For years, the People’s Elbow (or the Corporate Elbow, depending on his face/heel status) was The Rock’s signature move. It was a move that created some of the most electrifying moments in sports entertainment and led his elbow to legendary status However, while filming his upcoming 2025 movie The Smashing Machine, Dwayne Johnson injured that legendary elbow, and not by laying down the smackdown in the ring.
Ahead of the upcoming A24 movie’s October 3 release, the wrestler-turned-actor, along with director Benny Safdie and co-star Emily Blunt, sat down for an interview with CinemaBlend. We needed to know everything about putting on a ton of muscle and filming the movie on set. That included injuring his famous elbow after breaking through some doors in one intense scene he confirmed was shot completely practically.
Well... I went in on the door. Two doors – a bathroom as well as a kitchen. But that house, just so you know --and I think your viewers will find this really interesting -- is that house was built from scratch on a soundstage. Benny [Safdie] wanted to build it from scratch. No movable walls, so he can hide the cameras and everything. Running water. So everything was real, including the door!
Based on what we know about The Smashing Machine, Safdie went to great lengths to make it as authentic as possible, so it’s not all that surprising to hear he’d built a functioning house (real doors and all) for the shoot. Ss Johnson laid out to us, the director’s obsession with authenticity did come at a cost:
This is why my elbow is still sore. You see how swollen my elbow is? This has not gone down, by the way, in months. This is crazy. When I did that. Look at this shit. By the way, this is the one [pointing to his right elbow] that got injured up there. It was all black and blue.
By the sound of it, Johnson didn’t have a ton of time to let his famous elbow heal, as he and Safdie also revealed the situation got even more painful after he "blocked" some kicks while filming the movie’s fight sequences. After taking a shot to the arm, the bruising and swelling came back.
Honestly, it’s amazing Johnson never severely injured his elbow during his wrestling career, as I'd guess he had to have used the People’s Elbow signature move thousands of times in the ring. The move, which saw him remove his elbow pad and throw it into the crowd before running the ropes and planting his elbow on a downed opponent, couldn’t have been good for his right arm. Yet, it did lead to some of the most utterly insane wrestling moments.
While it’s still not yet known what the future holds for Dwayne Johnson’s in-ring career, hopefully, we haven’t seen the last of “The Final Boss” in WWE. With some major upcoming WWE PLE events on the way (WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas and WrestleMania 43 in Saudi Arabia, at the top of the list), maybe we’ll see The Rock bringing the smackdown on opponents more than doors moving forward. If not, at least you can see that elbow in action in The Smashing Machine.
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