by Mark Hunt
By the time I went round to look at the place Hape had suggested, I was already sold. I knew I wouldn’t have any problems telling Lucy – her life was pretty full and she probably felt relieved when I said I was moving out of her home and had found a new manager. But it wouldn’t be so easy to tell Alex.
Alex and Lucy came as a team, so if I was quitting Lucy I was also quitting Alex. Alex was a guy I loved, and he’d only ever done right by me, but I felt I needed a change in my corner, too. Alex was a nice guy and would never be anything but. Hape had the dog in him and I knew he would put the dog in me too. I couldn’t have any timidity in my corner if I was going to stand up to Jérôme and his ilk.
When I told Alex, he shook my hand and wished me luck. He meant it, too, there’s no doubting that. He knew it was going to be a big year for me, and all he’d ever wanted was for me to reach my potential. I did feel a twinge of sadness when I started training with Hape, but he quickly barked me into shape.
I trained my ass off in his gym, but for some reason I couldn’t get another fight scheduled. I started to wonder why. Hape said that after my last few fights, I was no longer seen as the region’s punching bag, but a guy who could take your head off and root your record.
After a few weeks at his gym, Hape brought another guy into my team, a slick, fast-talking Pakeha Kiwi whom Hape said was going to be my manager. I don’t ever remember agreeing to having Dixon McIver as my manager, but I had no problem with it. The guy could talk the hind leg off a donkey, and had managed both Rony and Ray in the K-1. It seemed to me that he knew what he was doing. What a poor judge of character I ended up being.
Dixon told me he’d heard another major K-1 event was going to be held in Melbourne. As part of an attempt to extend the K-1 brand, their biggest-name contract fighters would be fighting outside Japan. The rumours started to become facts. The best guys were coming to Australia for an event at Rod Laver Arena, then Melbourne’s largest indoor stadium.
There was a spot for a local fighter, too, who could gain entry by going through the second K-1 Oceania tournament, which now would give thirty grand to the winner. The way I trained for that tournament and the attitude Hape instilled in me, there was not one motherfucker who would be able to stop me.
My first fight was against Nathan Briggs, and I’ve already explained how I felt about rematches. I knocked him out in the first minute of the fight. My semifinal was against Andrew Peck, a powerhouse Kiwi fighter who’d been discovered by Sam Marsters in similar circumstances to mine. Peck had been on a run of knockouts, including Rony Sefo and Auckland Auimatagi, but I laid him out even more quickly than I did Briggs. I went into the final of that tournament against Peter Graham having about a minute and a half of fight time.
I’d trained with Peter at the Mundine gym for some months so I knew what a talented and proud fighter he was, but after chipping away for two rounds he presented a spot, like Andrew and Nathan had before him, and I finished him off in the third round. I was once again the champion of Oceania, on a fast track to the first major international K-1 event in Australia.
There were three months between the Oceania championships and the K-1 event, and I should have spent that time training. Instead I ended up loitering around New Zealand. The plan, which was arranged by Hape, was to jump across there for one or two appearances before coming back and knuckling down in preparation for the Melbourne event, but a few days became a week and then another, and then a few more, with us going down the line to Napier.
Soon after we arrived in Auckland it was clear that coming home with a bit of cash was not good for me. I enjoyed spending time with the boys in Auckland – I revelled in the role as a returned hero – but with them it was easy to slide back into the lax morality of my teenage years. I wasn’t hauled up in front of the judge whom I promised I would stay Australia’s problem, but there was drinking and smoking and drugs, then, a few months later, I went so far off the rails I couldn’t even see them anymore. When I finally turned up in Melbourne I’d piled on an extra nine kilograms and my gas tank was considerably smaller than it had been.
Travelling on a shuttle with the rest of the fighters heading to the venue, I heard Ernesto Hoost say loudly that he was going to kill the ‘Aussie boy’ in the tournament. I remember being glad I wasn’t an Aussie. At that time Hoost, nicknamed ‘Mr Perfect’, had a winning record of 81–16, having taken pretty much every major kickboxing title, and he was reigning K-1 Grand Prix champion.
