Born to Fight (11 page)

Merely checking in to the hotel – something I’d done maybe three or four times in my life – was over-awing. K-1 was a behemoth of Japanese television then, and even at feeder events like the one in which I was competing, the lobby was packed with an army of journalists, cameramen, groupies and functionaries, not to mention the fighters and their considerable entourages. It wouldn’t take long for me to get my gaggle of hangers-on and good-time boys, but
in Nagoya it was just Alex, Lucy and me. I felt as though we’d arrived at a party we’d been invited to by accident.

Like every K-1 event I’ve attended in Japan, the Nagoya event organisers had thought of everything a seasoned fighter could possibly wish for. The thing is, though, I wasn’t a seasoned fighter. I’d only ever trained in the Mundine gym or with Sam, and now I was being asked to train in luxurious ballrooms in front of the European beasts of the sport, whose disparaging eyes darted when I wandered in with my Tongan corners.

I wasn’t used to Japanese food, either. I ate a lot of noodles in Sydney – usually the cheapest meal around, and a noodle restaurant in Surry Hills was my date-night spot of preference with Julie – but these Japanese noodles were unfamiliar and, for me, unpalatable. I barely ate while I was there.

I hated the media obligations, too. I wasn’t a confident speaker. What did I have to say about Samoa? About my background and my life? Nothing. I had nothing to say. How did I feel? How did I
feel
? What the hell did that even mean? Shit, when I checked in to my room I couldn’t even figure out which toilet to piss in.

For most of the week Alex and Lucy were nowhere to be found, they were out, sightseeing and whatnot, and I was lonely in a way I hadn’t been since I was a kid. I was
a million miles from home and Julie. Everything outside the hotel was confusing and everything inside was, too.

I flicked on the TV looking for something familiar and comforting. Now having been on countless Japanese TV shows, I still don’t understand them, and as I surfed through the channels in Nagoya I only found pure confusion until, with great relief, I found something I could take in. It was
Doragon Bôru Zetto
or as I knew it,
Dragon Ball Z
. This show was all about the scraps, not the dialogue, so my enjoyment didn’t depend on an understanding of the language the characters were speaking. It was nice to sit down and understand what was going on.

I went into my fight against Le Banner hungry, meek and, in the first and last time of my career, with a sense of trepidation. I’d only seen these famous K-1 fighters on VHS, and had certainly never been in a ring with one. I half-expected them to be superhuman, like Goku in
Dragon Ball Z
or Ryu in
Street Fighter 2
, and I hadn’t discounted the possibility that Le Banner might be about to
hadouken
me from across the ring

When I was called from backstage I stepped into a stadium, a big one – the 40,000-seat Nagoya Dome – in which every seat was filled with a bum. It was too much; the week had been too much, the stadium was too much. Then when the announcer said the Japanese version of my name
– MARKO HUNTO – it felt surreal in an uncomfortable way. I just wanted to get this thing over and done with and get back on the plane.

At the end of the first round Jérôme got me in the corner and started throwing undefended bombs, a couple of which landed flush. The crowd bayed, the shots kept coming, Jérôme had the finisher’s look in his eyes … but I was fine. I was fine.

The bell rang and as I walked back to the corner it occurred to me this prick didn’t even hit that hard – I’d been hit harder than this my whole life. I even managed to drop the dude in the second round with a running leg kick, but as the last seconds of the third and final round ticked away I knew I’d lost on points. In those moments one thought spun around my head over and over again.
That was it?
The guy couldn’t throw fireballs from his hands or Dragon-Punch twelve feet into the sky or do anything I couldn’t do. If that’s all those guys had, I could get my hands on them. If I could get my hands on them, I could certainly put them to sleep. They weren’t the characters from
Dragon Ball Z
, and Jérôme wasn’t Super Saiyan. I was. I was the super SAMOAN.

When I walked into the Nagoya Dome I didn’t want that fight. When I walked out of it I desperately wanted to do it all over again. I wanted to go back in time half an
hour with the knowledge that it was just men in this ring, not supermen. I really wanted Le Banner again. I wanted that guy again, I wanted to knock his fucking head off, and I wanted it to happen now. Even though I’d been cowed and overwhelmed by my Japanese experience, it had made me realise that I could make a career in fighting. I could beat Le Banner, no doubt whatsoever. I would beat Le Banner.

For my first-round exit of that tournament I earned US$27,000, which meant I could cut down my hours at the factory and concentrate more heavily on my fighting. When I arrived in Sydney I went back to training straight away, but things had changed. I still loved working with Alex, but I realised that my needs were going to outgrow Lucy’s capabilities pretty quickly. As much as I appreciated what she’d done for me, I wondered whether she really understood the Japanese fight game. Also, she had asked for $1000 above and beyond the arranged cut that she took from my pay packet – for ‘expenses’. That was annoying, as the K-1 was more than generous with accommodating fighters and their teams, providing flights, accommodation, food and even per diems.

The final straw was when I picked up the landline phone, to find it dead. When I asked Lucy what was going on, she said I was welcome to pay the phone bill if I wanted
to. I paid rent at that place, which as far as I knew also covered expenses.

Whether by chance or by design, one day Lucy brought Hape Ngaronoa, a kickboxing instructor who had opened a gym in Western Sydney, around to her place, and as soon as I met the guy he started wooing me, saying that I should move and train with him.

I liked the guy. He was a Kiwi and we knew a lot of people in common. He played chess, like I did, and I liked his aggressive attitude and shoot-for-the-stars mentality. He told me there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do, and I was starting to believe that. He said I just needed the right help.

The clincher was when he offered to help me with renting an apartment in Liverpool. Julie was a Western Sydney girl, and I immediately took up Hape’s offer. We could get a place of our own in a part of the world in which I’d always felt comfortable. Surry Hills and Manly had their charms, but Western Sydney always felt like home: a place full of good, hardworking people with no pretensions, who wouldn’t thumb their nose when a tattooed Samoan kickboxer walked past.

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.’