MMA Fighting - DAMN! They Were Good | Remembering Mark Hunt, The King Of The Walk Off KO

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

DAMN! They Were Good celebrates the careers of the most exciting and influential fighters in MMA history. This episode covers Mark Hunt, The King of the Walkoff KO and a criminally underrated action fighter. Moving to MMA in 2004 after a short but accomplished career in kickboxing, the "Super Samoan" had immediate success in Pride, beating Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Cro Cop to establish himself as a serious threat. Then came a down period though as Hunt lost six in a row, including a UFC debut that the company begrudgingly gave him after he refused a buyout on his contract. What followed was one of the greatest second acts in MMA history as Hunt established himself as one of the best in the world and became a bona fide star, before an ugly late career period marred by a prolonged legal battle with the UFC ultimately left Hunt with less of a reputation that he deserves. What were the most iconic performances and what were our favorite memories from Hunt's career? Listen in as the MMA Fighting crews remembers remembers the man who gave MMA the Atomic Butt Drop. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Shaheen Al-Shatti: @shaunalshatti Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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For more information about how to step into a world of more with Chase experiences, visit chase.com slash experiences. Benefits available only to eligible Chase card holders, deposit in credit card products provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A, member FDIC. Terms, conditions, restrictions, and limitations apply. Podcast Network. Friends, my name is Jedmichu, and you know what time it is. It is time for another episode of Damn, they were good. And as we mentioned in our last episode, one of our most

successful episodes ever, by the way, talking about the esteemed Brock Lesnar. It felt, felt like this was an ideal time to take, you know, Brock Lesnar's nemesis, the man who certainly dislikes Brock Lesnar more than anyone else in the history of this fine sport. We're doing it Damn on Mark Hunt, ladies and gentlemen. That's right. Hunto, the walk-off king. It's here. It's going to be awesome.

And I'm really excited because this was way more fun than I thought it would be. Like getting into it. But first, before we get into it, let me tell you who I'm getting into it with. You know the deal. It's always some of the best and brightest from manyfighting.com. And this week we've got, I would say the OGs of this fine program. The two men who have helped me build this to what it is, Mr. Zalek, Alexander Kaylee, Mr. Shahino Shottie,

the two of the best damn, damn co-hosts possible. Fellas, how we do it? Oh, hello. We're doing good. I am glad that we're doing the Mark Hunt. I love the Brock Lesnar episode. Sorry, I couldn't be a part of it. Schedules didn't work out.

Would have loved you been part of it. But I do feel like this will help. Well, I'm glad I wasn't because it probably means I'm not on Mark Hunt's crap list like the rest of you guys. And I'm on this episode to pay homage and respects to one of one of combat sports great knockout artists. And so I'm guaranteed to be in his good graces. That is very important. If I learn nothing else from my prep in this, it's I do not want to make an enemy of

Mark Hunt because one, he's a very, very violent man. And two, it appears that he will hold a grudge for just ever. For life. Like, and I respect that. I am a man of similar principles. and I respect the heck out of that. So, Sheen, how are we doing? I'm doing wonderful.

This was too much fun to do research for. This is one of those, Marcon's one of those weird guys throughout combat sports history that, like, you're present for a lot of it, especially if you've been, I've followed the sport for long enough. But it just becomes like the body of work is almost so overwhelming that it becomes so easy to forget so much of this. And I told you before we hit record, you have ban. me to a Mark Hunt rabbit hole this entire morning and 95% of that rabbit hole was just

kickboxing highlights and it was delightful I had forgotten so much of this this man is a Titan amongst Titans in this whole space I love it so much Mark Hunt is so lovable with all of this it's just it's tremendous if you guys ever have time to find yourself if you're like hey I have an extra hour that I don't know what to do go look up some Mark Hunt K1 highlights It's a great time. Dude, if you just Google Mark Hunt highlights, you're going to go and you'll get a smattering of the UFC stuff and the pride thing. And we'll certainly talk all about that. But just a, he is, Mark Hunt, I did not realize this at the time that I set this.

