‘The Rock’ Shares Footage From MMA Training Camp

‘The Rock’ is serious about getting his role right as UFC and PRIDE FC veteran Mark Kerr, to the point where he’s entered an MMA training camp to learn the ropes of fighting.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is hard at work preparing for his starring role in the Mark Kerr biopic The Smashing Machine, and he’s just shared some footage from day one of his MMA training camp.

Mark Kerr was a NCAA Division I Wrestling champion who used his skillset to maul people in the early days of No Holds Barred fighting. He won back-to-back UFC heavyweight tournaments before moving on to Japan’s PRIDE FC, where his size and physicality made him a top name. But it all started to fall apart around 2000 due to mental and physical issues caused by Kerr’s steroid use.

This was all captured in the award-winning 2002 HBO documentary The Smashing Machine. Twenty years later, indie darling studio A24 is retelling the tale with “The Rock” starring as Kerr. To prepare for the role, Johnson is spending a lot of time in the ring working on the wrestling and ground & pound skills needed to realistically portray a cage fighter.

“I’m learning daily and it’s been a very humbling, intense and motivating journey into this world of combat and becoming Mark Kerr – the two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion, World Vale Tudo Champion,” Johnson wrote on Instagram. “I’m a hard worker, but I realized that I’d have to work harder with this role than anything I’ve ever worked for in my life.”

“This physicality is just one part of the larger journey, that is truly a team effort. Growing and grateful.”

The role comes at a time where Johnson’s reputation as a Hollywood golden boy is under attack. A scathing in-depth report on “The Rock” from The Wrap accused the WWE superstar of showing up several hours late to movie sets, costing his upcoming Christmas action film Red One an extra $50 million in production costs. There were also strange stories of how Dwayne would pee into bottles on set, leaving them for crew to clean up.

Johnson’s reps have denied these tales are true, but there’s ample evidence that “The Rock” is a difficult actor to wrangle schedule-wise — which could cause issues for the lower budget A24 production.

But hey, maybe he just didn’t give a crap about Fast X or Red One, while The Smashing Machine is clearly a passion project. For now Johnson is clearly locked into the role and working hard on making the best Smashing Machine he can. It will be hard for him to beat the 2002 version, but we look forward to seeing the end result regardless.