When it came to playing the brutal, battered and drug addled UFC fighter Mark Kerr in his new movie, “ The Smashing Machine ,” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson agreed to a hard bargain.

It was clear that there would be scenes of extreme ring violence. After all, the movie takes place in the 1990s, when UFC bouts were anything-goes bloodbaths. Wound gouging and head-butting made for such a spectacle that the late Senator John McCain disparaged the sport as “human cockfighting.”

In the spirit of maintaining authenticity, director Benny Safdie and The Rock made a pact that is virtually unheard of for a Hollywood star vehicle. “At one point, I said to Dwayne, ‘I don’t want to cut away. I think it’s important that we see him get hit,'” Safdie told The Post. “We talked about this early on, t

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