Born to Fight

by Mark Hunt

  As Bobish lurched towards me, looking for another takedown, I popped him with a nice, sharp little uppercut. That rocked him. One knee to the head and one liver kick later and he was tumbling towards the ropes like a felled tree. He was done. There was no need to jump on him and inflict any further damage.

  That was my kind of fight. He’d come at me and come at me with what at the time felt like endless undefended strikes to my head, but I stuck around. If I stick around long enough, I’ll get you.

  At the end of the fight Bobish was sent off to hospital, not because of the glancing uppercut or body kick that stopped him, but because he thought he’d blown his knee out.

  When I got backstage I was greeted with cheers from the Brazilian ground-fighting contingent who, in their broken English, praised my escape and finish. When I joined Pride the other fighters welcomed me, but I knew they sniggered at me behind my back. They thought I was going to be an easy win for them like most of the kickboxers who came over to MMA, but that’s one of the things I love about martial artists, they always give credit when credit is due.

  ‘Escape, huh? Is good. Is very good,’ Antônio ‘Minotauro’ Nogueira, one of MMA’s most talented Brazilian fighters, said with a respectful handshake and bow when the fight finished.

  It felt so good. Dan Bobish was a journeyman (and was cut from Pride after our fight), but he was a mixed martial artist and a ground fighter and I’d beaten him. I felt like I was now part of the club.

  It would only take one more fight until I felt like I owned the club. My next bout was against one of the most famous MMA and Pride fighters in history – a guy who was on an eighteen-fight unbeaten streak against legendary fighters such as Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Kazushi Sakuraba, Dan Henderson and Mirko ‘Cro Cop’.

  I was about to take out the Axe Murderer.

  Chapter 12

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  2006

  Part of the reason Mark was so good at Pride was because he was always, always going forward. Always. It would freak out some of the other fighters, and that also meant they could never set their back foot against him, because if they ever did, Mark would be right up in their face. Not where you want to be.

  BAS RUTTEN, UFC HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE AND PRIDE COMMENTATOR

  I love living in Western Sydney. That place is heaven to me. There’s no bullshit there. Everything you need is there, and nothing you don’t. There are no Ferraris driving down Campbelltown’s main street and no one looks twice when blokes like my mates and I walk down to the coffee shop. I don’t get hassled by someone trying to get me in on their dodgy business or a cousin asking for a loan because they’ve been charged with sexual assault of a minor and they need to lawyer up. There is none of that shit.

  I’d come to Western Sydney randomly, because of Hape and Julie, but I stayed because it made sense to me. I became increasingly convinced that I wasn’t leaving Pride and their pay cheques any time soon, so here in Western Sydney, with love and calm in my life for the first time, Julie and I decided to start a family.

  When I got back from my fight with Dan Bobish in November, I was planning on taking a few weeks out from training. I’d picked up an ankle injury in my first Pride fight when Yoshida got me in a toehold and I was going to try to rest it a little.

  I was going to buy a house. I was going to start a family. The idea had come and gone, but now it was back. This was the right place and the right time. Jules and I were going to spend the holidays together. We ended up doing Christmas, but not New Year’s.

  I got the call on 28 December, with Yukino asking me if I could fill in on Pride’s New Year’s Eve event, which was usually the biggest of the year. Of course I could fight – I could always fight – but from my experience with the Mirko fight, this felt like opportunity calling.

  ‘I am technically cleared, but I have this ankle injury which I’d like to get right, and I just fought Bobish, so …’

  Of course she knew the game I was playing.

  ‘What’s it going to take, Mark?’

  I asked for four hundred and fifty grand and six business-class flights to Tokyo. This could be a bit of a godsend – not only could I cash myself up, I could take the boys to Tokyo for a massive New Year’s knees-up.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know who you’ll be fighting?’ she asked.

  Not particularly. I’ve never been concerned with who I’m going to be fighting, because I’ve never met a man I didn’t think I could beat down. Besides, I couldn’t train for a guy in three days, so his name was immaterial to me.

