Born to Fight Read online

  For Jesus Christ, my lord and saviour; my wife, Julie; the people who have helped me to be where I am; and all those in the struggle.

  M.H.

  Thanks go to Mark, Victoria and Julie for their honesty, and to Val, Val, Laura and Luce for their love.

  B.M.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface: Arena Ciudad de México Mexico City, Mexico 2014

  Chapter 1: South Auckland, New Zealand 1974

  Chapter 2: South Auckland, New Zealand 1990

  Chapter 3: South Auckland, New Zealand 1992

  Chapter 4: Auckland, New Zealand 1994

  Chapter 5: Sydney, Australia 1997

  Chapter 6: Sydney, Australia 2001

  Chapter 7: Sydney, Australia 2001

  Chapter 8: Tokyo, Japan 2001

  Chapter 9: Auckland, New Zealand 2002

  Chapter 10: Auckland, New Zealand 2002

  Chapter 11: Tokyo, Japan 2002

  Chapter 12: Tokyo, Japan 2006

  Chapter 13: Tokyo, Japan 2008

  Chapter 14: Tokyo, Japan 2013

  Chapter 15: Tokyo, Japan 2014

  Chapter 16: Mexico City, Mexico 2015

  Chapter 17: Sydney, Australia 2015

  Illustrations

  Hachette Australia

  Copyright

  Preface

  ARENA CIUDAD DE MÉXICO MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

  2014

  I could tell Fabrício Werdum was about to put his hands up just a bit too high. There was going to be a little moment when his gloves would be in front of his eyes, and not on me. I knew it. I felt it.

  Just a moment, that’s all I needed.

  There it went.

  I leapt across the four or so metres between us, leading with a little, confusing jab, then a loaded-up overhand right.

  BAM.

  Caught him right above the ear. Down he went like a big old bag of Brazilian bananas.

  He’s a big bloke, Werdum – tall and experienced. Some people were saying I wouldn’t be able to hit him. I was too short, and Fab was too good. I didn’t have enough notice to get fit, and get fists on him. I was too old, and too fat. Blah blah blah.

  I knew I could get him. There’s no man in the world I can’t hit. If you’ve only got two arms and two legs, I can get to you. That’s a talent, given to me by God himself.

  My fists have taken me around the world. People have filled stadiums to see these fists in action. Men have feared them – professional fighters, gangsters and criminals and, I’m sorry to say, some poor people who stumbled along the wrong street on the wrong day. Now a fist of mine had put Fabrício Werdum on his bum. Fab wasn’t finished yet, but I could see the UFC Heavyweight Interim title right there, on the edge of his jaw.

  There were 20,000 fight fans inside the arena hooting and hollering, and a shitload more watching on TV, especially in New Zealand and Australia, my two homes. They were cheering for me. I could hear them, and I could feel them.

  Me? I felt nothing. I was empty.

  People assumed later it was the altitude and the cut – 2250 metres above sea level, and twenty kilograms shed in three and a half weeks – that had brought on my malaise. I really hated being hungry, but that wasn’t it.

  It was something else.

  I was forty years old and had lived five lives, four of them violent. This was just another bloke sprawled on the ground after I’d given him the skin of my knuckles. This was just another pair of unfocused eyes, just another man on the ground below me, with his hand up, and his chin down.

  I was thinking about my wife, Julie, and my little ones. I was just an inch away from another world title, just a second, but I was thinking about the quietness of home, the kids’ toys and the food in my fridge.

  This fight was just another moment to get through. Winning this fight wouldn’t be the best thing that would happen to me in this life. Losing certainly wouldn’t be the worst.

  I’ve been beaten, tortured and jailed. I’ve lived as a bad man and a good man. I’ve been addicted, homeless and broke. I’ve been lost, and found. This life would have ruined many, but God, he gave me the gifts I needed to keep going.

  Those gifts were at the end of my arms.

  Woe to the man who’s given a gift by God but ignores it. Woe to him.

  I walked back a few steps, bunched my fists and let Werdum stand back up again.

  Come on then, get your ass over here. Let’s see what you got. Gummon, boy.

  Gummon.

  Chapter 1

  SOUTH AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

  1974

  Mark was still a baby when all hell broke loose. He’d be black and blue head-to-toe regularly. I’d have to wash away the blood, massage his bruises and put salt on his wounds, so Dad could give him another beating. At about five Mark started to become a thief, and a violent maniac, but how would he know any better? He didn’t even understand what love was until he met Julie. There were good parts of him but, that survived during the abuse, and those parts became the soul of my brother.

  VICTORIA NAND (SISTER)

  The last time I saw the darkness was on the day my dad died.

