Free Born to Fight by Mark Hunt, Ben Mckelvey Page B

flight?’ he asked.
    ‘Hundred per cent.’
    ‘OK, you can be Australia’s problem. I’m giving you two years, suspended, but if I ever see you again, you’re doing every single day. I don’t care what happens in Australia, but if you turn up in a New Zealand court again, you’re doing the years. You hear me? Years.’
    I thanked the judge, and I meant it. Going straight from the courthouse to the airport, I flew back to Sydney. I felt relief when I touched down. I’d acted like a maniac again in Auckland, but I’d gotten away without any consequences.
    Turns out, though, that wasn’t the case. I wouldn’t know for some time, but I was going to be a dad again, a son this time, with the mother being the same girl as last time. I wouldn’t meet him for a few years, but I would fall in love with Caleb, as I have with all my kids, and I’d do anything for him. He’d take my name, and he’d be my son and my mate, and he’d even help me out in my UFC fights. That time was still a few years away, though.
    When I got back to Sydney, I realised I needed work that wasn’t ten feet from a row of pokies or with blokes who wanted me to commit armed robberies with them. I pared back my bouncing shifts and took a gig sandblasting, which was easy work but could turn your arms and mind to mush if you did it for too long. The bulk of that sandblasting money still ended up being pissed away on pokies, but I’d like to think the intent meant something.
    The big change that would end up shifting my life’s trajectory altogether wasn’t a change of work, but a change of recreation. While we’d been in Sydney Dave had become a big fella. Huge. The guy wasn’t small when we arrived in Australia, but by the time I came back from New Zealand he was enormous. Unless he made some radical changes, he was going to be 200 kilograms pretty soon.
    A Kiwi mate of his – a bloke called Denver Matthews – started getting stuck into Dave. He explained to Dave, in no uncertain terms, that he was becoming a giant waste of space. That was no way to live this life and Dave owed it to himself to change things. Denver was no angel, but he was right. If Dave wanted to make a change in his life, Denver said he was happy to help.
    ‘How are you going to do that?’ Dave asked.
    ‘Well, if you’re going to be a waste of space, you might as well be a waste of less space,’ Denver said.
    Denver suggested Dave should head down to Tony Mundine’s gym, where he was training as a kickboxer. This sounded like it could work for me too. I’d really enjoyed training with Sam, and I thought perhaps a little bit of gym structure could do me good.
    Dave and I started a routine, getting up most mornings at dawn, regardless of what had gone on the night before, rolling into the gym and getting in at least an hour’s work to start pretty much every day.
    These morning workouts felt good. They also reminded me how much I enjoyed the slap and snap of a fist or foot hitting the bag with power. As I started to get fitter and better, I’d recall that K-1 video, and I’d start to see Hoost or Cikatić at the end of those strikes.
    I wasn’t planning on doing anything more in Tony’s gym than keeping myself fit and entertained until, one day, Alex Tui, a guy who worked there noticed me. He was a Tongan in an Aboriginal suburb whom, to this day, you’ll still find at the gym morning and night. He told me he thought I could be a world-beater in the fight game. I wouldn’t believe him until we were in a Japanese stadium, with tens of thousands of fight fans cheering for the latest K-1 acquisition, ‘Marko Hunto’.

Chapter 6
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
2001
    Mark took a big kick from Nathan [Briggs] … POP, flush on the jaw. Most fighters would be hurt, or angry or scared, but it didn’t even register on him. He wasn’t flustered at all; it was as though it hadn’t even happened. That’s when I knew Mark could be very, very special.
    LOLO HEIMULI (TRAINER)
    They