Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson announced Friday that his production company, Seven Buck Productions, will be producing a movie on the life and career of Mark Kerr.
The vehicle will not only see Johnson serve as a producer but will also play the role of Kerr, a former two-time UFC heavyweight tournament winner.
The film is inspired by one of the greatest MMA documentaries to be produced with the 2002 release of “The Smashing Machine”. The documentary chronicled Kerr’s rise to stardom in the UFC and PRIDE while becoming increasingly dependent on pain killers.
Variety is reporting that the film is in early development and no studio is attached to the project, yet.
Wrestling as a heavyweight for Syracuse University, Kerr was a Division I champion in 1992 and took his wrestling skills and transitioned to MMA in 1997.
Kerr entered the UFC in July 1997 at UFC 14 defeating Moti Horenstein and Dan Bobish in the same night to win the heavyweight tournament on the card. He repeated on October 17th at UFC 15 defeating Greg Stott and Dwayne Carson with the fights lasting 17 and 53 seconds respectively.
Kerr then moved to PRIDE and fought in the group’s second event in March 1998. He went on to defeated Hugo Duarte and Nobuhiko Takada.
In 2000, he entered the promotion’s Grand Prix tournament defeating Enson Inoue in the opening round before losing his first pro fight in May in the second round to Kazuyuki Fujita by unanimous decision.
Kerr’s fall from grace began during this period. After a victory over Igor Borisov in August 2000, Kerr went 0-5 over the next six-plus years, which included lengthy sabbaticals between several fights.
Kerr was largely fighting because of his reputation and name value, leading to five fights within a span of six-months in 2008 going 1-4. His final fight was in August 2009 where he was knocked out by Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal in 25 seconds on an M-1 Global event in Kansas City, Missouri.
Johnson will be in attendance at UFC 244 tonight at Madison Square Garden to present the “BMF championship” to the winner of the main event between Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal.