  The first time I saw that thing I didn’t know what it was. I was terrified of it, though, like nothing I’ve been scared of before or since. The last time I saw it, I finally knew what it was. I knew who it was. It was the devil, come to take my old man away.

  I first saw that darkness in South Auckland at the wheel of a totalled car I’d recently stolen. I’d come round a corner just a little too fast, bounced off the kerb and up into a light pole. When I woke up, my partner-in-crime, Bronson, was pulling me out of the wreckage, but there was something wrong about the night – it was as though the contrast of the sky was all jacked up, and there was a burning smell.

  As I ran, I saw a giant claw coming down through the clouds, reaching towards me. I felt myself disappearing from my body, and started to run in third person, as though I was a character from Grand Theft Auto.

  I was scared that night – one of the few instances I ever was. Bronson and I ran like I don’t think either of us ever have since. Bronson saw it too. He was never quite the same dude afterwards.

  I saw the darkness in Sydney once, too, when I was half-conscious in a flophouse in Surry Hills, surrounded by junkies and prostitutes and recently but deeply addicted. That day it didn’t come fully formed, but as something nebulous. I still recognised it, though, the moment it appeared, with that smell and that feeling.

  I asked what that thing wanted this time – I was in a bold mood – but it had nothing to say. It just surveyed my surroundings of shit, before leaving, with its faint smell of acidity and ash lingering.

  Those two times I think the devil was just visiting, or perhaps leaving a warning. The last time I saw it, though, it came complete – fully raised, fully formed, and here to do its work.

  A few months before my dad died, his eyes had started to go and his skin was turning green. When he finally went to hospital, he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. None of us kids knew why the old man ignored the doctors and refused their help, but none of us were surprised either. After his diagnosis, the old bastard discharged himself, walked the many kilometres home and slumped on the couch. There he stayed, taking no medication and no visitors, instead just rotting away like meat left in the sun.

  A few months after his diagnosis, it was time for me to throw the shadow of Charles Sale Hunt over my shoulder, toss him into the car and drive him to the hospital to die. On the old man’s last day alive, I pushed my wheelchair-bound mum, who’d been made immobile and silent by multiple strokes, into a giant, bright, sparse, white-tiled hospital room where he was laid out on a
bed. Almost all the life had gone from my father; his face was sunken, with yellow eyes like the Hulk’s. His hair was white and stringy, and his once strong body had wasted away.

  What was left in him was about to be taken by the giant that stood next to his bed, which was dark like a void, hooded, huge, familiar and with a stench that was overpowering. I could feel the immense, crackling, untethered power of that figure, but I dared not look directly at it. I could feel that even looking at that thing could level buildings, maybe even cities.

  I kept my eyes on my father. As I stared at the old man, I knew he was going with the devil that day. I also knew there was nothing to be done about it. My father had lived his life, made his choices and committed his sins. Now he was going with the darkness.

  So be it.

  I find it hard to remember my parents’ faces these days. I always remember my dad’s blue overalls and the blue overcoat he wore in winter, and I remember my mum’s big old Afro. Sometimes, though, in my memories, smudges have replaced their faces.

  I’m assuming my parents’ story was similar to the rest of the FOB (fresh off the boat) Islanders in New Zealand at the time. The Samoan economy was pretty basic, so if you didn’t want to work in the fields like your parents and grandparents before you, you probably wanted to think about hopping over to New Zealand.

  My parents had both been married before they met each other, so maybe that helped push them west. I don’t know that for sure, though. I don’t know much about my parents’ history, and almost nothing about their parents and beyond. What I do know is that in 1965 Charles Sale Hunt and his wife, Meleiota, moved from Savai’i in Samoa to Auckland, and by 1974, when I was dropped into this world at St Heliers Hospital, pretty much all they had to show for themselves was Victoria, five years older than me; Steve, three years older; John, two years older; and now me, the baby.

  My first ever memories were just feelings, and there was one feeling that I remember more than the rest: hunger. Dad had a job at the beginning, a manufacturing gig at the Kent Heating factory, but he could never put enough food on the table. Couldn’t, wouldn’t, whatever.

  My memories of places and people started to form when we four kids were shipped off from our one-bedroom place in the Auckland suburb of Mount Eden to Savai’i to live with my dad’s brother and his wife when I was maybe four or five.

  Not many people know much about Samoa, which is fair enough; it’s a pretty small place – big people, but a small place. Samoa is made up of a series of islands, which lie about 3000 kilometres northeast of New Zealand.

  The place looks like you’d expect a Pacific island to look – blue seas, green hills and yellow sand – populated by 200,000 or so locals. There are about the same number of Samoans living in Australia and New Zealand, with the bulk living in New Zealand. Samoa was administrated by New Zealand up until the sixties, so there was an easy immigration path between the two countries.

