by Mark Hunt
My first port of call after I’d decided to mount an event was Lucy Tui, who had a skillset across match-making, promotion, sponsorship and every other aspect of fight event management. When I arrived at my first event at the Bonnyrigg Serbian Centre I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was only a few short years since I’d fought in that place, and not just that, losing, having been dropped by some unknown kickboxer after a day of sandblasting. Now I was returning as the promoter, having been to the very top of the martial arts mountain.
I hosted two events and they were really good ones, with good fighters and good fights. The stand-out fight was Cuban–Australian middleweight Hector Lombard’s destruction of Fabio Galeb, whose performance was especially notable because he’d fought only a week earlier on a card in the Gold Coast.
Sakakibara-san and some of his business partners flew in just for the day to observe my second event, and I really appreciated their patronage and support. They praised me for the event, which was an operational success but, as it turned out, a financial failure.
In 2000 I used to set up chairs for Lucy’s events, earning $50 cash in hand per event. In 2007 I found that setting up chairs was about $100,000 more lucrative than hosting events. Perhaps I was too used to the production values of Pride; perhaps I was just better at being in the ring than outside it, but either way those losses came at a particularly bad time.
I had other overheads, big ones. I had two mortgages, a lot of blokes had their hands in my pocket and I continued to live as though there were going to be more fights and more pay cheques. For many months after the sale of Pride I’d pester the UFC, asking when I was going to be fighting again. First I was told there’d be more Pride events soon, then I was told I was moving over to the UFC as one of the handful of Pride fighters who would be incorporated into the UFC roster.
Not long after that the response changed again: my services weren’t needed. I was the odd man out. I didn’t understand, I was a big draw and had just fought for the heavyweight title. I had a contract, for fuck’s sake. It was a delicate situation which I still don’t fully understand; even now there’s a lot I can’t say about the transition – but suffice it to say I was on the shelf and pissed about it.
Since I’d started fighting in Pride I’d been trying to reconnect with my children in Auckland. While my daughter wanted nothing to do with me and is still understandably angry with me, my son, Caleb, was starting to warm to the idea of his absent dad as a real person, not just a name.
When Caleb’s mum called me and said he was twelve now, and was getting to that age where a paternal influence could be useful, I spoke to Julie about Caleb living with us. She thought it was a really good idea; we had this giant house and it seemed I’d be home a lot more in the immediate future. She thought it would be good for both me and the boy.
When Caleb arrived I didn’t connect with him at all. I don’t know why; perhaps it was because I just didn’t know him, or how kids should be at his age. I was so adrift and so wild when I was a pre-teen that I just couldn’t relate to Caleb and I certainly didn’t know how to father him.
Even though we spoke about Caleb being my son and how important it was that I parent him, Julie ended up looking after him. I wasn’t kind to the kid. It wasn’t that I was cruel or violent or anything, but just moody, angry and stern. I was devastated when I found out Julie had been sending Caleb to his room when she knew I was coming home, just to make sure there wouldn’t be a confrontation about Caleb leaving his socks on the floor or a bowl in the sink or whatever.
With no income and no desire to downsize my extravagant lifestyle, my financial situation got worse and worse. I was offered a lucrative deal to wrestle on a New Japan professional wrestling card and I thought that was something I could do to stay solvent, but the legal advice I got on my contract was that I was locked out from doing any combat sports, including wrestling.
My situation grew more and more desperate and I had to take out more and more loans, until I finally got word, in 2008, that I was now allowed to take some fights elsewhere. My issue with my Pride contract hadn’t been resolved, not yet, but I could at least get out there and fight in the meantime.
The obvious place for me was in Japan, with DREAM, a new MMA fighting organisation launched by some of the now-jobless executives who had worked on the Pride events. DREAM was owned by the Fighting and Entertainment Group, the parent company that also owned K-1, so the offer they brought to me was two-fold. DREAM had arranged a deal with a Russian fighting organisation, M-1, over rights to their biggest star and part owner, Fedor Emilianenko, allowing him to fight in Japan on their cards. Beating Fedor was something I was pretty keen on doing, but before I was going to get Fedor, they wanted me to go back and fight again for the K-1 title. That prospect didn’t excite me at all.
