Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is many things! Absolutely shredded, perhaps the biggest Hollywood superstar, iconic WWE champion, and an excellent businessman. And while he has found astronomical success as a leading man, his acting isn’t exactly Oscar-worthy. Critics in the past have accused the TKO board member of essentially playing the ‘same character’ in each and every project with minimal creative incentive. In short, ‘The Brahma Bull’ has been typecast as a muscular tank of humor wearing a brown tee in his movies. But that might change in the near future.
At least that is what it seems like from what MMA legend Bas Rutten told ‘Submission Radio’ in a recent interview. ‘The Rock’, of course, is playing the legendary mixed martial artist and two-time UFC heavyweight champion, Mark Kerr, in an upcoming biopic titled ‘The Smashing Machine’ set to release on October 3.
And Rutten, who used to train with Kerr and was good friends with the American, is playing himself in the film, recreating his real-life interactions with Kerr in it. And according to the former UFC heavyweight champion, so good was Johnson’s acting that he actually lost himself at times during their dialogue and forgot he was talking to ‘The Rock’ playing Kerr, and not the former UFC tournament winner himself.
“That was just a picture, and when I saw him with the little tattoos there, you know, the Mark Kerr tattoos, and then the pants; the white and the yellow pants… And I was like, I was freaking out, I go like ‘Dude I… got goosebumps now, this is so real.’ And then Emily was standing there, she was like ‘Dawn, you know I got goosebumps now,’” Rutten said.
“Again, I was like ‘What the heck is going on?’ And there’s this scene we have in the gym where he’s talking to the press, and that was the very first time I heard him speak like Kerr as well. And I was, I literally go ‘Yeah, that was a weird thing.’ … I was very impressed, I was like ‘Wow, this guy!’” he added.
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We can’t really disagree with what we saw in the trailer for ‘The Smashing Machine.’ From encapsulating the atmosphere of the early days of PRIDE FC and building on the look of Kerr and his relationship with the likes of Mark Coleman, Johnson is really putting his heart and soul into the role, and has taken drastic steps not only to sound and talk like Kerr, but also look like him. Let’s see!
Dwayne Johnson’s intense routine to play Mark Kerr in his upcoming biopic
Dwayne Johnson took to Instagram recently to tell fans about the rigorous diet, training, and workout schedule he has developed to make sure he could do justice to the role of the MMA legend. Despite being a superstar billionaire who can literally retire today if he wants to, ‘The Rock’ is instead working out at least twice a day, doing cardio first thing in the morning, and keenly watching everything he eats.
“I wake up in the morning. I do cardio on an empty stomach, like I just did when I wake up. I have a little bit of caffeine… Have some aminos with that and a probiotic. And an hour later, I’m doing cardio. Did 40 minutes today of interval cardio. I guess somewhat high intensity. I do 45-50 seconds on the stair master. At level 14 or 15,” Johnson said in a video on his Instagram account.
“Then I bring it back down to level 7 or 8. And I’ll recover for the next two minutes… I’ll go home, I’ll eat breakfast, I’ll get some more work done. And then I’ll eat again, my lunch. And then I will come back here to the gym and train on the weights, and then I’ll have my post-workout shake,” he added.
As you can see, ‘The Rock’ is fully invested in the role and has gone to great lengths to make sure he gets Kerr right. If his acting as the UFC legend is indeed as good as Bas Rutten has claimed, then maybe playing Mark Kerr, a warrior in the cage, who struggled with d–g issues outside the cage, could well get him an Oscar nomination at the very least. What do you think about Bas Rutten’s revelations about Dwayne Johnson’s acting as Mark Kerr?
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