I’d heard about the dangers of adrenaline dumping, but I never really understood it until the Sydney crowd roared after Bruce Buffer hollered my name.
‘Fighting out of Sydney, Australia … Mark “Super Samoan” Hunt!’
In that moment I loved every single bastard in the place.
My opponent was Chris ‘The Crowbar’ Tuchscherer, an American wrestler in the Dan Bobish mould and a training partner of former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. Like me, Tuchscherer was in a precarious position with the UFC after a couple of losses. With both of us the wrong side of 35, it was pretty obvious this was a ‘win or leave town’ contest.
I managed to clip Tuchscherer a few times in the opening exchanges and caught him with a one–two combination that sent him to the canvas. There was a roar when the American fell, and had it been just a few years earlier I would have dived at him, but I was playing the game far more warily now.
C’mon boy, get back up. Let’s go again.
Throughout that round I managed to tag Chris almost with impunity, giving him a mouse below his left eye and a large cut above until, with two minutes left in the first round, the ref jumped in to check if the American could continue.
‘There’s something in my eye,’ Tuchscherer told the ref.
‘Yeah, it’s your eyelid,’ the ref replied.
The doctors came over to check on Tuchscherer, telling him he should probably retire, but gave him the option of going on if he wanted to. Of course he wanted to. This dude’s career was on the line. As soon as we were called back on, the newly energised Tuchscherer dived in for a takedown and he managed to get me on my back.
I guess he must have figured then that his only shot left was a submission – any more time on his feet and he was going to be stopped by either the doctors or me. From the top, Tuchscherer was pouring pints of his blood over me
from the cut above his eye while he tried to lock in one of my arms for a submission.
With his blood lubing both of us up, it would have been hard to get that submission position, but he did manage it. There was a concerned groan as Tuchscherer grabbed my arm and twisted it for a Kimura, the position that had been my downfall so many times.
I thought for a moment that was going to be it until, honestly, the crowd gave me the energy to break that lock. They roared like I’d just won the State of Origin when I freed my arm.
These dudes were with me. It felt great. Tuchscherer stayed on top for the rest of the round but he didn’t get another submission chance. When I walked to my corner I couldn’t wait to get back into the middle. I was going to be stopping this shit.
We got back onto our feet and a battered Tuchscherer ran at my front leg, but he was too slow by then and I easily dived away. I was having fun now. This guy was ready to go out; I just had to wait for my spot.
I felt young again. I felt like me again.
I tagged Tuchscherer with glancing blow after glancing blow until I caught him with a crisp little uppercut on the jaw. As I felt the resistance go down my arm I knew
he was out. There was no need to jump on him; this dinner was done.
I hadn’t won a fight in five years, so raising my hands in a stadium full(ish) of my adopted countrymen felt joyous. As my arm was raised, I couldn’t wait for the last fight of my contract. I’d win it, of that there was no doubt.
The last fight of the contract was to be against Ben Rothwell at the Pepsi Center in Denver. As I’d done in Indiana, I took off to American Top Team for my camp, but when I arrived there I found that a lot of the good heavyweights had scarpered after an argument over money. Without good sparring partners, I really had to look elsewhere.
Two weeks before the fight, I called up my buddy Jamie Te Huna, who was fighting on the same card, to ask if I could move to the MusclePharm gym in Denver where he was training with the Wolf Lair team and their star fighter, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson. At MusclePharm I sparred primarily with Cheick Kongo, a muscle-bound Frenchman of African decent, and as soon as we started working I realised those sessions were going to be invaluable. Denver sits more than one and a half kilometres above sea level, and for big boys like me the thin air at that altitude is not much of a meal for hungry lungs.
I managed to get some good shots into Rothwell’s jaw and eye during the fight, but that’s not how I won it. I won it by sheer bloody perseverance. I didn’t stop going forward, didn’t stop throwing shots and I used my escapes, which I was now drilling more than anything else, to great effect.
The way I worked on my ground game had significantly changed by the time I got to the Rothwell fight. For a while my guys had tried to turn me into a useful BJJ fighter, but by Denver we realised it would be much more prudent just to concentrate on the four escapes which, if done properly, would get me back up on my feet.
As Bruce Lee once said, he didn’t fear the man who had practised 10,000 kicks once, but the man who had practised one kick 10,000 times. I must have drilled those four escapes at least 10,000 times by then.
In the third round it looked as though we were both taking each breath through a straw, but I could tell by looking at Rothwell that the diameter of his straw was just that little bit smaller than mine. By the time I had my hand raised, Rothwell was exhausted, beaten and bloodied. I was exceptionally proud of my work. Of his last seventeen MMA fights, Rothwell had only lost twice – against Cain Velasquez and Andrei Arlovski. Rothwell was a fighter, an athlete and a talent, and I’d got over him through sheer bloody hard work.
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 over. 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.