WARNING: Graphic content

KICKBOXING legend and current UFC heavyweight contender Mark Hunt is one of Australia’s greatest ever fighters. In the following edited extract from his soon-to-be released autobiography Born to Fight, Hunt discusses how a harrowing upbringing as the youngest of four children in a Mormon Samoan household in New Zealand shaped him for a life of resilience.

I USED to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the beatings happened: why they happened in general, or what the cause of any specific beating might have been. It’s only now that I know they didn’t really have much to do with us, they were about something else. That something else I hope never to know about.

Dad would beat us for any little thing, and with any implement. Fists, feet, broom handles, sticks, electrical wires, the hose that went from the washing machine to the tap. That last one really sucked, because it was heavy and it hurt like hell when Dad really got it going, but no matter how hard you got beat with it, it never broke.

With that hose, Dad could just whip until he got tired, and he had energy for that work, man. He loved that hose.

Another of his favourites was calling one of us over, and when we got there, throwing all his weight into a thigh punch. You’d fall to the ground with a dead leg and then he had you.

You couldn’t run, you just had to lie there and wait for him to do whatever he wanted to do to you. Was he going to get the hose? Was he going to get the broom? Were you going to get the boot? Are those his footsteps?

He also used to like making us beat each other, and if ever we cried, he’d jump in with his man fists and feet.

All the beatings were worse if we cried. If we cried, the extra strikes were on us. At the end, the blame was usually shared. We shouldn’t have been so weak.

When I saw the movie Wolf Creek, the cruel bastard of a main character Mick Taylor reminded me of my dad. He would have made a good torturer, the old fella. He really put his heart and soul into his sadism.

‘SOMETHING HEINOUS AND SINFUL’

I used to think my older sister Victoria got off relatively lightly. That didn’t mean she didn’t get beaten; she was in charge of us boys and had to try to keep us clean and in line, and when she didn’t manage it (which was pretty much always) she’d get the crap beaten out of her too. Still, I didn’t think she had it as bad as me, Steve and John.

We all thought Dad was soft on Victoria. He used to take her into a room with him, but inside we wouldn’t hear the crashes and thumps of a beating, nor would there be blood or bruises when she came out. That s*** wasn’t fair as far as we knew. We knew something odd was happening in that room, but we didn’t know that something was heinous and sinful.

News_Image_File: Mark Hunt, sitting on his mother’s lap, with his father, sister Victoria and brothers Steve (left) and John.

‘I’M SORRY TO SAY I WAS ANGRY WITH HER’

I WASN’T relieved when Dad was taken to prison — I was too young to understand the whole situation. I just knew he was going away and that there’d be even less food in the house. I also knew he was going away because of Victoria, and I’m sorry to say I was angry with her because of that. We all were, but we didn’t know any better. Except Mum, she knew better, or she should have anyway, but her concern at the time was keeping Victoria from telling the cops the whole story.

Dad came back pretty quickly, after Mum offered Victoria a new bicycle to shut up about the whole thing. I remember we all piled into the car to go and pick him up from the bus stop down at the shops.

We all wanted to see the old man, except Victoria of course. When I first saw him, I felt sorry for him. He had hollow eyes, and a lonely, sad way about him. I’d never seen him like that before. As soon as he got into the car, though, he slowly started to become himself again, and after a few weeks life pretty much went back to how it had been before, except that Dad lost his job and there was even less food.

‘SHE ALWAYS KNEW DAD WOULDN’T GIVE HER UP SO EASILY’

WITH money Victoria could escape and get her own place. She wasn’t able to keep any of the money she earned at the factory, though, as her wages went straight into Dad’s bank account. But maybe she could do some extra hours, and the company would allow her to have that money go into another account? Her work agreed. The escape was on. Victoria worked, earned, found a room and set a date. Then, just before she was about to leave, the old man found her second bankbook. You probably know enough about the old man now to know how he reacted — but Victoria held fast. She was too close to give up.

