{"id":1181265,"date":"2025-10-03T08:14:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1181265"},"modified":"2025-10-03T08:14:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:14:32","slug":"dwayne-johnson-smashing-machine-concussed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/dwayne-johnson-smashing-machine-concussed\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson Got Willingly &#8216;Concussed&#8217; for The Smashing Machine: &#8216;He F&#8212;ing Rocked Me So Hard&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Smashing Machine<\/em> star Dwayne Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie tried hard to tell the story of UFC fighter Mark Kerr truthfully \u2014 especially in the fight scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film follows Kerr, played by Johnson, as he rises in the ring but struggles with addiction outside of it as he tries to mask intense pain. Emily Blunt plays his long-suffering girlfriend, Dawn, who faces her own struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film has drawn Oscar talk for Johnson, previously best known for franchise and action films \u2014 and it&#8217;s safe to say he&#8217;s the only contender in this year&#8217;s Best Actor race who was willingly, as he describes it, &#8220;concussed&#8221; for his art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/smashing-machine-benny-safdie-dwayne-johnson\/\">cover story on <em>The Smashing Machine<\/em><\/a>, Johnson and Safdie told us that early in the making of the film, Safdie pitched the bold idea to always keep the cameras outside of the ring, and to avoid quick cuts and editing-assisted illusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBenny and I were in a meeting, and he said, \u2018I have something to pitch you. Tell me I\u2019m crazy and I\u2019ll never bring it up again: I would love to never cut away when you\u2019re in the ring or in the cage.\u2019&#8221; Johnson told writer Joshua Encinias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018I would love that. I will train hard, and I will come in in the best, and hopefully decent, shape,\u2019\u201d Johnson recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most intense result of that approach came in a fight scene that recreates a famous brawl in Japan between Kerr and Kazuyuki Fujita, who is played in the film by actor and MMA fighter Yoko Hamamura.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dwayne Johnson on Taking a Real Shot to the Face From Yoko Hamamura for <em>The Smashing Machine<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"iframe-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Smashing Machine | Official Trailer HD | A24\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aRpnP3LZ99g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Johnson told Hamamura, literally, not to pull his punches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI pulled aside Yoko Hamamura,\u201d Johnson recounted. \u201cI said, \u2018Hey, you have to hit me in the face.\u2019 And he thought I was kidding. He goes, \u2018No, no, I can\u2019t do that.\u2019 I said, \u2018I mean it. I\u2019m not trying to be a tough guy. You know what happened in this fight with Kerr and Fujita, and Benny\u2019s not cutting away.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Safdie agreed: \u201cI\u2019m not going to cut away. I\u2019m staying right there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Johnson insisted to Hamamura: \u201cPlease, please rock me. We got one shot with this. \u2026 You know how to hit. If you hit me here, I think you\u2019re going to break my jaw. If you hit me up here, you\u2019re going to break my cheekbone. If you could somehow\u2026 we get one shot at this, so rock me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hamamura did as he was asked, with predictably painful results. The fight appears prominently in the <em>Smashing Machine<\/em> trailer, which you can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aRpnP3LZ99g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">watch here<\/a> if you can&#8217;t see it above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe f&#8212;ing rocked me so hard,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt winds up in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/smashing-machine-dwayne-johnson-mark-kerr\/\">trailer<\/a>, where I\u2019m up on my knees, and I\u2019m wobbly and dazed. I was concussed and wobbly for days after that. But we didn\u2019t cut away. And I\u2019m glad we didn\u2019t because that was a very pivotal fight for Mark that actually changed his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBenny wouldn\u2019t let us fake it,\u201d Johnson added. \u201cIf Mark got rocked, I got rocked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Safdie and stunt coordinator Greg Rementer meticulously planned out every round and takedown, but there was no getting around the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a level of respect for what these fighters go through. You can\u2019t fake that. You have to feel it,\u201d said Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Safdie elaborated: \u201cDwayne had to learn how to fight like Mark, to really make it feel believable. &#8230; That\u2019s the first thing that takes you out of a movie like this \u2014 if you can just tell they\u2019re not doing this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Smashing Machine <em>is in theaters today, from A24. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Smashing Machine star Dwayne Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie tried hard to tell the story of UFC fighter Mark","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":1181267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_comments":false,"cm_data":"","cpt_newsletter_id":0,"tpd_coauthor":[],"tpd_feed_delay":{"delay_type":"default"},"is_tpd_lists_single_post":false,"tpd_featured_posts_arr":"","tpd_franchise_content":"","hide_featured_img_single_post":false,"msn_featured_video":[],"_msn_custom_title":"","tpd_featured_video":[],"tpd_sponsored_post_logo":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_link":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_width":0,"tpd_sponsored_enable_nofollow":true,"tpd_disable_incontent_ads":false,"tpd_disable_right_rail_ads":false,"tpd_disable_after_content_ads":false,"tpd_disable_header_ads":false,"tpd_disable_sticky_footer_ads":false,"tpd_disable_video_ads":false,"tpd_disable_outbrain":false,"tpd_affiliate_disclaimer":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12627,42146],"coauthor":[],"feeds":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1181265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-dwayne-johnson","9":"tag-the-smashing-machine"},"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Dwayne-Johnson-Smashing-Machine-concussed-428x241.jpg","fimg_url_thumb":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Dwayne-Johnson-Smashing-Machine-concussed-428x241.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Dwayne-Johnson-Smashing-Machine-concussed-788x444.jpg","author_name":"Tim Molloy","author_avatar":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/IMG_1078-100x100.jpg","author_link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/author\/tim-molloy\/","coauthors":[],"primary_category":{"term_id":11,"name":"Movie News","slug":"news","taxonomy":"category","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/category\/news\/"},"featured_img_medium":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Dwayne-Johnson-Smashing-Machine-concussed-788x444.jpg","post_categories":["Movie News"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181265"},{"taxonomy":"coauthor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthor?post=1181265"},{"taxonomy":"feeds","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feeds?post=1181265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}