Having already conquered the Hollywood box office, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is now seeking critical acclaim, and he seems poised to get it from his upcoming film “The Smashing Machine.” The biopic to MMA legend Mark Kerr has already picked up the Silver Lion from the Venice Film Festival, and has received strong reviews, with Rock’s performance in particular being singled out as among the best work of his career.
But it didn’t come without some bumps and bruises along the way. Appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” Rock revealed that he and director Benny Safdie agreed to make “The Smashing Machine” as real as possible. As such, it led to Rock suffering an injury while recreating one of Kerr’s fights in Japan.
“I told our fighter who I was fighting…I said ‘Hey brother. I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve got to hit me,” Rock said. “‘You have to hit me.’ And he is a Japanese fighter, very respectful. He goes ‘No no no, I will not hit you.’ He refused to hit me. And I finally said ‘Please. We have one shot at this. You must hit me.’ And Benny came over and said ‘You must hit him.’ But then he said ‘I know you respect DJ, but I know you respect the fight that actually happened with Mark Kerr in Japan. Let’s keep our integrity and whale away.’
“So you’ll see, in the movie, he’s rocking me over and over and over again. It was wild. So after that fight, you see me, and I look like I’m loopy. That’s cause I had a concussion…But it’s the thing you got to do, you realize, because if you’re going to make an MMA movie, you’ve got to go all the way. And that’s what we did with this. You have to man.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
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