1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - The Story of Mark Kerr: September 3rd, 11:45am

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

The Story of Mark KerrAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to one-on-one with DP, brought to by Canopy Street Market on 937 the ticket and the ticketfm.com. Welcome back, Anthony Lionheart Smith. And I don't know that we could cover this, this bio, this doc, this movie in one segment. I don't know that we can't. Because there's so many different orres in the water when it comes. to this thing. One, you're, you're, the people involved. Mark Kerr's story, if you, if you want to get to the mountain Rushmore of curious personalities in mixed martial arts, Kerr, there's a bunch of y'all. Like that part, there's a bunch of movies that could have fit into this story. I would imagine that

Ronda Rousey, Holly Holme, the, you know, the preacher's daughter, that if you go the other side of the, the craziness that happens within the business, telling the business deals, sharing the information on pride and the other organizations and federations that are involved, the wear and tear, the life of the people connected

or adjacent to the fighters. And this will lead to having these questions. But the movie is called the smashing machine, and it is based on the Lifetime's Trials and tribulations of Mark Kerr. Now, if the version of the UFC that currently exists is not what Mark Kerr came through. No. No, not at all.

So, different landscape for sure. Right? Different, different, different era. But it does from all reports, it does a pretty good job of telling the story of the difference between UFC and pride, of the struggle portion of your journey. then your rise to the top and all the frictions and things that get in the way. Give the people the elevated pitcher who Mark Kerr was, a wrestler, a Division I wrestling champion.

Yeah, so Mark Kerr was an incredible Division I wrestler. Just accolades as far as you can read on Mark Kerr. He was one of the better guys to ever do it. Of course, after wrestling, you got one of two directions. You can, well, I guess three. you can coach start a club you can coach you can find a college to coach at whatever you want to do you can coach um if you're good enough you can wrestle internationally try to make a world team try to make an olympic team uh nowadays there's there's obviously more avenues to wrestling there's you know these super matches and and

there's ways to make money other places back then that wasn't the case so you can wrestle internationally or you can start fighting and uh mark cur chose the the mMA direction so he went out he went out he went over bought in pride um again i'm i'm going to be honest with you guys that's where the thank you sir that's where the um performance enhancing part of his career started i would imagine would be in pride pride was riddled with steroids and peds they didn't test over there um a lot of those fights were real but a lot of them were not a lot of them were fixed um guys were paid extra money to to get the desired result. And then, I mean, you can kind of just go back in the history books and see how the guys did that were really, really successful in pride.

And then see how they did when they came over to the UFC when it was really real. There was only a couple of guys that were wildly successful, Rampage being one. But I, me and whoever is listening to this, I bet you struggle to come up with three that were wildly successful coming over from pride. Procop was, you know, left late. Left leg hospital, left leg cemetery. Right. It's, I don't know. I think Crocop won like one fight in the UFC.

Right. And not that I don't think those guys are legends in their own right, but it's a different world. So he came over. He was a tournament champion in the UFC. But his story is not unique to him. He's just, he's the one that they chose to tell because of the history. And he kind of was at the grassroots. of a lot of this stuff.

But it's not unique. The addiction that comes with when you don't have this thing anymore, when you do have to retire the toll on your body, because you can only do PEDs and compete at this level and do that to your body for you can't burn the candle of both ends. So then your body starts to fail you, then you can't win anymore, and then your identity, especially back then.

And I had it a little bit too when I was younger. fighting was who I was. It was everything to me. I was nothing without it. It truly defined who I was as a person. And fortunately, when I started having children and other things became more important, fighting became something that I do, that I was passionate about, that I loved. But it wasn't who I was anymore.

I was a father. I was, you know, I was all these different things. And a lot of guys don't ever have that switch in their brain that happens. it's always so when it defined you and it is everything that you are and then you lose it a lot of people fall apart and i could tell you stories after stories after stories of guys who were great and then when they couldn't do it anymore and then they lose it they lose themselves and then comes the alcohol and the drugs and and the painkillers from the from your surgeries from all the injuries that you've had and and and then it just spirals and then you end up broke and

And fortunately, Mark Kerr was going to, he was one of those few guys that were able to pull himself out of it. And pull himself back into something that was some sort of resemblance of who he was before it all started. It is fascinating. Again, the trailer kind of snuck up on it. And I was telling Bach this during the break. It snuck up on me. Like it just showed up in my stream several ways. And it just stopped me because I don't know that these stories have been told.

on this scale, was it the right person, who else would be in the conversation? I'm a bit averse to it, if I'm being honest. Well, but that's where... I haven't seen it, and I don't know that I will. That, that's where we were headed. So here's what we'll do. We'll go to break.

We'll reset for the, for hour number two, Anthony Lionheart Smith, Bach, DP. We will talk about the smashing machine. And I think the stories attached to it are more important than the die. For sure. But I think the conversations will be led by this, particular film. So more here on the ticket when we come back. This is Lincoln's home for sports

talk on the FM dial. Also online at the ticketfm.com on the internet. KNTK FM Firth 937 the ticket.