  If they got the money right, then they could have me.

  ‘You’ll be fighting Wanderlei Silva.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, well then, it’s a deal.’

  The boys and I were booked onto the next flight to Japan. I didn’t really know much about Wanderlei Silva when I got that call, except that he was Brazilian, he was one of Pride’s most popular guys, and he called himself the Axe Murderer. In his nineteen Pride fights Wanderlei was undefeated. I know now that I was probably put up against him just as a big body that could stay upright while it copped a beating, but when I left Sydney I was pretty confident of a win.

  Wanderlei was a black belt in BJJ and judo, but he specialised in Muay Thai and liked to fight on his feet. Even though we were fighting a catchweight bout, Wanderlei was a natural light heavyweight, so I’d outweigh him as much as Bobish had outweighed me. That would help. Also, Wanderlei liked to stand toe-to-toe and throw down. He’d won twelve of his last thirteen fights by way of knockout, and, as the new boy to Pride, he might not know me well enough to know it’s all but impossible to finish me.

  It seemed impossible, but there was more pageantry at that Pride event than even the K-1 Grand Prix. The night kicked off with a single figure approaching a giant taiko drum, before ripping off his costume to reveal what looked like a nappy with a g-string. As he played the drum he was joined by a flock of other drummers, all wailing away perfectly in rhythm before building up to a crescendo, then the wall behind them disappeared to reveal the fighters on a giant, multi-level stage. The fighters were introduced one by one, and it was a murderers’ row of talent: me, Dan Henderson, Kevin Randleman, Anderson Silva, Jens Pulver, Takanori Gomi, Mirko, Fedor, Nogueira and Wanderlei, who got the biggest cheers from the 50,000-strong crowd. The ceremony ended with fireworks. It was time for me to go to work.

  I dropped Wanderlei early in the first round and managed to get a really solid escape on him after he took me down and tried to lock me in an arm bar. I was feeling pretty happy with myself after that one. When I extricated myself from him, Wanderlei lay on the ground waiting for me to come back to him.

  I knew Silva loved an upkick, so I had to be wary of that, but I also really felt like jumping on that prick and wailing on him. I launched myself at him with an improvised attack that I think is unlikely to have been attempted in professional MMA before or since. I jumped up and tried to land my ass on Silva’s head, as though I was at the swimming pool and the Brazilian was the water.

  Randy Couture, who was doing the English commentary, called it the ‘Atomic Butt Drop’. The crowd loved it, but it had little effect and I landed on my back. The round ended with me dropping him again, but I’d taken a decent amount of ground-and-pound damage from my back.

  I dropped Wanderlei again at the beginning of the second with an uppercut and jumped on him as he fell, but he showed a solid chin and even managed to get on top of me again. I was exhausted when we started the last round, and accordingly we spent a decent part of the round with Wanderlei on top of me, even though he didn’t really manage any significant damage.

  Silva had certainly outwrestled me, but I thought I might have done enough with my hands to get the win. The Brazilian was a local favourite, though, and a veteran – so who knew how the judging was going to go.
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  Two of the three judges saw it my way. I’d arrived, man. I’d beaten one of the biggest names in the organisation and I tell you, Roppongi got the true South Auckland treatment that night.

  When I returned home, Jules and I stuck our banner in the ground. We were getting a house and after that we were going to try for a kid. That was a pretty huge decision for me, but it just seemed right. Julie wanted to settle her life and I wanted what she wanted. I wanted it too, don’t get me wrong, but without Julie I may have never found my way there.

  When the mortgage brokers saw what I was earning in Pride they were happy to lend us a pile of cash, and I got exactly what I wanted – a mansion. Julie said we didn’t need a house that big. She was right, too, and I knew it, but I wanted that place. I wanted lawns that needed a ride-on mower. I wanted multiple bathrooms. I wanted extra rooms that would just end up storing boys’ toys. I wanted a ‘Cribs’ crib, man.

