Interview with Mark Kerr

I recently had the chance to sit down with one of the legends of MMA, wrestler Mark Kerr. A former NCAA champion, Kerr won two consecutive UFC tournaments before jumping to PRIDE Fighting Championships. Along the way he developed a crippling drug addiction, documented int he HBO film The Smashing Machine. Kerr is back in the fight game, older, wiser, but seemingly not better. The loser of four in a row, Kerr is hoping to turn things around in his upcoming fight for M-1 Global Challenge against "King" Mo Lawal.


Fight Network:It's interesting going back and reading about the early days of your wrestling career. The MMA connections run deep. Is it true that you went to high school one year with Pat Miletich?

Mark Kerr: I did. I actually lived in the Quad Cities. Pat was a senior and I was a freshman. He was definitely the big man on campus. I was one of the guys that wrestled with him all the time. Obviously, I grew to be a bigger boy. But in the Bettendorf wrestling room, I wrestled Pat in high school. Even stranger than that-I'll add more to this oddity, I wrestled Randy Couture in the NCAA finals, my senior year and his senior year in college.

Fight Network: You were at UFC 15 and saw the groundbreaking match between Mark Coleman and Maurice Smith for the UFC title which was a wake up call for wrestlers everywhere. It was obvious right away that you knew from that fight that you were going to have to do much more than straight wrestling to win in MMA.

Mark Kerr: I was in Mark's corner that night. If you watch closely you can actually see me clutching the towel. On a couple of different occasions I wanted to throw the towel in. But Mark just adamantly would look at me out of the corner of his eye like 'Don't you dare.' It was a learning opportunity. Here you go. It's a guy that is used to taking a beating. He's a Muay Thai fighter. What am I going to do to him as a fighter? Am I going to get on top of him and beat him? He can take it. What do I do now? Maurice Smith took everything Mark could throw at him and came back for more. Until Mark was exhausted. The rest is history.

Fight Network: You missed out on fighting many of the best fighters of your generation, at least in the ring or the cage. But a big part of your legacy is on the mats in the middle east. Do you wish you had been able to fight those same guys in MMA competition?

Mark Kerr: I'm just as proud of the Abu Dhabi events that I won. I think those stand up. Those were against the Sean Alvarez's, the Mario Sperry's, the Ricco Rodriguez's. Josh Barnett. These were guys who were the best submission grapplers out there. I beat them at their game. I don't know why I didn't get those kind of matchups in PRIDE. I think the Japanese in some respects were protecting their prize product. Because they marketed me to the nth degree. I did their TV, their radio, their version of Johnny Carson, their Japanese game shows. I dressed up in a sumo suit on national television. They wanted to protect this opponent a little, so they put me against good opponents instead of great ones.

Fight Network: You fought PRIDE legend Nobuhiko Takada right after his worked bout with Mark Coleman. Was there ever any pressure on you to throw the fight?

Mark Kerr: I don't agree with it, but I can't fault him for it. It paid dividends for him. He sacrificed a little but it gained him so much. I made it perfectly clear that it was my reputation and my integrity on the line. I made it clear to them that there was no way I would ever compromise it for financial gain. It would be too hard for me to carry that to bed every night.

Fight Network: Something that's different about today than in your prime is the drug testing. Do you think if they had those mechanisms in place in your era that you might have been spared some of the pain we all saw documented in The Smashing Machine?

Mark Kerr: In my day it was like the wild, wild, west. My first professional fights were in the basement of a hotel in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Bareknuckle. It's like they were scripted from a Hollywood movie. Where it was is nothing like where it is now. Thankfully those safeguards are in place. If someone in that system is using these substances, you're going to get caught. If you fight often enough in enough states, you're going to get caught. Thankfully it's out there.

Fight Network: I enjoyed your legends match with Oleg Taktorov, but this is something different with King Mo Lawal (August 28, 2009, for M-1 Challenge). What do you think you bring to the table against this young guy?
Mark Kerr: I really think he's a 185-pounder. A light heavyweight at best. I'm a true legit heavyweight. There is a big difference. I'm hoping I can get in there, slow him down, and maybe do some good old fashioned ground and pound. Props to sherdog.com