  I don’t really know why Mum and Dad sent us over to Samoa. I guess they wanted to give us a better life than the one we were having in Auckland, but I do remember having to catch and cook bats in the fields to eat. So perhaps it wasn’t for our benefit.

  In Samoa, I remember a house above a shop. I remember a rock pool where my brothers and I once thought we were about to drown. I remember a cousin pulling each of us out of that water by our hair. I remember a picture theatre, which I now realise was probably little more than a darkened room and a projector. I remember stealing biscuits.

  I don’t recall many of the people in Samoa, but I do remember a little Asian bloke with a badass look on his face, shirt off, black pants, howling like a cat.

  WAAAAAATAAAAAAAAH.

  Some people were trying to attack this little shirtless guy, but he was fending them off as easily as you might a litter of kittens, his fists and feet flying around like he was a banshee. I don’t remember what Uncle and Auntie looked like – they are just smudges now too – but I remember Bruce Lee. That little dude was made out of magic. I loved Bruce Lee and David Carradine, and later Van Damme, Seagal and Norris. There wasn’t a problem they couldn’t fix.

  In Samoa I remember meeting up with my sister, Victoria, once a week in church. That was the only time we’d see her, as tradition dictated that the boys lived with Uncle, and Victoria with Auntie, in a different house. Victoria had been sad in Auckland, and when I saw her at church in Samoa, I noticed she had that same sadness. I didn’t figure out why until I was a lot older.

  After a year or so we were called back to New Zealand to live with Mum and Dad, this time in a four-bedroom house in Papatoetoe in South Auckland. It may sound like my parents had gotten their shit together, but they hadn’t. The house was bigger than what we were living in before, no doubt, but there wasn’t really any more food, and now there was debt – debt that fuelled the fire of Dad’s anger. Even as a little tacker, I could recognise that.

  As soon as we got into that house, the arguments with the neighbours started. Later on I realised that our family, and our house, had a reputation. Mum was loud, but Dad was physical, very physical. We were isolated on our street, and weren’t even allowed to talk to the other little Samoan kids next door. Victoria used to pass notes to them asking what life was like in their house, but that act of sedition had to be carried out carefully, because if she was caught, she was getting a beating.

  Most of the neighbours didn’t like our parents, and they particularly gave Dad a very wide berth. We kids didn’t have that luxury. 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 cords, 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 whup until he got tired, and he had energy for that work, man. He loved that hose.

  He was big on psychological pain, too, my old man. A beating he seemed to particularly enjoy was forcing us onto our knees on the floor in the sitting room, facing out the window at the pear tree, where he’d go and spend time carefully selecting a whupping branch. We’d hope for a new, young branch, or an old one ready to break, but he’d usually end up with something hefty and durable.

  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 equally 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.

  I used to think Steve got the worst of it, because he was the oldest boy, and the biggest, and the one most likely to know better than to do whatever it was that we little kids shouldn’t be doing – that’s why he got his head smashed against the walls and doors. Now I suspect it was just because Dad had had more time to resent him.

  I used to think 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 o
ut 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 shit wasn’t fair as far as we knew. We thought something odd was happening in that room, but we didn’t know that something was heinous and sinful.

  We used to dare each other to go in. Thank fuck we never did.

  We didn’t know shit about shit. When I knew more about what was going on, I realised Victoria by far had the worst of it, but none of us could comprehend any of that at the time.

  I try to remember any light, fun moments we shared as kids, but it’s hard to find anything. If there were any board games, or holidays, or trips to the movies, or the rugby, or the museum, or anything that parents and little kids do together then I don’t remember them. All I remember about that house is a shitload of beatings and what felt like endless days of hunger.

  There was usually some food when Mum was around, but later on she had two jobs, which meant she was never there. Dad cooked sometimes, but when he did it’d be a giant pot of lamb flaps, or something like that, and we’d be eating it for weeks, even after it had gone off.

  There was food when someone in the family died, and we couldn’t wait for that to happen. Unlike a lot of Samoans, we didn’t know our extended family, because most of those who lived in New Zealand were on my mother’s side, and Dad forbade us, Mum included, from being in contact with them. We would only see them when someone died, and none of them meant anything to us except a bus ride to a big feed when they finally fucked off from this life. Of course we couldn’t wait for that to happen.

  There was also food when the Mormons came around. They were the only people who ever came round to that shithole. Those guys from the church used to get to tuck into all kinds of good stuff that our parents would get for them – cake, Milo, chips, Coke, biscuits, all the stuff I would literally have dreams about. When they came we’d poke our heads through the door, salivating, looking at these missionaries with eyes of hatred and jealousy.