  I found a guy to build a completely specced-out computer for me and set up a dedicated gaming room. That year I managed to put 40 Screaming Eagles on my Counter-Strike account, an honour that’s only possible with more than 60 hours of play a week.

  When Pride contacted me about my next fight they had the audacity to ask me to take a pay cut – from US$250,000 a fight to US$200,000. I’d just been paid more than double that and I’d knocked off one of their top guys after three days’ notice, not to mention that I’d broken my finger in the process. The way I saw it, I did them a favour by fighting Wanderlei and my stock had been rising since I’d beaten him. If anything my price should be going up.

  Pride continued with preparations for the fight, even though I told them I wouldn’t be fighting on the cheap. To their credit, they did find perhaps the most enticing opponent possible for me – Cro Cop. I’d never forgiven Mirko for making me feel embarrassed at the K-1 event in Melbourne and I was desperately keen to avenge my 2002 Nagoya loss to him, but business was business and as I said to them again and again, my days of fighting on the cheap were over.

  Despite this, the promotional wheels went into action. Billboards were erected, advertisements aired and articles were published, but at no point did I tell Pride I would be on that card for $200,000. The days, weeks and months went by, until it was December and I got a call from Yukino about flights.

  ‘Flights come after money,’ I told her, and hung up.

  Yukino called back and said I could have my $250,000, but I told her we were well past that. Although a quarter of a million US dollars a fight was good money, I was angry about the attitude of ownership the Japanese fighting organisations had over their fighters.

  There was so much money being generated – nearly 50,000 tickets had already been sold for the New Year’s Eve fights and the television audience would probably be around 20 million, so why shouldn’t a decent amount of it go to the fighters?

  There’d always been rumours that the television companies gave the organisers a certain sum per fighter, and whatever amount the organisers could get the fighter to agree to below that, they could keep. I wanted to see how much financial wriggle room they actually had.

  After that I got a call from another Pride representative, this time a lawyer.

  ‘Hunto-san, how can we make this right?’

  ‘I just want respect from you guys. I’ve been doing what you need me to do in the ring, now you need to do what you should out of it.’

  ‘Okay, how do we do that? Do we need to come down there and see you?’

  ‘That couldn’t hurt.’

  Three days later I was in the lobby restaurant of the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney facing an interpreter, a couple of Japanese flunkies and the head of Pride FC himself, Nobuyuki Sakakibara. With me was a friend named Ben who’d been staying at my place. He’d lived in Japan as a Mormon missionary and had picked up a lot of the language.

  The Pride people were dressed for business; Ben and I were dressed for Counter-Strike, which was on the agenda after we finished this meeting. While we negotiated there was a lot of private conversation on the Japanese side of the table, with the obvious assumption that a couple of coconuts like me and Ben wouldn’t be able to understand their tongue.

  Eventually Sakakibara-san said to me, via the interpreter, that $250,000 was the absolute limit of what they could offer and there was no point asking for anything more. I leaned over to Ben and asked if that was true. He said it wasn’t.

  ‘There’s a lot going on on that side, and I didn’t pick it all up, but they’re trying to lowball you, man,’ Ben said. ‘There is more money; they’ve said that. I don’t how much there is, but they think that because you’ve been on the shelf for a year and you don’t have a manager, you’ll go for the $250,000.’

  I was sick of this shit. A quarter of a million was good money and I’d happily take it again after this fight, but they’d tried to stiff me – and right in front of me, no less. The old anger rose up, so I stood and pointed at Sakakibara-san.

  ‘You’re full of shit, man. You can shove this fight up your fucking ass,’ I said to him.

  Sakakibara-san spoke English, even though he sometimes chose not to, and started speaking – growling really – in Japanese in a way he hadn’t spoken to me before. He didn’t raise his voice, but he spoke with menace. When he was finished, it was my turn.