Now I know he was, of course, talking about (and to) me. Later that day there was a press call, including a group photograph. I was happy to be in with the rest of the seven big-name fighters, until a meaty paw deliberately and obviously reached over to obscure me from view when the photograph was taken. The message was clear: you’re not one of us. I was back at primary school, with the capillaries in my face ready to burst. I looked along the arm and found it was attached to a big, eraser-headed Croatian named Mirko Filipović, who is now known as Mirko Cro Cop, a moniker he picked up due to his time in his country’s elite anti-terror police unit.
I didn’t mind what Hoost had said, he was just mucking around, but this Cro Cop slight meant something. It meant I was just a regional annoyance, not one of the big boys, not part of the group. I wanted to fix this fucker, and I was monumentally pissed off that I wasn’t in any kind of shape to do it.
When I stepped into Rod Laver Arena I had my first taste of what fame would feel like. I’m sure few people in the crowd knew who I was, but they knew I was the local fighter and that was enough for them to get cheering. My first fight was against Japanese boxer Hiromi Amada – I caught him in the first round with a right hook and sent him to sleep. My semifinal was against Ernesto Hoost. While he didn’t get to kill me, he did kill my legs, throwing what felt like endless inside and outside leg kicks that soon rendered me one big, lumbering punching bag. I took Hoost to a decision, but the match went to him.
After that I agreed to fight in an event in Auckland, but as far as I was concerned my year was done; I’d have to try to get those big boys of K-1 in 2002. As was the case the previous time, when I landed in Auckland I partied, even before the night of my fight. I was caught by Tarik coming in to the hotel at 3 am, having had a pretty substantial night.
The next day I wandered my way through three rounds against Peter Graham, watched the referee raise Pete’s hand, patted him on the back and then headed straight for the ciggies and booze.
I was planning to get back into training, but not until the next year. In the meantime I had lined up a little sparring against Sydney fighter Adam Watt, who had qualified for an upcoming K-1 event in Fukuoka, the winner of which would gain entry into the big dance, the Grand Prix. I was a little unfit and slow and Adam fairly beat the crap out of me in those sparring sessions but I was happy to turn up; he was a good guy, if not sometimes a little volatile and temperamental.
I remember I was at a barbecue at Dave’s house in Auburn, when I got the call. I had a beer in my hand and had just finished a ciggie, when the phone rang. It was Dixon.
‘Mark, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Cro Cop has picked up an injury and can’t fight in Fukuoka. I just got the call, and they want to slot you in, they want you fighting in three weeks.’
‘The bad news?’
‘The bad news is you’d be fighting Ray.’
Three weeks’ notice against a guy like Ray Sefo would be no joke, but of course I said I’d take the fight. I’d never turned down a fight and I wasn’t going to start now. Even though I may not have been able to win, I knew I could at least last the rounds. The Japanese fans would always appreciate that.
When the negotiations started, the K-1 started to nickel-and-dime me, trying to give me considerably less cash than I’d earned for my previous Japanese fight, and I started to wonder if I really wanted to take this fight after all. I was going to fight Ray Sefo, the undisputed king of the region, with whom I had my own personal history. R
ay would be coming in as strong and fit as humanly possible. He desperately wanted to be the first man outside Europe to win the Grand Prix, and had lost in the final of the previous year’s Grand Prix. With this being the last opportunity to qualify for the 2001 Grand Prix, he’d no doubt been red-lining his training.
It was actually Adam Watt who convinced me to go. ‘What have you got to lose?’ was the cut and thrust of his argument, and it was an argument that spoke to me.
Chapter 8
TOKYO, JAPAN
2001
It was good that a Samoan brother made it, and represented us. I was really happy for Mark. No, really, I was. I was happy, I am happy … wouldn’t mind having another crack at him, though.
