Mark Kerr: The Real-life 'Smashing Machine' On The Rock's Performance, Wrestling Kurt Angle, UFC Hall Of Fame

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Mark Kerr (@markkerrtsm) is a retired MMA fighter and former amateur wrestler. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his life story being told in the new biopic "The Smashing Machine", how the movie came to be and how The Rock became involved in the project, his thoughts on the movie, fighting in UFC, how he got the nickname The Smashing Machine, the differences between the fighter and the person, battling addiction, wrestling Kurt Angle prior to the 1996 Olympics, and more!

Quote I'm thinking about: "Don't count the days, make the days count." - Muhammad Ali

On his story being told on the big screen:

“I’ve talked about this, I can’t even put it in context. I don’t have anything in my life that’s a correlation to it. So it’s like one of those, ‘Hey, if a movie’s made, who’s gonna play you?’ That’s a running joke, right? Well, I think I have the best person in the world. I don’t think I could like up it anymore, it ended up being just this incredible [thing]. Dwayne is just an amazing human being. Everybody involved has just been incredible.”

On the documentary being the inspiration for the movie:

“Oh my gosh, that’s another one. Benny [Safdie – director] and I talked about it, making this film for everyone involved came to them at the time that they needed it to come to them. When Benny and I touched base for the first time in 20 January 2024, the running joke was he got on the phone, he goes, ‘Hi, my name’s Benny Safdie, and I’m gonna make…’ It was like this scripted thing. And then he just stopped, and you can hear him go, ‘All right, listen, here’s what’s really going on.’ And we have this heart-to-heart. We’re on the phone for like, an hour and a half. He goes, ‘Hey, I need to be completely emotionally transparent with you, like his conversations with me if I’m going to make a movie about me, right? So that was the correlation, and it was beautiful. He said to me, ‘Hey, you’re permanent, you’re not a prop, I’ll be friends with you for the rest of my life.’ Just this amazing connection that we developed.”

On his first reaction to the film:

“Oh God, I cried. Just cried and cried. They brought me out in January, and the film was about 80% complete. My brother Michael met me out here, small little studio, it was Benny, myself and my brother, we watched it, and some of it just hit me. They didn’t tell me, ‘Hey, listen, Dwayne’s gonna do all this prosthetics.’ I didn’t see that till I was in Vancouver, and just watching how deep they got emotionally on stuff was just unbelievable.”

On how Dwayne Johnson became involved in the project:

“That was originally when I got contacted in 2019 by Brad Slater, who is DJ’s agent. It was this conversation of who owns your rights, or who owns a screenplay. So I directed him in that place, and that was like, Dwayne wants to do this. That was the first that I was like, Huh? It was like DJ wants to do this, not that he’s gonna do this, we’re just gonna figure out maybe some options. Then Seven Bucks Production acquires the rights, and then I get a call from DJ right before the BMF belt in Madison Square Garden. He makes that announcement, and I’ve said this, it’s like back in 2019, the conversation I had with DJ was almost transactional. It was like, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do.’ He said it’s going to be this, this, this, and this, and this, and this is going to happen, and you just don’t need to do anything. Then COVID hits, writer’s strike, all this stuff, and I had his phone number. I never called or text him in four years, it wasn’t gonna change anything, right? Wasn’t gonna call him up. ‘You gonna make it yet? You gonna make it yet?’ I just kind of left it to, it sounds silly to say, but I left it in the universe. It’s like, if it’s gonna get made, there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

Did you think it would still get made?

“I had hope that it would, but I just lived my life like nothing was going to change. My wife would say, ‘Go call him.’ I said, ‘You know, somehow, some way, I truly believe that the universe would go hey, now’s when you need to reach out.’ So in the fall of 2023, at the end of October, I called Brad Slater, and he just was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t even believe you’re calling me.’ This is what he said. He goes, ‘I can’t tell you. You need to talk to Dwayne.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, you can’t say a word?’ He goes, ‘Nope, I can’t, it needs to come from him.’ And I’m like, Oh my god. So it’s either ‘Hey, this thing’s scrapped forever’ or ‘Hey, we’re rolling forward with it.’ So that was Thursday, and he goes, ‘DJ will text you over the weekend.’ So he texts me the next day. He’s like, ‘Hey, I’ll call you over the weekend.’ That whole weekend goes by, the whole week goes by, and I’m like, Oh my God. Now it’s like, nine days later. I’m like, what the f*ck? So I get another text that next Friday, it’s like,’ I’ll call you over the weekend.’ It was like Saturday, and then it was like Sunday afternoon. It was like, ‘Are you available?’ I’m like, Oh my God. So I get on the phone with him, and the difference was in 2019 I said transactional. In 2023, it was just like a different person, a different space he was in. And it was this, ‘Hey, you know, we’re moving forward with this. Production has already started. When it moves, it’s going to move fast.’ Not understanding one of his assistants had moved heaven and earth to clear out 12 weeks. He’s so busy, I don’t even know how I’d find 12 minutes, let alone 12 weeks, right? So they found a place in Vancouver and all this stuff. And it was like, he wasn’t kidding. When he goes hey, I’m gonna announce it, this is what got me, he goes to the world that this thing’s going forward. Not to California, it’s to the world. And I’m like, all of a sudden it goes and it’s heading down the tracks, it’s incredible.”