  ‘This is my city,’ I told Sakakibara-san sternly. ‘Ben, tell these motherfuckers I’m going chuck them all in the harbour. And you,’ I said, pointing at Sakakibara-san, ‘are going in first. You can open a window, or go through the glass. Up to you.’

  Ben spoke for the first time in, what I’m told was, really good Japanese. There were some red faces and a long period of silence broken only by piped music and the clinks of cutlery on fine crockery.

  Eventually it was the interpreter who spoke.

  ‘Mark, we came to make this right. How can we make this right?’

  This was where a manager would have earned his keep, as I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

  ‘Six hundred and fifty grand.’

  The number just tumbled out of my mouth.

  ‘And I want three hundred and fifty before you guys leave Sydney, too.’

  I’d always had to chase K-1 for my money, and even though I never had such problems with Pride I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

  ‘And that’s it?’ the interpreter asked.

  That was that. I asked them to please excuse us, as we had a very important meeting with some counter terrorists.

  While Ben and I were playing Counter-Strike that afternoon I was wondering how the Japanese were going to respond. A few days later I found out, when more than half a million Aussie bucks landed in my account.

  Apart from my K-1 GP match against Le Banner, I’m not sure I’d ever wanted to win a match more than in that fight against Cro Cop. I didn’t really have any deep personal animosity towards the guy, but I couldn’t get over the fact that he thought he was a better fighter than me. He was dismissive, that was it. That was what was making me angry. Fighters always have to think they’re better than the guy they’re going to fight, but Cro Cop, like Jérôme Le Banner, had considered me in a different class to him. I was just a chubby coconut with a decent chin and heavy hands, that’s all he thought of me. That’s what pissed me off.

  Mirko had been easily the most successful K-1 fighter so far to move over to Pride, and he was tearing his way through the Pride heavyweight division. In fact, he’d torn off eight wins over his last nine Pride fights, with his only loss being a title fight against Fedor, and even then he’d been able to break the Russian’s nose, toss him out of the ring, then lose on a wafer-thin decision.

  Although I doubt he remembered Melbourne, I think Mirko sensed I had an issue with him. Before the fight he came up to me and said, ‘Whatever happens, we are friends, Mark, yes?’

  I had no problem with this; Pride and K-1 kept a very fraternal atmosphere and I was happy to maintain it. My relationship with Mirko could be wha
tever he wanted it to be – after I got out there and took his head off.

  The fight was a pretty good one. I was concerned Mirko would be on his bike the whole fight, with me copping counters and head kicks while I chased him around the ring. There was a bit of that; I ate a few head kicks and I did have to stalk him a lot, but he stood in front of me enough and I tagged him in the head and body pretty regularly. He hit me with two axe-kicks in that fight – in wrestling shoes, no less – and I ended up under him at the end of the fight when I got jack of him running away for most of the round. I then launched an ill-advised jump-kick at him, but I did enough for the decision.

  All of a sudden I was two for two against a couple of the MMA’s biggest stars. I reckoned I was ready to go and get that big Russian’s belt.

  I fought again two months later, headlining again, but this time against an unknown MMA property in Yōsuke Nishijima, a well-liked Japanese boxer trying MMA for the first time. It might seem strange, for those unfamiliar with Japanese MMA, that an inexperienced guy (and one I outweighed by a good 30 kilograms) would be put up against someone who’d just taken out their number-one heavyweight contender, but that was the Japanese way. I was Nishijima’s Yoshida in that regard.

  Our fight started a little later than expected – after a fight between Mark Coleman and Maurício ‘Shogun’ Rua hosted a few uninvited guests (Wanderlei Silva, ‘Ninja’ Rua and Phil Baroni) – but at least the crowd was well and truly primed for me and Nishijima atop the card.

  I hadn’t trained since Cro Cop when I got into the ring but I knew I’d be able to dominate in whichever way I chose. This could have been a fight in which I took Nishijima to the ground and smushed him with elbows and ground-and-pound strikes, but that wasn’t the kind of fighting I liked and it wasn’t the kind of fighting my fans liked, either.