RAY SEFO, K-1 VETERAN AND PRESIDENT, WORLD SERIES OF FIGHTING
Sometime in 2001 the Japanese decided to adopt me as one of their dudes. Early in the year I had barely any profile in Japan – a K-1 0–1 nobody as far as the Japanese were concerned, if they were concerned at all. By the end of 2001 I was doing fast-food advertisements and presenting at the Japanese MTV Music Awards.
It all started with that fight against Ray. I’d gone over to fight him for a repechage tournament, one of the eight ways a fighter could qualify for the Grand Prix. My fight against Ray was a first-round fight so there wasn’t much interest building up around it, but it’s now remembered as one of the most famous fights in K-1 history. That fight was really my introduction to the broader fighting world.
Like I said, though, I went into that fight unfit, so my normal strategy of ‘taking the other guy’s head off’ developed into ‘taking the other guy’s head off in the first minute of the fight’. Ray is, like me, a Samoan Kiwi, and our heads don’t come off too easily.
I came out swinging, every punch a sidewinder. Ray looked a little shocked at my early output but weathered the storm like you would expect. At the end of the round I could tell he was enjoying the abandon of the contest. K-1 was big, serious business and most fights were very technical. But Ray seemed to like being in the ring with someone who was willing to stand there and trade leather with him.
The first round ended not only with the customary clapping, but also cheers from the Japanese crowd. I was told about the cheers later because all I could hear was my own breathing and the pounding of my heart. After a round of effort, I was rooted.
I went into the second round sucking up the big ones, and now out of ideas. I swung for some more home-run shots but the punches were flying past Ray’s bobbing head. As the seconds ticked by, my feet were getting heavier and heavier. I could punch, but I couldn’t move much. Ray moved me around the ring, bouncing punches off me and every so often I’d load up a big right or left. A 2–1 combo landed right on his scone, with Ray nodding his approval. He was in it now. I was too.
Oh, we’re in a scrap now, boy. The ring, the crowd, the city all started to fade away. Now it was just a couple of concrete-headed Samoan scrappers doing what we do best.
What have you got for me fella? Ray loaded up with a five-punch combination, finishing with a left hook that landed flush on my chin. Good punches, real good. He’s got heavy hands, Ray.
When he was done I dropped my hands and stuck my face out towards him so his nose was right in front of mine.
‘THAT IT?’ I yelled.
Ray threw me a smile, moved in and kissed me on the cheek. It wasn’t a ‘fuck you’ kiss, as some people have suggested, it was something else. We were brothers, man, a couple of Polynesian brothers tied to this moment we would both remember for the rest of our lives.
I patted him on the back and then loaded up with a 2–1–2 combo, with each punch landing flush. Ray rolled backwards and took them, all of them, before dancing a little dance with a huge grin on his face. I threw my arms out to my sides.
Okay boy, your turn. Think you can knock me down?
Ray danced forward and started throwing all he had. I dropped my hands, bit down on my mouth guard and let him rain down on me.
‘YEEEEEESSSS,’ I screamed at Ray while his fists flew into my head. After ten or so unguarded shots I started to shoot back and soon we were throwing in turns. When the bell rang and the punching stopped, the ring came back, and the crowd, and the context of the fight.
I looked out at the Japanese crowd and they were cheering and clapping, but they also had looks of disbelief. That’s not how the European fighters do it, and certainly not how the Japanese fighters do it. It seemed many in the crowd didn’t know how to react. There was laughter, which is not something you hear regularly at a Japanese combat sport event, and people with their hands on their heads, shocked.
South Auckland comes to Japan, eh?
When I was called for the third and final round, I was well and truly stuffed and I knew, no matter how conditioned Ray might have been, he must have been rooted too. We kept trading as best we could, but the fight had peaked and we got across the line with a lot of clinching and counter punching.
The crowd cheered when Ray took the decision, but I knew a good part of that appreciation was for me. I patted him on the back after the fight. That was some scrap. My tournament may be over and my Japanese record may now be 0–2, but it really was a scrap for the ages.