On whether he has any regrets to the documentary:

“So they filmed for 18 months, almost two years and I never saw a single stitch of footage. I didn’t see a second of it. They never showed me any of it. So the first time that I ever saw the documentary as it is, as it appeared on HBO, was an Adobe sound studio here in LA and there was like, four or five of us watching it. Literally, it ended, I got up and I just said to John [Hyams – director], almost blank, I’m gonna have to get back with you. And just walked out and walked down, got my car and started driving. I’m like, What the f*ck did I just do? I couldn’t believe the stuff they captured. And I couldn’t believe just how vulnerable, how naked I was. It’s like they filmed a porno basically.”

On how close he came to dying:

“I should have died at the hospital before they transported me to the main hospital. I mean, I was unattended. When they found me, I was in the bathroom, lips blue, barely breathing. It was just one of those where your body starts going into this catabolic state where they really can’t do anything medically to pull you out of it. Your body has to kind of find its own equilibrium. Like my blood, because the lack of oxygen was acidotic, it’s acidic. The pH balance in my body is just all whacked out of line. So I spent three days in the hospital just to get to a point of neutral. So the filmmakers are way over their skis. They have no f*cking clue what to do. And so they literally wouldn’t let me go home, just like they put me on a plane and sent me to New York. Because they’re like that, we don’t know what to do. So I was in New York for seven days at a friend of mine’s house, and it was just brutal. I mean, brutal. When you come off opiates, your body is just destroyed. Walk down this flight of stairs, walk a block and have to turn around and walk back because I just didn’t have the energy to walk any further. And it’s this whole, like, my body’s resetting, and it’s like this hardcore way to do it. At that point, I had been on opiates for probably 10 months, not, not a single day missed.”

On the difference between the fighter and the person:

“So the first fights ever, I hoped I had that switch, because it’s a little different switch than just, hey, we’re competing against each other. We’re wrestling. So wrestling is a combat sport in and of itself, without strikes, kicks and so on. But I had always hoped that I had that switch. Part of the narrative I had in my head was like, Okay, if you and I get thrown in a room and one person has to come out, I’m coming out. I know that I am. And then having that little doubt in the back of your head going, I think I know I am, because at that point, I didn’t know, I didn’t know if I had that gear. And then once everything in the ring, everything just coalesced and together. It’s like I have that and it’s one where I do have to click a switch, because it is just such a different contrast from my everyday me.”

On how he became known as The Smashing Machine:

“So down in Brazil for those fights, they had a Brazilian reporter, and he looked at it and he said it’s the only thing you can come up with. Because the first two fights were quick, but they were gory, and the last fight was 15 minutes or so, 18 minutes, I forget what it ran, but it went to decision. And it was a time where back then it was here’s the rules. You’re gonna fight until someone wins. That was it. So when I say, I don’t know if it went 15 minutes, I know it went a while. It went until they stopped it, and so I had taken this guy, Fabio, and I mauled him. It just was one of those things where I couldn’t understand inside me why he just wouldn’t give up. It was like I am punishing him to the point where any human being would just give up. And now, looking back on it, I can understand what I was after was taking his will, and some people just don’t want to give it to you. And he’s one of the people that didn’t want to give it to me. He just refused to give it to me. Because other people I’ve fought, I’ve put pressure on them, and I’ve hurt them, and they just give me their will to win. And you can feel it as a fighter. You could feel somebody give a little bit of it, and it propels you to take more of it. So he just wouldn’t give in, and it frustrated me. And I just, you know, in the documentary, it’s like I dig in his cut, I fractured his orbital, get to the point where I can’t even punch with my hands. So I’m punching with the palms of my hands. I’m trying everything, and he won’t [give up], and it baffled me. It literally baffled me. And looking back, I understand what I was after and what he didn’t want to give me, you know, in that moment, I was like, just f*cking give it to me. because I just kept pounding him and pounding him. And it went for so long. It was like a machine that was on an assembly. It was a headline in a magazine.”

On wrestling Kurt Angle:

“I think total of eight times. It ended up being four, four.”

But he won the Olympic trial?

