Born to Fight (25 page)

I was battered and exhausted, but I was back, man. I was back.

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 thought 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.

I wasn’t overawed as I walked to the ring, though. That’s only happened to me once in my career – in my first K-1 fight against Le Banner. I was locked in and ready to go as I made that walk at the MGM.

Every other stress in the world disappears when I step onto that mat, and no other person in the world exists, except for the man I’m there to fight. John doesn’t exist, nor does my old man. Not even Julie exists in that Octagon.
When I’m in that ring, I’m in church and God flows through me. I was born to be in that cage. In that cage, I’m free.

Junior dos Santos was up there with some of the best guys I’d ever faced. Often described as the best boxer in the division, JDS also had a pretty high-level BJJ black belt and the dude was quite a specimen of an athlete too – but he only had two arms and two legs.

When we were called to the middle for the instruction, JDS gave me the business stare. I gave it back to him. JDS and I got along well, but he was like me in that he knew how to turn on the switch when it was needed.

We touched gloves and it was on. After wheeling for the first ten seconds or so, I threw the first strike of the fight and it could be argued this was the moment I lost the fight. That’s the thing about fighting. You only have to fuck up once, and you don’t even really need to fuck up, you just have to have a little bad luck.

My first strike was a leg kick, trying to get into the meat of his thigh. My foot never got to his thigh, though, as my kick was intercepted by the hard bone of his knee. When I put my foot back down I could tell something had gone wrong but had no idea how bad the injury was until, later in the round, JDS dropped me to the canvas with the same arcing, overhand right he’d used to knock out Cain Velasquez.

When I was scrambling back to my feet I felt confused. I should have been able to get away from that long, looping punch, but it caught me plum on the scone. Why couldn’t I move properly?

The first round was pretty close, but I would probably give it to him. When I got back to my corner I could feel a hot, throbbing sensation in my foot. I looked down at it, but one of my trainers had thrown a towel over it. They’d seen my right big toe, all weird and mangled, and had covered it up. Out of sight, out of mind.

In the second round it seemed I just couldn’t get away from this big fucker. I’d see his jab coming, I’d move backwards … and then I’d still eat his fist. That happened over and over and over again. I couldn’t get my fists on him, either – not with much power or in decent combinations. I’d push off my rear foot towards him but just wouldn’t get any propulsion. It was like pressing a broken button on an old
Street Fighter 2
cabinet.

I managed to tag JDS a few times in the second and got a good combo on him against the cage, but he immediately shot in for a takedown. As soon as my back hit the ground the crowd started booing – it had been a decent scrap up to that point. The round ended with him throwing elbows from the top and as I went back to my corner, I knew I needed a KO in the third for the win.

By the third round I couldn’t get any purchase from my back foot and had lost faith in my ability to pull any more good combinations together. When I saw an opening, I swung for a home run. JDS was too good for that stuff, though, so I just ate counter shot after counter shot after counter shot. I kept coming at him – I had no choice – until he slowed me with a heavy right, then finished me off with a spinning wheel kick that bounced off the top of my head.

When I realised where I was and that I’d been stopped, I was disheartened, but not crushed. Fair play, Cigano, fair play. I’ll have to get your ass next time. Returning to the dressing rooms, I found that my toe was about as broken as a digit could be, not only sticking out at an obtuse angle, but with the bone piercing the skin.

The fight atop us in the card lasted less than a minute and a half, with Bigfoot being overwhelmed by Cain’s volume punching. I really wanted to test myself against Cain – he was slowly revealing himself to be a generational talent up there with Fedor himself – but that privilege was now once again going to fall to JDS.

JDS and I were given the Fight of the Night honours. I was gutted that I hadn’t won, but I was happy I’d come to this hallowed ground and added my own little bit of history.

After that performance, the UFC were going to give out another honour, one that in my estimation was second
only to a title shot. I was going to headline a UFC event on my home soil. The fight was to be in Brisbane, against a man above me on the Las Vegas card. It wasn’t the man I wanted, but it was a big scalp (literally) nonetheless, with Antônio Silva coming off a title shot, and considered right up there in the heavyweight division.