA,” added Johnson in the heart-warming video.

‘The Rock’ revealed that while he was going all out in training to prepare for the biopic set in the early days of the sport when it used to be a no-hold-barred contest, the shooting would start a few weeks later. “And we start shooting in a couple of weeks and I cannot wait. All in honor of the life of Mark Kerr and all the men at that time who, no hold barred, ushered in MMA when it was like the wild f****ing west,” he added.

The film will document Kerr’s mixed martial arts career, focusing on his contribution to the sport as one of its pioneers and among its most entertaining fighters. It will be a dramatized re-telling of the events and will take inspiration from the 2002 HBO documentary of the same name. Ahead of the film, let us take a look at his mixed martial arts career.

How Mark Kerr got into MMA

As a child, Mark Kerr would dream of making it to the WWF (now WWE). So smitten was the young Kerr with pro wrestling that he would have mock fights with his brothers in his backyard. It was, therefore, natural for him to start wrestling in school. By the time he reached college, he was one of the best collegiate wrestlers in the country, winning two NCAA Division-1 titles.

After leaving college, Kerr became interested in the then-fledgling sport of mixed martial arts. This would cause the American to travel to Brazil, where he won the Vale Tudo (Anything Goes) tournament after defeating three opponents.

He then went on to fight in the UFC, winning the finals of UFC 14 and UFC 15 in 1997. After his brief UFC stint, the American would go on to fight at Pride FC in Japan. Among the pioneers of the sport and one of its most recognizable stars in the late 90s owing to his eleven-fight undefeated streak, Kerr’s career would take a sharp downturn in 2000 as he went on to lose the next seven of his eight fights. After over a decade in the sport, Kerr finally hung up his gloves in 2009.