I’d moved on from kickboxing and from K-1. My attitude in 2002 was that I’d already ticked that box, and by 2008 my attitude was, if anything, even more trenchant. My paymasters were insistent, though. The dominant force in K-1 was now the giant Dutchman Semmy Schilt, who had won the last three GP’s, and had taken out Ernesto Hoost, Ray Sefo, Peter Aerts and my old mate Jérôme Le Banner in the process.
They were running out of bodies to throw at Schilt, who, at seven feet tall, had a range that was unmanageable for even the tallest fighters in the organisation. I would be a match for him, they thought, or at the very least I would be able to stand with him and trade leather.
When I walked into the Yokohama Arena to fight Schilt, my lack of training was obvious. I’ve always been a pretty stocky dude, but when I stepped into the ring for that fight I had legitimate love handles. I didn’t want to be there, I hadn’t trained and I didn’t give a shit whether I won or lost, so of course I lost. I didn’t actually have as many problems getting into Semmy’s range as people thought I might, and I clocked him with a few stiff leaping overhand rights. I didn’t have the fitness to follow up those punches, though, and I couldn’t get away from the big Dutchman’s Dhalsim-like kicks. Semmy got me in the guts with a spinning back-kick at the end of the first round and I couldn’t answer the bell for the second. That was my last K-1 fight.
In the larger scale of things I didn’t care too much about that loss. Of course I was never happy about being stopped in a fight, but I didn’t consider myself a K-1 fighter anymore, I was an MMA guy.
My first fight in DREAM was to be in Osaka against Sergei Kharitonov, a Russian fighter with an impressive record but, at the last minute, he pulled out and was replaced by Dutch kickboxer-cum-MMA-wunderkind Alistair Overeem, who’d won his first fight at nineteen and even though he was seven years younger than me, he’d had thirty more professional MMA fights.
Again, I rolled into that fight fat. I weighed in about ten kilograms heavier than the UFC heavyweight limit and I was also pretty unfit. I still fully expected to beat Overeem, however. Three days before the fight the guy had been on a beach in Thailand, not expecting to fight for some months, and only just got to Osaka in time to weigh in.
In the opening exchange of the fight I pushed the Dutchman over and as he fell I jumped onto him on the ground, quickly moving to side control. On the ground, though, I was at sea. I’d been shirking my training with Steve and BJJ wasn’t like stand-up fighting, which was as natural to me as breathing. I had no instincts, no power and no stamina. Even when I fought Yoshida in my first MMA fight I had my natural ability to guide me and my kickboxing strength and fitness, but in this fight I felt like a little kid again, powerless and shamed. Overeem quickly locked his legs around my arm and rolled me for an arm bar finish. It was the shortest fight of my MMA career so far.
When I got home I was filled with frustration. I’d lost three consecutive fights – four if you count the K-1 bout – and that was something new for me. It wasn’t the sting of defeat fuelling my frustration, though, it was my inability to do anything about it. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to train properly and I couldn’t bring myself to eat
properly. I couldn’t stop smoking and drinking. I was going backwards financially, also something I couldn’t seem to do anything about. Spending as I was, I now needed to fight, which hadn’t been the case for me since I won the GP. If I sustained one significant injury I’d be in a ruinous situation.
When I walked into my giant house I no longer felt a sense of satisfaction, only the weight of all the mortgages I’d accrued. Debt hung around my neck like a millstone. Debt had been one of the things that had wrecked my father. Debt was wrecking me.
The next event that took place would bring both pressure and immense joy into my life – my son Noah was born. I was there for that one, down at Liverpool Hospital. When he emerged, tiny and helpless, I felt nothing but happiness and love for the little bundle.