I’d only been backstage for a few minutes when I heard a bit of a commotion going on. I only vaguely noticed it; I had a towel hung over my head, trying to unring that bell Ray had struck. Then I heard my name.
‘Hunto-san, Hunto-san?’ It was two Japanese men – one I recognised as an organiser of the event and the other I assumed correctly was the fight doctor.
‘Sefo-san, he can … he cannot continue. Can you continue?’
Always boy, always.
Ray’s vision had been jarred by our exchange in the second round and he was unable to count how many fingers the doctor was holding up. The doctor had ruled him unfit to continue on to the next fight. When the doctor gave me the same test I passed with flying colours. Probably the first time I’d ever topped the class in a test of numeracy.
I had twenty minutes and I’d be moving on to the second fight, which would be against the winner of the fight between K-1 veteran South African Mike Bernardo and the bloke I’d been sparring with less than a month earlier, Adam Watt.
My fight with Ray had been a war, but Adam’s with Mike was a beat-down. Bernardo fancied himself as a bit of a gangster and he and his entourage had been trying to intimidate Adam since we’d arrived in Japan, but it seemed the Aussie wouldn’t be so easily flustered. Bernardo went down twice in the first round of their fight, before being finished after two and a half minutes.
Twenty or so minutes later, Adam and I were facing off. When the announcer introduced us and the ref gave us the rules I could still feel Ray’s punches in my head, but as soon as the bell rang I was on again and ready to scrap. I still had slow feet, but fast hands. I took the middle of the ring, letting Adam dance around me while he threw a series of kicks and testing jabs. When he came into range I threw power punches and I dropped him a couple of times. I mostly managed to avoid the barrage of spinning attacks his camp must have thought I was susceptible to.
In the third round, with me ahead on points and my gas tank close to empty, Adam got me in a corner for one last attempt to get over the top of me. He threw combo after combo and mostly I had to just cover up, until I saw Adam dropping his right hand and shoulder when he threw his combinations. The first time I caught him with a left hook, the punch just glanced away. The second landed flush on the jaw. He dropped to the ground and the ref called time to have a look at a big cut I’d opened up on him earlier in the fight. That thing wasn’t going to stop pissing blood, so they called it.
One more fight.
Adam’s guys started congratulating me, then Hape and Dixon. Soon it dawned on me there weren’t any more fights that day – I was done. This hadn’t been an eight-man tournament as I’d thought, but a four-man one. I was heading to the K-1 Grand Prix – the final eight in the biggest martial arts c
ompetition in the world.
The next day I flew back to Tokyo and was taken to a soundstage in the Fuji TV building, where I found the seven fighters I’d be competing against in the Grand Prix, amid a large set. The tournament’s draw was to be finalised live across Japan on prime-time TV. On set there were eight positions on an elevated stage – A–H, with the positions representing a spot in the draw. A and B would fight first, then C and D and so on. If you wanted to avoid fighting the person in position A, you could place yourself anywhere from E to H and it was guaranteed if you were to fight the person in position A, it would be in the final.
Each fighter drew one of eight balls, with each ball bearing a number. As luck would have it, Jérôme Le Banner got ball number one and chose position A. Of course he did. Le Banner was on a thirteen-fight undefeated streak and the heavy favourite for the tournament. Why wouldn’t he consider himself the A-1 man?
I got ball number three. That meant I could essentially choose whom and where I wanted to fight. The inexperienced Danish fighter Nicholas Pettas had already picked a spot, across the draw from Jérôme, and I could tell people were expecting me to pick him. Pettas was the least heralded fighter on the bill (except for me, of course), but I knew exactly whom I wanted to face. I didn’t want to risk someone else getting the opportunity to punch Jérôme’s ticket.
The sound from the crowd grew louder and louder as I drew closer to position B, and claps and cheers when I gave the big Frenchman a bit of a shoulder shove and just a hint of the South Auckland stare. Jérôme clocked me with a look of disbelief.
