Tonight, heavyweight Mark “The Smashing Machine" Kerr makes his return to mixed martial arts in the IFL's Superfight against Mike Whitehead, a contestant from the second season of Spike’s Ultimate Fighter. Kerr, a D-1 NCCA wrestling champion at Syracuse University, brought mayhem and brute force to MMA in the late 1990's and briefly after Y2K. His success came during one of the most violent periods in MMA when there were few rules and regulations. But Kerr is best known as the main subject of an excellent HBO documentary that came out in 2002, appropriately called “The Smashing Machine.†It showed him during a time when his life was as reckless, tortuous and forbidding outside the ring as it was inside it. While Kerr came across as a young man/gladiator with a load of problems, he was eminently likable—and you were pulling for him from the get-go. Not just fans of MMA but anyone who saw the film was left wondering, What ever happened to that guy? Is he alive? Not only is he still with us, he’s doing very well--mentally, emotionally, and physically. And the articulate, personable behemoth says he’s still got some fight left in him, too. http://fightbeat.com/article_detail.php?AT=207
It will be cool to see him back in action and to see how he adapts. I hope we see him come out and just give Whitehead a lession in GnP.