“He did. Yeah, the two years prior to that, I had beat him from the world teams. This is just how beautiful a person he is. So my mom, who had terminal cancer in 96, I tell people, you want to know a bad month. So, 1996 January, Dave Schultz, I wrestled for Foxcatcher. So did Kurt. Dave Schultz is murdered. I’m over in Russia when they make that announcement. Just heart goes absolutely cold, we still haven’t competed yet. And so the coach is like, if you don’t want to compete tomorrow, you don’t have to. And I’m like, okay. We’re in Siberia, Russia, and I go, Okay, I’ll compete. So I competed, but my heart wasn’t into it, so I lost the first match, and I go, F*ck it, I’m done. And I go home. I was supposed to actually fly from Russia to Foxcatcher to continue to train for the nationals, which were in April. So I ended up going home to Ohio. My brother asked me to come home, and he says, ‘Hey, listen, you know, the cancer is terminal. It’s metastasized outside of my mom’s colon, and they’re going to try some experimental chemo. She’ll have to have a chemo pack on to pump chemo for 24 hours a day. But it doesn’t look optimistic.’ So I go ahead and just devastated, and I gather myself up and I go, Okay, I’m living in Arizona. I continue to train. I end up going to Athens, Greece, and end up pulling my transverse abdominal and drop into my groin muscles, pulling them completely out. And so I can’t compete in the Nationals, so I have to petition to get in Olympic trials. They are in Spokane, Washington, and I wrestle Mark Coleman. I lose to Mark right off the bat. So my chance to be an Olympian, I could be an alternate, but I can’t get to Kurt, right? So I throw shoes away, literally, like, f*ck it! What’s the point? And Arthur Martori, who had the Sunkist Kids [Wrestling Club]. He comes over, says, ‘Listen, it’d be the last time your mom’s gonna watch you wrestle. Why don’t you get your shoes on?’ I’m like my God, you’re right. And so get my shoes on, and I wrestle three more, four more matches that day. And it puts me in a spot to be where I can be second alternate on the Olympic team. So I wrestled the next day. I mean, my body is just devastated, and I end up losing that match. So I gather myself up, go to Ohio and me and my mom watch Kurt win the gold medal, and then we try everything to get a hold of him afterward. And my mom dies September 3, we get a letter from him, September 5, and it’s this beautiful, beautiful letter. I can’t even talk about it. Make me bawl. In the letter, he’s basically like, because you made me Kurt’s biggest obstacle it helped him win the gold medal, because it was an obstacle he never thought he could overcome. Now, I’ll have to show you the letter someday. It’s one of those we’re still to this day reading it, or my brother reading it, it just drops you. It’s incredible.”

Do you still keep in touch with Kurt? 

“I actually bumped into him again in Philadelphia for Wrestlemania, and we just had a beautiful conversation. Such good just a great human being, yeah, you know, just really good human being.”

On possibly returning to the UFC when he was competing for Pride:

“Yeah. So this is how small this world is. So I’m living here in Santa Monica, and the UFC gets sold, and we get word that there’s a training camp going on in Big Bear, and it’s Tito Ortiz’s training camp. They’re going to push him to be the face of the new UFC. They get it sanctioned for New Jersey boxing Commission, which is the gateway to Vegas. So I go up there, and I’m driving up there. This is so strange. I’m driving, it’s like February. I’m driving up there, snowstorm, roads are icy. I’m in my truck, and I get hit by a drunk driver at 11 am in the morning. He hits me like we reached the peak of a hill at the same time, he panics, he slams his brakes on, and he just skids right into my truck. At the bottom they were stopping cars because there was so much snow going up. They’re like, You need four wheel driver chains, and that’s the only way of letting people up. And so he crashes into me, and I have an attorney that was helping me at the time, and a friend of mine, and we’re like, you know what? Let’s just continue on. So we jump in the tow truck, and the tow truck continues to take us up, and we finally get to where the training camp is. And it’s, it’s Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. It’s Dana White, it’s Chuck Liddell, it’s Tito Ortiz, it’s everybody. I mean, the Fertittas brought their massage therapists, their chefs, I mean, everything that you could possibly imagine for a training camp. And so it was like, I wanted to meet him. I want to see who the new owners were. And so because I got hit by a drunk driver, didn’t have a car to get down the mountain. And Frank and Lorenzo were like, ‘Hey, we’re going to Beverly Hills Hotel tomorrow. Do you want to ride in the limo with us down?’ So it was this awesome ride down the mountain with the new owners of the UFC, got a chance to talk to him, and shortly after that, they made one offer. The pay was so little comparatively to what I was making in Japan. I was like, I just can’t. They go if you’re willing to sacrifice now there would be ample opportunity for you.”

On The Rock getting big for the movie:

“The running joke was that Benny is the only director in the world that looked at him and said, ‘Ah, you need to get bigger.’ The first time I ever saw him in full prosthetics, so they brought me over to Vancouver for fight week, we’re in this big venue, they’re going to film these scenes, scenes that are in Japan, and they didn’t tell me they’re going to do prosthetics. They didn’t say any of this. And so I’m talking, Dwayne walks in behind me, and he’s got a blue Pride shirt. He’s got these Adidas track pants on. He’s got the shoes on I wore, he’s got my hair on, he’s got all the prosthetics on. And I turn around and I could only cuss at him. It was this whole thing of just pushing him and going, ‘F*ck you, dude.’ Because I didn’t realize how much time he put into [the appearance], because he goes, ‘I needed big traps and I needed big shoulders.’ Because it’s like, when you look at me back, then it’s like, I had a 25-inch neck, I had shoulders that just were on top of shoulders. I looked at him. I just couldn’t believe it, like a doppelganger, he was me. Shockingly, I couldn’t process it because it was just like, Oh my God, dude, this is unbelievable, because no one said, ‘Hey, listen, we have Academy Award winning makeup and prosthetics.’ Incredible.”

What is Mark Kerr grateful for?

“Stability, relationships, and sense of self.”

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