by Mark Hunt
Backstage I got a visit from Dana White. Things weren’t ever really acrimonious between the two of us, but we were certainly at loggerheads over particular issues so I appreciated the visit. He’d come to apologise for how things had played out and to congratulate me personally for my performance.
There’d been another heavyweight fight on that main card – between Travis Browne and Rob Broughton – which had ended with booing. It’s not easy for heavyweights to keep their pace up at altitude, and Dana had loved the way I’d managed it.
He had also come to invite me to the post-fight media conference – an honour usually reserved for the main and co-main event fighters and the finishing bonus winners. It was then that I knew my contract was going to be re-upped. I was in the UFC to stay.
My next deal, however, was to be the worst I’d signed in a decade. I still took it happily. My new manager told me it was the best I was going to get, and I believed him. The days of seemingly endless largesse were over. It was time to grind.
The part of the deal I especially liked was the generous monetary incentive for me to win. That was exactly what I was planning on doing: winning. I’d almost forgotten how good it was to win, how that feeling can flow through every minute of every day.
I was going for that UFC belt. People would have laughed if I’d said I was heading for the belt when I joined, so I didn’t tell anybody. People would have laughed then too, but that was always the goal in my head. I now had six extra fights to set down that path. I needed the belt before it was all over. I still believed I had a gift given to me by God himself; I’d neglected it for so many years, but it hadn’t left me.
No one can give a gift like this but God and I had to respect it in the same way I respected my other gifts, Julie and Noah. After that fight another gift came along. Julie and I hadn’t had an easy time falling pregnant and we felt nothing less than blessed when a baby girl, Sierra, joined the brood.
Shortly after my baby girl’s birth the UFC sent over a big box of kids’ gear and a personal card addressed to Julie and me from Dana. That gesture meant a lot to me. I’d had quite a few teething problems with the UFC, which was a world away from the excesses and luxury of Pride and K-1. Indiana had been a shock, but after Denver I was ready to embrace the blue-collar journey I’d started with these guys. If I wanted excess, I would have to earn it.
My next UFC fight took me back to Japan. Apart from some early shows in rooms that weren’t much bigger than scout halls, the UFC had never really tried to crack the Japanese market. With Pride gone, in 2012 it was time.
They arranged a stacked card for the event at the Saitama Super Arena, with fights involving most of the top contracted Japanese fighters, the two best lightweight fighters in the world scrapping for the title, and two of the few Pride guys left in the organisation, namely Rampage and myself.
My fight was against one of the dudes in the division I categorically didn’t want to fight – not because I was concerned with him battering me, but because I was concerned with battering him. That fighter was Cheick Kongo. Cheick had helped me a lot in training for my must-win fight against Rothwell. I had no desire to put him away, but I knew why the fight made sense in UFC matchmaker Joe Silva’s mind. Kongo was on a bit of a tear, too, and besides that, he looked like he was carved out of stone, something the Japanese fans would probably appreciate.
I knew I’d be able to put Kongo away. He was a striker, like me, with a background in karate, kendo and savate and he was someone who was going to stand and punch with me. Anyone who was going to stand and punch with me was going away.
I trained with Steve in my private gym near my house for the fight and when I travelled to Japan, I knew I was ready. I was strong and fit and my head was screwed on right.
I didn’t relish fighting Kongo, but it was great to be back in Japan and at the Saitama Super Arena. When I’d last left that place it was with a sore jaw and a shattered ego, after the Melvin Manhoef fight. Back then I didn’t know if I would ever get there again.
I dropped Kongo first with a left hook. The big Frenchman’s knees buckled but I let him regain his posture – my days of jumping into my opponents’ guard were over. He wobbled around for another 30 seconds or so, until I got him with a right that sent him semi-conscious and into the cage. I swarmed on him after and threw short right hooks until referee Herb Dean jumped in and saved him.