Later I would feel the strain of having another dependant, but on the day he was born I was calm and happy. I knew that because of his mother. In many ways Julie had raised me, but by the time she got to me I already had some fucked-up habits. Still, I think she did a pretty good job with me, and regardless of what was happening with this little dude’s dad, he would always have a rock-solid mum.
When I was told my next fight was against Le Banner, I thought maybe my fortunes had turned. Jérôme had taken MMA fights on and off since I’d beaten him in the GP in 2001 but he hadn’t faced the kind of opponents I’d faced, and I had no doubt I was going to take him out.
When Jérôme dropped out and they replaced him with journeyman middleweight Melvin Manhoef, again on short notice, I knew I was assured victory. Manhoef stood only about five foot seven, and would weigh in a good 40 kilograms lighter than me. I’d be able to bully him on the ground, throw him around in Thai clinches and bludgeon my fists straight through his standing defence. There was no way he could possibly beat me. Perhaps DREAM knew that too. Perhaps they wanted to protect their asset.
The fight was on a giant 2008 New Year’s Eve card, with eighteen bouts and some of the biggest names from both DREAM and K-1 fighting. It felt good to be walking back into the Saitama Super Arena knowing that I was going to get my arm raised. Pride comes before a fall, though. That fight would be the worst loss of my career. I know I’ll never have another like it.
He’s muscular, Melvin, but he still looked like a child in front of me when we were called to fight. I was anxious to get it all over and done with.
‘READY? FIGHT!’ the ref called.
I pivoted around the middle of the ring while Melvin danced, then I came at him with a long right and a left, and then … and then?
They were bright, those lights.
I have a fight soon. I need to open my eyes. I have a fight soon. I’m fighting. Who am I fighting? Who is this guy? What’s that noise? I have to fight soon. I have to get up. GET UP.
Man, those lights were so bright. I’d never been knocked out cold before. I’d been fighting my whole life and against giants of men, but I’d never been laid out like that. It was only when my eyes came into focus and I saw Melvin dancing around like a maniac that I realised what had happened.
When I was backstage showering, my mind was on a strange feedback loop. I kept thinking the fight hadn’t happened yet, until I would see those lights and remember it was all over. The fight was over, and maybe my fighting career. Who could I possibly beat, if not this little bloke?
I’d bested the best at K-1 and climbed pretty close to the top of the mountain in Pride. I believed I had a gift. I thought I was the best fighter on the planet and that faith had been hard to shake even after a run of losses. Now, however, I had a crisis in faith.
When I got back home I didn’t know what to do with myself. While I was winning I didn’t have to think about anything else in life besides putting hands on people. I had no money problems and no children, but that had all changed.
When Noah was born it was a day that can’t be compared to any others, and he is and always will be a ray of light through the darkest days, but when I came back from being knocked out by Melvin I saw him and I just felt panic. There weren’t going to be any more paydays if I kept losing, and if I couldn’t beat Melvin, who could I beat?
For the first time since I was a little kid I felt stuck, hemmed in by my circumstances. As had been the case when I was young I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it except rage at the world around me.
I thought about debt a lot and, in a great paradox, it seemed the only way I could stop thinking about it was by gambling. I was training infrequently, if at all, eating like a lard-ass, gambling like a maniac and generally treating the people around me like shit, and I just couldn’t stop any of it. That frustration I recognised.
I’d never understood the cruelty of my father until I was staring at a future that was going to be far more difficult than I’d imagined. I had anger in me; I had always had volcanic anger in me, but for much of my adult life that anger was dormant. Now it started spilling over, spitting and frothing with burning heat.
There was danger for those around me, but all I could see was my own fury. More and more I took my anger out on Caleb. That boy had really started loving his dad. Yes I’d been absent, but in my absence I’d done the things South Aucklanders admired most. I was famous, and famous for being the toughest man in the toughest sport. What red-blooded part-Samoan near-teen Kiwi boy wouldn’t love that? I found it hard to reciprocate his love, though. I was happy to be mates with him but I fucked up any time I tried to be a father.