Eventually Dad offered an olive branch: Victoria would give him all the money in the second account, and he would let her leave. Knowing she’d already paid her bond and advance rent to her new landlord, Vic agreed. She always knew Dad wouldn’t give her up so easily, so she planned to leave without him knowing. When, one day, he came home to find her packed and ready to leave, the s*** hit the fan.

‘THE FIRST TIME ANY OF US HAD DEFIED OUR FATHER’

Despite the fact that sibling solidarity was usually in short supply in that f***ed-up house, she asked us to escort her out of the house, and we agreed. Victoria left the house with the three of us flanking her as though we were a close protection unit — John and Steve in front, facing Dad, and me, the smallest, behind. John and Steve told Dad that Victoria was leaving, and if he tried to stop her, he was the one who was going to get the beating.

It was the first time any of us had defied our father, and the first time we’d ever physically challenged him. I was still a little kid, but Steve and John were filling out and becoming strong, especially Steve, who was starting his teenage years. The old man could have beaten any one of us then, but not all of us. He had no choice but to let Vic go.

News_Image_File: In the Octagon. News_Image_File: Mark Hunt in his kickboxing days.

‘THOSE BEATINGS WERE NOTES IN A SYMPHONY’

WHEN I met Johnno, he was new to our school, having been kicked out of his class for belting a teacher. It was with Johnno that I first made myself known to the cops. The first time the cops picked me up was for stealing shoes. The cops threatened me with this or that, but I didn’t give a s*** about whatever they were going to be levelling at me; I was only worried about how badly I was going to get beaten when my old man found out.

That scene was repeated over and over again, and soon I even stopped worrying about how badly I was going to get beaten when Dad had to turn up at the cop shop. Those beatings were notes in a symphony. In trouble with the police or not, I was always in line to get the s*** beaten out of me, regardless of what was going on.

I vaguely remember what it felt like when Dad started beating the s*** out of me. It’s not something I’m familiar with now, even when I’m being pounded by dudes like Junior dos Santos or Stipe Miocic. At some point as a little kid, I managed to take pain and put it somewhere outside my head. It existed somewhere, but not anywhere it could stop my fight. I didn’t really ever get injured then, either. I’d hear people I scrapped with copped broken jaws, busted noses, fractured eye sockets, broken ribs, but me, I was always golden. If I didn’t feel pain and didn’t get hurt, why wouldn’t I scrap?

‘YOU LIKE A SCRAP, DO YOU SON?’

I FOUGHT in the city, in the south, in the suburbs. I fought at schools, I fought in bars, I fought in the street, but it was one day, fighting out the front of a club, where someone noticed and my life started to take a nice little turn.

Outside the club I found a scrum of guys putting the boot into Johnno, who was on the ground in a ball. I ran over to help, but slipped and soon I was on the ground next to him, copping my own kicking.

The police turned up on the scene, dragging these fellas off us.

While the street was all flying fists and shouting, a hand reached over and pulled me back into the club. It was a dreadlocked guy, shorter and older than me, but strong,

tattooed and with a definite confidence. This guy pushed me into the staff toilets and told me to stay there until he came and got me. I did what he said, and waited there for what felt like an hour. When the door opened, I knew this guy had probably just kept me from another stint in prison.

‘So, you like a scrap, do you son?’ the man asked.

I didn’t say anything.

‘You want a real fight then?’

I did wonder what I’d been doing up to that point.

The man said the words Muay Thai, but it didn’t mean anything to me. He said the word ‘kickboxing’, which I did understand. Then he said the word ‘Thursday’.

‘This Thursday?’ I asked.

‘This Thursday, bro.’

This guy’s name was Sam Marsters, a bouncer at DTMs and a few other clubs around K’Road. He was also a fighter, a trainer and a bit of a local entrepreneur.

It took me nearly another decade after that brawl to realise how significant it was, but isn’t that how real life works? It’s only ever looking backwards that you can see whether a road you’ve taken was a road to fortune or ruin.

Born to Fight, by Mark Hunt and co-writer Ben Mckelvey, retails at $32.99 and can be ordered online from hachette.com.au

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