What was planned to be a one-off event turned into one of the most successful and enduring professional martial arts organisations in history, and the Europeans continued to prevail. In fact, of the nineteen K-1 Grand Prix events,
only once has a non-European won. And that bloke spent a good part of 1993 sitting around in Dave’s garage, smoking, drinking and watching VHS tapes of the K-1.
I’d never seen anything like the spectacle of K-1 before: the crazy production values, the giant crowds and the huge amounts of prize money. It seemed galaxies away from South Auckland.
‘Shit man, that could be you,’ Dave said to me while we watched Branko Cikatić, the inaugural winner of the tournament, beat up Satake in the semifinal.
It seemed a crazy, unwarranted statement, but part of me knew Dave was right. What was happening outside the ring was foreign to me, but what was happening inside the ring was as familiar as breathing. A scrap was a scrap, and I never, ever thought I would be out of my depth in one of those. Even then, having only ever slugged it out on the streets and in the clubs and halls of the North Island – and with a few losses too – I’d never thought any man in the world was a better fighter than me. No man in New Zealand, no man in Japan, no man in Europe.
The fight ended when Cikatić caught Satake with a left hook that knocked the giant Japanese fighter out cold. When the streamers waved and the flags started to fly, I turned to Dave and told him that I, too, thought I could win that tournament. It’s very likely that I had a beer in
one hand and a cig in the other, however, there and then, I believed I could win that thing. As was my way, though, as soon as the idea occurred to me, it disappeared again. It was an absurd thought, and the loud negative voice returned.
You’re an uneducated street thug who came from shit, is shit, and will always be wading through shit. Have another beer, and another ciggie.
I probably did.
While I lived in that garage, I put myself in a rut I thought I deserved. During the day I worked as a lackey at a furniture factory called John Young Manufacturing, and at night I did door work at K’Rock, one of the roughest bars in Auckland. I started an irregular routine of extreme monotony and boredom at my day job and booze, drugs and scraps at my night job. Video games and infrequent training filled in the rest of my time.
As the months went by, a couple of possible futures emerged. The first came into focus one night when, while working at K’Rock, I was approached by a dude I immediately clocked as a little bit shady. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Where does a guy like you get off thinking that anyone else looks a little bit shady?’ That’s because you’re thinking about this in binary terms – shady and not shady. Where I was from, there was a
whole spectrum of shady and I wasn’t even nearly at the bad end of it.
The guy’s name was Tai – a big fella with tattoos bursting out of his collar and onto his face and neck. I knew these tatts meant gangs.
‘I heard you can handle yourself bro,’ Tai said to me.
I didn’t tell him I couldn’t.
‘I’ve got some work for you if you want it.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘Collections work, man. People owe me money. You go and get the money. Real easy shit. You think about it.’
I did think about it. I’d spurned that gang life once because I assumed another, better life would emerge. It hadn’t. Once again, though, I realised I didn’t want what this dude was selling. What he was suggesting was a life that wasn’t just peppered with fights, but real beat-downs and probably even worse than that.
That wasn’t me. I didn’t want to terrorise people. I had, and I felt shitty about it. I told Tai I was right where I was.
At my day job I saw my other future, which was perhaps even more unpalatable. One of my supervisors at the factory was a broken-down old Pakeha man, whose only energy for life was what he could muster from the office supply of powdered coffee. I disliked him because I saw in him
a possible future version of myself. Every day I went to that place, a voice in my head got louder and louder.
You’re going to be that old man. It’ll happen in a minute, bro, in a second. You’ll look up one day and you’ll be him.
These were the two possible futures I saw in front of me, and I didn’t want either of them. For whatever reason, though, I couldn’t do anything to carve out a third path. I was in a rut and when my life hits a rut, the bad voices of those lesser angels start taking over. I found myself sporadically street fighting and robbing again, but this time it felt different. It wasn’t a lark anymore. I was doing it because I was angry, and even though I hated myself for doing it, I couldn’t seem to stop it.