I got away clean in that fight. Kongo barely even had the opportunity to put a hand on me, so the UFC offered me a quick turnaround, which I very much appreciated. I did feel like I was in a bit of a hurry. My next fight was to be in Vegas against Dutch fighter Stefan Struve, whom they called ‘Skyscraper’ because of his seven-foot frame. This fight was part of an all-heavyweight card, with champion Junior dos Santos defending his belt against submission specialist Frank Mir in the main event. Shit was going to be settled on this card. If I could bust Struve up in a spectacular fashion, then tongues would start wagging.
Then, a week away from the fight, the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in my knee gave up. I was training at ATT in Florida when it happened, with my leg curling up involuntarily after a loud snap. I was taken away for X-rays and the doctor told me I needed surgery. I asked him if I could do it after the fight, and he told me that I literally had no PCL left. It was the ghost of K-1 past popping up again – Le Banner was looking to get one more stoppage against me.
I thought I could probably still walk on that leg if I had to, so I told my coaches I wanted to postpone the surgery and fight on. I’d never in my career turned down a fight. No training, injured, unfit – whatever, I was here to fight. Any man, any day was my fight philosophy.
Steve told me off for being stupid. ‘Mate, you’re being a fucking idiot,’ he said. ‘Struve’s going to bring everything, and you’re wanting to fight on one leg? That cunt’s seven foot tall! How are you going to hit him with your stubby little fuckin’ arms without being able to move?’ It always bothered me how much Steve swears.
He was right, though. I was taking this stuff seriously now and it was pretty unlikely I could beat Struve with one leg. I was gaining a bit of momentum at the UFC so if I lost to him, a top-ten heavyweight, I’d get bumped down the back of the queue quite a bit. I had to think about this stuff strategically now: I knew I only had a limited number of years left in the cage, so I flew back to Sydney and went under the knife.
While I was recovering from surgery Struve beat his replacement opponent Lavar Johnson and also up-and-coming American–Croatian fighter Stipe Miočić. When they rescheduled my fight with Struve, now to be held in the Saitama Super Arena, he was an even bigger scalp.
I brought in a six-foot-eight Brazilian fighter named Marco ‘Gigante’ Villela, who got his BJJ black belt under Carlos Gracie Jr, to train with me so I could at least try to emulate the BJJ game of the Skyscraper, who had four submission wins on his UFC record. It was a chore, ground-fighting such a big bloke. I felt like I’d been stuffed in a sack full of wet ropes, but that was the job and I was up for it. By the time I got to Japan I was confident those big arms and legs of Struve’s wouldn’t be able to snake around my arms, legs or throat.
It was an odd fight. Struve is a full foot taller than me and I literally had to jump up with my left hooks to hit him in the face, but I did manage to land a few good ones in the first round. At every opportunity Struve would try to suck me back onto the ground and attempt to wrap one of his python-like arms or legs around me, but by then my escapes were working well. When I did end up on the ground it would only be for a few moments and I always managed to get myself back up again without too much damage having been inflicted.
It was a gruelling fight, but late in the third round I was able to hurt Struve with a left hook counter. While he stumbled backwards I tagged him again, this time a right on the forehead followed up by a running left hook that dropped him like a crash test dummy. Struve buckled against the cage after that punch. He was still conscious, but I knew it was ov
er. I felt it down my arm. He was toast.
I started walking away, until I realised referee Herb Dean hadn’t called it yet – in fact he was calling for Struve to stand back up again.
Really, dude?
I walked back to the broken Dutchman with my fists balling again, but Dean stepped in before I could put any more hurt on him. Just as well, too, as later Struve tweeted an X-ray that showed a jaw so broken you could put your little finger through it.
I was battered and exhausted, but I was back, man. I was back.
Chapter 15
TOKYO, JAPAN
2014
He proved us wrong, he proved everybody who doubted him wrong. I think [Mark’s] one of the greatest stories in sports right now.
