Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Smashing Machine!Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine tells the true story of UFC legend Mark Kerr, who is often credited with popularizing MMA fighting among viewers across the world. Safdie's film details the early years of Kerr's career, exploring how he rose to fame and what challenges that fame brought. Reviews of The Smashing Machine have been generally favorable.
The ending of The Smashing Machine brings Mark Kerr to the finals of the PRIDE Fighting Championship, an MMA tournament that aimed to bring the success of the UFC across the Pacific to Japan. The film explores how Kerr's substance abuse issues and toxic relationship characterized much of his early career, leading to this pivotal match.
Although Kerr overcomes his addictions and mends his relationship with his then-girlfriend, Dawn Staples, he ultimately falls at the last hurdle and is beaten by the Japanese fighter Kazuyuki Fujita. While this is an underwhelming ending in many ways, it speaks volumes to The Smashing Machine's key tenet of success being inconsequential to one's own happiness.
Did Mark Kerr Fully Overcome His Addiction Problems?
Dwayne Johnson Smashing Machine in a doctor's office
Mark Kerr's turbulent relationship with painkillers is one of The Smashing Machine's most important subplots, and the way Safdie makes this dynamic seem so natural and authentic is arguably the movie's biggest strength. It's not sensationalized in the way you might expect from a Hollywood biopic, but rather infused very slowly and subtly into the plot.
Equally, this means that Kerr's recovery from addiction is also subtle. There are some very emotional moments in which Kerr is forced to reckon with the effects of this addiction on his personal and professional lives, but for the most part, Kerr's recovery happens in the background while The Smashing Machine focuses instead on his fighting career.
It is a very interesting way of tackling this topic, and it proves that somebody's personal struggles don't have to define who they are or how they're perceived by the world. Dwayne Johnson's lead performance in The Smashing Machine is very restrained at times, and you often don't notice just how much Kerr is recovering — but by the end, he seems much better.
Speaking with TIME earlier this year, Kerr revealed: "I've been sober for seven years now, and that took me a minute, because that's a reckoning. I recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of body and mind." This essentially confirms that while Kerr's addiction didn't end completely after The Smashing Machine's story, his recovery and self-improvement were very real.
Did Mark And Dawn Manage To Save Their Relationship?
Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson walking down a street in Japan in The Smashing Machine
In many ways, the dynamic between Dawn and Mark in The Smashing Machine reflects Mark's toxic relationship with alcohol and drugs. The two are inexplicably drawn to each other despite the harm they continue to inflict upon one another, and this has a continually detrimental effect on Mark's professional career.
There are several moments in The Smashing Machine where Mark even blames Dawn for his losses, claiming that their dynamic is putting too much of an emotional strain on him and causing him to perform worse. The pair split up briefly following Kerr's life-threatening overdose before the PRIDE finals, but as The Smashing Machine teases, this wasn't the end of their relationship.
Dawn and Mark reconciled months later and ultimately got married in 2000, and they now share a child together. The pair reportedly broke up in 2015, but Kerr's comments to TIME prove that his relationship with Dawn is still positive:
I look back on it now, she's a little girl asking to be loved, and I'm just a little boy that doesn't know how to accept or give it.
What Happened To Mark Kerr After The Pride Finals?
Mark Kerr, as played by Dwayne Johnson, entering the arena on The Smashing Machine.
Kerr is often considered an unsung hero of MMA fighting, somebody who pioneered and revolutionized the sport, but is often forgotten because he never quite reached the top of the ladder. Following his defeat at the PRIDE finals in 2000, Kerr continued to fight in three more rounds of the championship, but stepped back in 2001 following two unexpected losses.
Kerr made one more appearance at PRIDE in 2004, hoping to regain his crown and prove that his rough streak was behind him. Unfortunately, he was defeated just 40 seconds into a fight with Yoshihisa Yamamoto, and he quit the league for good. He continued fighting in smaller American tournaments, but officially retired in 2009 after losing five consecutive fights.
The True Meaning Of The Smashing Machine's Ending
Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine
At its core, The Smashing Machine is the story of a generational talent who failed to achieve his full potential because of his own self-destructive behavior and mental health struggles. Whether it's Kerr's addiction to painkillers or his inability to walk away from such a toxic relationship, there are many factors in the film that demonstrate exactly why Kerr is such a complex figure.
It's hard to pin down a particular moral of the story with The Smashing Machine, as the film seems much less interested in judging or analyzing its subject, and more concerned with placing him in his deserved spot among the pantheon of MMA pioneers. If anything, it's a story about how success and happiness can rarely exist in the same space.
There's an interesting discussion in The Smashing Machine about whether success is really worth the pain it brings. The hunger for greatness breaks Kerr down both mentally and physically, but the film's ending sees him almost relieved that he didn't win the fight because he knows that it would have only given him a taste of a more destructive path.
