Roberto ‘Cyborg’ Abreu has now been cast as fellow BJJ legend Fabio Gurgel in the upcoming film based on the life of Mark Kerr; ‘The Smashing Machine’. Kerr himself is being played by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and a number of other combat sports veterans will be playing other roles. Current undisputed heavyweight boxing world champion Oleksandr Usyk will be playing his fellow countryman Igor Vovchanchyn, while Bellator heavyweight world champion Ryan Bader will be playing Mark Coleman. With such an impressive list of veteran martial artists in supporting roles, it’s clear that they’re making every effort to make ‘The Smashing Machine’ feel as realistic as possible.
Each of these figures played an important role in Kerr’s combat sports career for different reasons, with Coleman being one of his longest training partners and closest friends. That means that Bader should be enjoying quite a bit of time on the screen, whereas Cyborg’s role will likely be confined to a smaller section. That’s because Kerr made his professional MMA debut in a tournament at World Vale Tudo Championship 3, where he beat his first two opponents in less than five minutes before having a gruelling half hour fight with Fabio Gurgel that only ended when the referee stepped in to stop the fight and award Kerr the win.
Kerr continued his impressive run by winning the heavyweight tournaments at UFC 14 and UFC 15, before going on to have a successful PRIDE career that involved a pair of fights with Vovchanchyn. It was around this time that Kerr made his submission grappling debut at ADCC 1999, another ruleset he enjoyed success in over the years. He ended up with a record of 13-1 across three ADCC gold medals and a superfight championship, an incredible run that led to him being inducted into the ADCC Hall of Fame as a member of the inaugural class.
Roberto ‘Cyborg’ Abreu announced that he was going to play Fabio Gurgel in the Mark Kerr biopic; ‘The Smashing Machine’ in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