DANA WHITE, UFC PRESIDENT
Of us Hunt kids, John was the angry one, the brooding and quiet one. He was as smart as a whip, but his swinging moods were as unpredictable as autumn weather. From his mid-teens onwards there were long stretches when he lived like a hermit, shutting himself into his room for days on end, sometimes emerging with channelled purpose. He never explained to us what he was up to, or his reasoning; we’d just have to wait and watch to see what he was going to do. Then we’d deal with the results.
One day, shortly after I got out of prison for the first time, John had apparently resolved to belt the old man. We were all going about our day, then seemingly from nowhere, CRACK, a big shot to the old man’s jaw. Dad was out for the count and I had to carry his fat ass to the hospital.
I never asked John why he belted the old man and I never asked him why he tried to kill himself, either. We never talked like that. No one talked with John like that.
Victoria ended up speaking to counsellors, I spoke to Julie, and even Steve yelled at the sky when he had to. John, though, he never shared. He kept all his hurt to himself. I suspect his deepest fears and most bitter hatreds stayed in his head, penned in by high walls. There they festered and became toxic.
It was after the Kongo fight that John first tried to commit suicide, at the house I bought for my folks. Victoria, John and Steve were all living in that place then, along with Vic’s kids, whom John loved as though they were his own.
That day John came back from work whistling and seemingly happy. He went into the small room next to the kitchen, lay down a tarp, stacked his shoes on top of each other so they could serve as a pillow, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed himself in the chest and neck. When that knife broke, he went and got another one. John went under but not all the way, and was revived and taken to hospital.
When Vic called to tell me what had happened, I was shocked, concerned and panicked but also, I’m sorry to admit, annoyed. I hated being pulled into family shit, no matter what it was. My family felt like something I’d survived, something I’d escaped from. I only shared pain with those people, nothing else.
There are obligations, though, that you can’t get past. I owed John. John had given me and Dave the money to go to Sydney, and he always knew enough about me to know that if I was going to etch out a decent life, it wasn’t going to be in Auckland. Once when I was destitute in Sydney, I called John to tell him I was thinking about coming home. He just said, ‘There’s nothing for you here, Mark,’ and hung up.
It wasn’t just obligation and debt that made me want to go to John, though. I really wanted him to live, to survive.
I flew to Auckland after he got out of hospital and hung out with him in South Auckland for a bit. It was like old times: we played darts and talked a little bit about rugby, fighting and people from the neighbourhood. We hung out at the front of the South Auckland clubs, watching the nineteen-year-old versions of ourselves tumble drunkenly out of the doors and into street scraps.
John didn’t have much to say to me and I didn’t have much to say to him either, but I think me being there could have helped him. I don’t know, maybe it didn’t. He was broken, and I had no idea how to fix him. Seeing him like that brought the rage back in me. John was the second toughest bastard I’d known growing up (after our brother Steve), and a guy who was as good with his fists as me – maybe even better. Now sometimes talking to him was like talking to a fencepost. It wasn’t right.
I left New Zealand angry with everyone in John’s life, and also with John himself. Suicide was chicken shit stuff, I thought. That’s not what men did. Men sorted their shit out. Men persevere.
I returned to Sydney despairing and angry, but also very happy to come home to Julie and the kids. I was thankful, too. John’s vacant face would appear in my mind and I would think there but for the grace of God – and the grace of Julie – go I.
I wasn’t built to look after my adult siblings. I was the baby of the family, man. Looking after my kids and my wife, that was my job. Beating the shit out of the other UFC heavyweights, that was my job.
After the Struve fight I was expecting to take a little break, but the UFC dished up an opportunity I just couldn’t refuse. They asked me if I would like to fill in for the injured Alistair Overeem against the number-one heavyweight contender, Junior dos Santos, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. They only had to ask me once.
A former UFC champion, dos Santos had been the high-water mark in the UFC heavyweight division, having peeled off ten consecutive victories until his last fight, in which he lost a gruelling rematch against Cain Velasquez. Cain would also be fighting on that card, defending his title against Brazilian Antônio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva.