With my kids now, I’m always thinking about them and what’s best for them – that’s the only thing I’ve had a stronger instinct for than fighting – but with Caleb, he landed in my life already his own person. I just couldn’t relate to him. I couldn’t be consistent with him. I’d have to force myself to treat him the way he should be treated, and if you’re a parent you know that’s not going to work. I was bad at disciplining him because I was ruled by my moods, and my moods were getting shittier and shittier.
I was never physical with Caleb, or Julie or anyone in my house, but I certainly raged inside that house and I was a physical menace outside my own door. I was becoming an ogre – a dangerous, rage-filled man free of joy or empathy or compassion. There was a rot in me that was growing. It was eating my life, destroying my family and killing my career. I had to do something about it.
An American MMA fighter and pimp named James Lee, who had stayed with me while he trained in Sydney, extended an invitation to train with him in his native Detroit. That would be something different, maybe the something different I needed, so I packed my bags and flew east.
In Detroit I trained with James during the day and at night we went from bar to bar picking up cash and checking in with his girls. I enjoyed the training and loved the city, which was grand but also real and working class, but the experience didn’t end up helping me in the ring.
After three years in my house, Caleb had left and gone home to his mother while I was in Detroit. Apparently I could be absent or angry, but not at the same time. Poor bastard, I can’t imagine what it must have been like living with me at that time.
I rolled into my last DREAM fight with a head full of mess. For a good chunk of my life the ring would be the place where I felt most comfortable, a place where I could clear my mind and let God move through me, but I went into that last fight tight, angry and, yet again, woefully underprepared.
The fight was the quarterfinal of the DREAM SuperHulk tournament, which had the same format as the Pride tournaments but neither the prestige nor the talent. The fighters in the tournament would include Bob Sapp, who was about to go 1–16 in his next seventeen fights; Hong Man Choi, a seven-foot-two Korean who moved like a tectonic plate; and even Jose Canseco, a confessed habitual steroid abuser and one of America’s most maligned baseballers in his only ever MMA fight.
I was paired against 23-year-old Dutch–Iranian middleweight Gegard Mousasi. He was talented, but small, and he was another guy I should have beaten easily. He was another guy I lost to. It took a little more th
an a minute for him – maybe 95 kilograms – to get me – 135 kilograms – on my back. Like many before him Gegard snaked in an arm bar easily, forcing me to tap. When I did, I knew I’d reached the end of the line.
My DREAM career, which had totalled less than three fighting minutes, was over. I was supposed to fight two more times in that organisation, but they were done with me. Hong Man Choi and Bob Sapp were still welcome in DREAM, but my services were no longer needed.
Pride was gone, the DREAM and K-1 doors had closed and I was on a six-fight losing streak. I was fucked, I was well and truly fucked. I really had something to be angry about then.
Chapter 14
TOKYO, JAPAN
2013
Back in Japan there was a lot of shady stuff going on, like managers who were getting paid by the promoters to keep the fighters in the dark and underpaid. When I saw that Mark had landed on his feet in the UFC, I was happy to see it. He was always one of the good ones. I was hoping he’d end up fighting Mirko, and beating the shit out of him, but you can’t have everything you want.
MIRO MIJATOVIC
It all came to a head one day in 2010. I was in a video games retailer on Campbelltown’s main street with Julie and the baby looking for a new PlayStation game to play when a man saw me from the street and came at me. He wasn’t a big guy and he didn’t look like a tough guy, either, but he made a beeline for me, bumping into me deliberately and staring me down.
I gave him that old stare. That South Auckland stare.
‘You wanna come outside?’ he asked. The guy was twitchy, maybe even druggy.
I followed him out and a moment after he raised his hands the guy was unconscious, lying in a pool of his own blood. I walked away quickly as people gathered. I passed an ambulance with its sirens singing, rushing towards the store. I felt nothing. I felt no exhilaration, or anger, or hate, or even regret. I was simply neutral.