Of course I ended up going down again for assault. This time it was just a month stint, but that month at The Rock (Mount Eden Corrections Facility) felt like years. We were in lockdown 22 hours a day and I soon started to despair. The last time I’d been in prison I was escaping my family home, escaping the old man. This time I wasn’t escaping anything and there wasn’t really anything to look forward to when I got out, either.
This was the first time it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t going to be anything more than a thug and a criminal. Maybe I should just embrace that shit, nom up and be done with it.
‘At risk’, I guess you would have called it. When I got out of the joint the second time, you could have pointed me anywhere and I would have followed. Luckily for the good people of Auckland, someone ended up pointing me towards Australia.
The idea first came into my head when my mate Tokoa, whom we called Tooks – a feisty little fella from school Dave and I had spent quite a bit of time with since – came home after a year in Australia. He first came to us before he left. We were sitting in Dave’s garage playing Mortal Kombat on the PlayStation, and he told us about his plans across the ditch, and what he’d heard about Oz.
‘All you need to do in Australia is just nod at the girls on the bus, and you’re in. It’s that easy there, bro,’ Tooks said.
I didn’t know about that, sounded like bullshit. Then Tooks came back, and he found us still playing Mortal Kombat. A year had passed and he’d come home to see his family. He found us in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing. I was still bouncing, still at John Young Manufacturing. Nothing had changed.
When Tooks asked what we’d been doing, Dave and I gave embarrassed looks.
‘Shit boys, you got to do something with your lives. You can’t just sit around in a garage playing video games forever.’
He was right. It’d be pretty easy to spend another year the way we had the previous one and, before you knew it, those years would add up.
‘Hey, was it true about the girls on the bus?’ I asked Tooks.
‘Come and find out.’
It was an idea, but not one that took form until Dave got a call a few months later. We were once again in Dave’s garage, once again with PlayStation controllers in our hands, bashing away at a game of Mortal Kombat. When the phone rang and Dave picked it up, I could tell he wanted to get off the phone until he started to warm to what was being said. Soon he was quite animated and his attention moved to me.
‘Mark. Hunt. My mate, you remember him?’ he asked the person on the phone. There were a few words on the other end of the line, and Dave smiled. ‘I dunno. I’ll ask him. Hey man,’ he called over to me. ‘You want to move to Australia, live with my brother?’
I’d never been to Australia. I’d never been anywhere, except the country towns where Sam had taken me and the boys to surf, smoke weed and fight. I’d heard a lot about Australia, of course – not that different from NZ, but a little bigger, a little busier and with a few more opportunities.
It wasn’t here, that was the main attraction of the place. What would I be leaving behind? Dead-end jobs? Clubs I’d been to a thousand times? Endless games of Mortal Kombat in Dave’s garage?
I would be leaving one thing behind, though: a daughter. My daughter was born just after I got out of prison the first time. She wasn’t the product of a committed relationship, she came from a couple of kids who were starting to grow into their bodies. When the girl’s mother said she didn’t want me to have anything to do with the baby, I was relieved. Some people could have handled the responsibility at that age, but I was a dangerous teenager who would have brought nothing to that kid’s life besides misery and violence.
I was still a child myself then, and became something even worse than that – a broken, immature adult. I knew what it was like trying to grow up in a house with a broken, immature adult in charge. I knew the damage that could do.
Maybe this is all emotional retrofitting, but given who I was at the time it probably worked best for all involved.
It would have gnawed at most men, knowing their daughter was being raised by someone else. It did gnaw at me later on in life, but in that period I had no issue completely freezing out parts of my life that I didn’t want to think about.
One day before leaving for Oz, a semi-naked man rode past me on a bicycle with his arms flailing, screaming obscenities. It took me a minute or so to even realise it was my brother Steve. When I recognised him, I felt no compassion or pity, just embarrassment. I wanted Steve to get the fuck out of my sight so I didn’t have to think about him anymore. When the opportunity to go to Australia came, I did have to reach out to John, though.