A win against JDS would almost certainly give me a shot at the winner of the title fight. I wouldn’t have the luxury of a long camp, but I trained in Auckland and made plans to take my team to Vegas three and a half weeks out from the fight. I booked a house and a car, arranged a gym and got the boys and myself on a flight east.
When I turned up to the airport, though, it was a no-go.
‘I’m sorry Mr Hunt, but we can’t allow you to board that flight,’ the Air New Zealand attendant said sweetly. I knew exactly what it was, too. It was the ghosts of drinking past fucking with me.
The incident took place on New Year’s Eve in 2002, after I’d lackadaisically and unsuccessfully defended my K-1 title. I was on holiday in San Diego with Julie, hanging out with some Kiwi mates – roofers, fun lads who appreciated a drink and wouldn’t shy from a scrap. We’d ended up at a lively beachside bar and the booze did flow – it was New Year’s Eve, after all. I was in a good mood. I was in California with my girl by my side and my mates … where were my mates?
I looked outside and saw the urgently moving crowd and shouts and shrieks of a fistfight. When I got there, it was all over. I tried to get back into the bar to find Julie and the lads, but when I got to the door of the bar, a cop stood in front of me and told me I couldn’t go back in. I hadn’t done anything but walk out and try to walk back in again. Sure, I was drunk, but no drunker than every other reveller out there, and Julie was inside.
‘I just gotta get my girlfriend,’ I told the cop as I tried to walk inside, but he stood in front of me and opened up an extendable baton.
‘You’re not going in, boy.’
Boy?
Maybe this prick was pissed off that he had to work on New Year’s Eve, maybe he was just an asshole 365, but I didn’t appreciate the threat. I walked up to him until we were toe-to-toe and asked him a question.
‘What the fuck are you going to do with that baton?’
It turned out he wasn’t going to do anything with it. Instead he maced me and called over to seven other officers, who jumped on top of me and sat on me. I thought about that moment when I saw the Eric Garner video. With mace in my face and seven dudes on my back, I couldn’t breathe at all and there was no ref to come in and stop that shit.
I ended up being charged with disorderly conduct. I hadn’t touched a soul, but that’s just the way it works in the US. I paid the $5000 bail and got the next plane home.
Pride had been able to arrange my visa, albeit belatedly, for the fight against Butterbean, so I though
t things would all be fine for that Vegas fight against JDS. Twice, however, my whole team went to Auckland airport in preparation for JDS, and twice we were told there was no point boarding our flight because I wasn’t going to be let into the US.
I knew the UFC were making every effort to sort out my visa issue, but as time drew closer and closer to the fight, I was increasingly concerned. I was fairly confident I would get to fight – the UFC contributed pretty significantly to the coffers of the state of Nevada so they probably had quite a lot of political pull – but with every day I spent in Auckland things were going to be a little bit tougher out there in the Octagon against one of the best heavyweights around.
Four days before the fight I was told I was now free to head to the US. At that point I thought maybe it made more sense to fly a couple of days later and just stay on Auckland time, but I decided it would be best to get to the US as soon as I could – I didn’t want to give Uncle Sam time to change his mind.
The fight was at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, part of a hotel complex that wasn’t just the biggest in Las Vegas, but in the world. When I arrived there and saw my face up on the giant billboard on the Strip, a place that’s usually reserved for blokes like David Copperfield, I filled up with pride.
I thought about the legendary battles that had taken place in this arena – Tyson versus Holyfield, De La Hoya versus Mayweather, Pacquiao versus Hatton, now Mark Hunt against Junior dos Santos. When Pride or K-1 came to Vegas they’d been a sideshow, but the UFC was the big show in Vegas, and fights at the MGM were the crème de la crème.
The surrealism reached its peak when I got to the fight and saw that Mike Tyson was in the crowd, there to watch. As a kid my wildest dreams would have included going to Vegas for one of Tyson’s fights. Now here I was in Vegas, and not to watch him, but have him watch me.
