Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed that he suffered a legitimate concussion while filming a fight scene for his upcoming movie, “The Smashing Machine.” During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the WWE legend explained that the film’s director, Benny Safdie, was committed to making the action look as real as possible, which meant Johnson had to take real punches during some sequences.
Speaking to Fallon, Johnson credited Safdie’s “as real as it gets” motto for the realistic look of the fight scenes. He detailed a specific scene that replicated a real-life moment from the career of Mark Kerr, the MMA fighter Johnson portrays in the film. The scene depicts a fight against Japanese fighter Kazuyuki Fujita (played by Yoko Hamamura) during the 2000 PRIDE Grand Prix, where Kerr was on all fours, taking repeated blows to the head.
“Mark Kerr is on all fours, and Fujita is just wailing away on him. Mark Kerr is not moving, but the camera is right there… He’s with it, he’s not knocked out, he’s loopy. He’s just [staring off towards the camera]. He’s taking every hit, and I said to Benny, ‘That’s how we’re going to shoot this?’ And he goes, ‘Yes.’”
The Rock explained that he insisted his co-star, Yoko Hamamura, hit him for real to capture the authenticity of the moment, a request the respectful Japanese fighter initially refused. “I said to our fighter, ‘I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve got to hit me. You have to hit me.’ And he is a Japanese fighter, very respectful, he goes, ‘No, no. I will not hit you.’ He refused to hit me and finally I said, ‘Please, we have one shot at this. You must hit me.’”
It was director Benny Safdie who ultimately convinced Hamamura by appealing to the integrity of the real-life fight they were recreating. “So you’ll see in the movie, [punches his fist] he’s rocking me over and over and over again,” Johnson said. “It was wild. So after that fight, you see me and I look like I’m loopy, that’s ‘cause I had a concussion [and I was dazed]. But it’s the thing you’ve got to do. You realize 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.”
“The Smashing Machine” has already generated significant Oscar buzz following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a 15-minute standing ovation, a moment that reportedly brought The Rock to tears. The film is scheduled for a theatrical release on October 3.