Dave had a place for us to stay when we got to Australia; his brother George was willing to let us crash with him for a little while. We also reckoned we’d be able to get some door work as soon as we touched down, but the issue with our plan was getting there. We didn’t have two dollars to rub together between us for the flights.
Of all my siblings, John was the one I’d had the most problems with because we were so different, and that was why I had to reach out to him. He was quiet and studious, and he saved his money. I didn’t know how he was going to react when I asked him for cash. I thought there was a distinct possibility he would have a go at me.
Anger was one thing John and I had in common. My anger ran in ebbs and flows, though. My anger you could see build and recede. John’s would lie dormant until, in an instant, the world was all fire and brimstone.
In the end I didn’t even really have to sell it to him. He just nodded and told me he’d sort it out. No ‘why’, no caveats, just that he’d sort it out. He took a student loan to help us and it was enough money for both of us to get to Sydney, as I couldn’t go anywhere without Dave.
Up to that point there had been scant occasions in my life when someone had done something for me without expecting a little bit of kickback later on down the track. I think John helped me because he knew how far behind I was when I started this life. I think John helped me because he was my brother.
None of us Hunts got much out of our family, but I got this, and it’s something I’ll always remember. I’d fucked John over, I’d helped send him to prison and had never atoned for it, but he was still there for me when I needed him. Such opportunities are worth their weight in gold. Such opportunities are to be respected.
Do you think I respected the opportunity? Fuck no. The first chance I had, I did my best to screw it up. In fact we weren’t even out of the airport before I almost fucked it all up.
Dave and I were moving to Australia with one suitcase each and almost completely barren wallets. With no idea when the next chance for a piss-up might be, we decided to get stuck into the free booze that we were happy to find on the plane. By the time we touched down at Kingsford Smith Airport we were well pissed up. George met us at the airport and when he saw the state of us country cousins (not to mention the smell, which he did many times) he was not pleased.
George started giving us a serve before we’d even finished with the ‘hellos’. Dave told his brother to settle those lips of his and I thought it was all a bit of a laugh until George turned to us and said, ‘Do you two fellas want to kiss the floor?’
‘What the fuck did you say to me?’ I barked at George.
My fists were already starting to ball. I don’t let people threaten me – it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re doing for me. I still have problems letting that shit go.
‘Keep that up and you boys will be living on the fucking street,’ George said.
‘Bro, it’s not like we just took a bus to Otahuhu,’ Dave said to me quietly. ‘Let’s just try keep it a little bit cool, yeah?’
He was right of course. We weren’t even out of Sydney Airport yet and I was one drunken punch away from being homeless and probably arrested. I figured Australians would take a fairly dim view of drunken Kiwis punching on in their international airports. Not the best way to start my new life.
A couple of nights later, Dave and I met up with some other Kiwi fellas we knew and at the end of the night we had door jobs lined up. I had a red-hot go at fucking that up, too.
My first shift was at a place in Quakers Hill where the junior bouncers also had to collect glasses. I didn’t mind that at all, as I had no delusions any job was below my station. Late in my shift I walked past one of the Aussie bouncers – an older guy who’d been hazing me and giving me shit all night. He stuck his foot out in front of me, causing me to drop a whole tray of glasses in a spectacle that brought every eye in the place on me. The other bouncers laughed, along with the punters and a lot of the girls.
I was straight back at school. I was in a place I couldn’t just walk away from, with everyone laughing at me. The old fire in me started to flame, with the hair on the back of my knuckles beginning to tingle.
I cleaned up the broken glass then told the Aussie bouncer I wanted to have a quick chat with him outside. Pretty much as soon as we walked out the door he was lying on the ground with a shattered jaw. As I stood over him I didn’t feel strong or exultant, I just felt depressed. This was another opportunity I’d fucked up, which is not to say I was repentant. I didn’t see how this thing could have gone any other way.