The Smashing Machine

The film opens with a candid Mark Kerr talking about his rise in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the mounting pressures he faces as he heads toward his next bout, offering a window into the mindset of a fighter at the pinnacle of a turbulent era.

In 1999, Kerr is at home with his girlfriend, Dawn Staples, a relationship marked by both affection and strain. He teases her over a bulking shake that didn’t come out right, then immediately apologizes, revealing a dynamic built on push-and-pull as they navigate life on the road and the demands of competition. Kerr gears up for another fight under the watchful eye of Mark Coleman, while also juggling meetings with Japanese officials about his pay, and slipping in and out of drug use that shadows his progress. The tension between ambition and personal turmoil threads through his daily routine, turning the gym into a pressure cooker where every choice feels consequential.

Backstage and in the locker room, the pressure bursts into conflict. Kerr, under the influence, argues with Dawn as he wrestles with the emotional fallout of a disappointing performance. After a devastating loss, he retreats to his locker, succumbing to sorrow and a sense that the path he’s chosen may be tearing him apart from the inside out. The aftermath spills into his home life, where Dawn’s presence becomes increasingly fragile as Kerr’s world grows more frayed. The next morning brings a harsh wake-up call: an overdose that accelerates the unraveling of their relationship and foreshadows the long road ahead toward recovery.

Coleman visits Kerr and urges a hard reset, insisting that a change is necessary if he hopes to compete with the intensity he’s shown before. Kerr agrees, and he enters rehab—a turning point that strains his bond with Dawn, eventually pushing her away and prompting him to branch out to train with Bas Rutten. Under Bas’s coaching, Kerr discovers a renewed discipline and trains himself into peak form, a transformation reflected in his performance and focus as he wins his first post-rehab bout. The renewed energy also rekindles a fragile reconciliation with Dawn, a moment that brings Bas’s concern into sharper relief as the people around Kerr weigh the costs of his return to the sport.

Yet the reconciliation proves unstable. Dawn’s hedonistic impulses create new frictions, and Kerr makes the painful decision to end things and ask her to leave. The rift is severe enough to push Dawn toward desperation, culminating in a suicide attempt that lands her in care and interrupts Kerr’s hard-won stability. The emotional toll of his personal life folds into his professional struggles, and in Japan he faces a distracted, haunted performance—fighting not just an opponent, but the memories of Dawn and other chapters of his life and career. The memory-laden bout ends in a brutal defeat, underscoring how inner turmoil can blunt even the most disciplined fighter.

Meanwhile, Coleman’s path through the year culminates in victory as he wins the 2000 Pride Grand Prix, while Kerr bandsage and stitches his own injuries, the physical toll mirrored by the emotional one he carries. The film slowly narrows its lens to the present day, showing the real Mark Kerr shopping at a grocery store—a reminder that the man behind the legend persists beyond the arena.

In a final, telling reveal, it’s disclosed that Mark and Dawn married just 11 days after Kerr’s loss at the 2000 Grand Prix. Kerr would retire in 2009, and though he remains largely out of the public eye today, the film frames him as one of the earliest pioneers of MMA, someone who helped shape a sport even as his personal life bore the heavy marks of fame, struggle, and resilience. The story lingers on the idea that enduring influence can outlast notoriety, cementing Kerr’s place in the annals of the sport he helped build.

Last Updated: November 22, 2025 at 16:00