I was building out a schedule to do this. And I was like, oh, I try to in general structure these around like big anniversaries. And the reason Mark Hunt jumped off the page is this week. this week, December 7th, we're recording this a few days earlier, but December 7th of this week, Thursday, the day this episode is dropping, it's the 10-year anniversary of his fight with Antonio Silva,

the first one, the five-rounder, one of the very best fights of 2013, frankly, one of the very best fights we've ever seen in the UFC. And I was like, oh, that's a terrific that lines up, it's going to be right out, you know, we can do the Brock, there's the yin and the yang. And I just went over my head that really the episodes that I have the most fun

that I love the most are when we're just doing guys like this, they might not have been the best dude. Mark Hunt certainly wasn't the best dude in anything probably ever. But God damn, was he exciting and fun? Like he is maybe the quintessential heavyweight action fighter? Just absolute lunacy. And he's got hundreds of fights, basically, between MMA and kickboxing. So you can dive down a rabbit hole and you're just falling like Alice to Wonderland,

just tumbling for hours and hours of, holy shit, look at him and Jerome L banner just go out each other time after time after time. It was so much fun the prep. I messaged you all beforehand today before we recording. I was like, hey, guys, this is going to be a great time. And I think it is because as we're going to get into the categories in a little bit, I have so many answers. If you've listened to this show before, you know, we structure it in categories.

There are a whole bunch of them. Try and keep it to a couple of answers per category, but that way we can talk about the breadth of the career. I got 30 answers for almost everything we're going to talk about here. It's going to be a weird place to see where we overlap, because I think some of this will have some. I think we're going to be wildly divergent on some stuff. Before we get into that,

and we will rush into that a little bit quicker than we normally do, just because there's so much to talk about in the context of that, I did kind of just want to start in a different way that we normally do because for a lot of these, this preamble is, hey, how were you first introduced to Marc Hunt or whatever? And for me, I honestly can't remember. It feels like he's been around forever. And I sort of assume it's the same with y'all because it's hard to think of like, oh, here's the time that he jumped out, particularly know you guys for a long time. We all sort of got into the sport around the same time. It's probably going to be similar.

what I think is more interesting is as it was going through this, Mark Hunt has a very unique career in that a lot of like the big moments, the big highlight stuff are losses. They are a lot of memorable aspects of his career are times he took an L, which hasn't really been the way we've sort of broached the subject here. And so as we get into this guys, I guess my first question for you before we dive into the category, is does Mark Hunt have like maybe the greatest Mount Rushmore of losses for a good fighter?

Like not a dude who's just on like not a guy who gets highlight reeled all the time. But buddy when he does, it is spectacular, you know? That's a great question. I think there's a certain element of validity to that. And I would almost spin it off in a way of does Mark Hunt have the most different individual unique Mount Rushmore's that you could create. Because that is one of them, certainly, right? But then you could also do a Mount Rushmore of just purely the walk-off knockouts,

which this is... I almost made a special category for it. Stephen Morocco, the great Stephen Morocco, when you guys were doing the Brock Lesnar episode, had that idea for Brock. Just pivoted Brock because Brock was hard. Yeah, he didn't, because Brock has, what, 10 pro fights? Nine pro fights? Yeah, to anyone who didn't listen to that episode, he didn't do

pick for Brock fights he picked four Mount Rushmore's that Brock could be on and I think you guys are saying a similar thing from Mark Hud which makes which makes a lot of sense you could do the walkoff knockouts yes you could purely just kickboxing like like you could you could limit the just kickboxing it's like you could parse that down even more of like just K1 just whatever the UFC stuff just losses just wins like there are I feel like there are so many different ways you could parse the the Mount Rushmore out like I it's thrown me for a little bit. And again, we were talking about this software of like, I have been trying to narrow down this Mount Rushmore. And every time I feel like I have a four, I stare at it and I'm like this.

This doesn't feel right. This is wrong. Like I am objectively wrong here. There's something. I got to reconfigure this. Like I'm still not sure where I'm out with some of these. Yeah. I'm exactly the same way.

I honestly, I don't like my Mount Rushmore just because I, I, there is one that I think I, I think one when we get into Mount Rushmore, we're all. going to have anything it has to be there and then you could convince me that we are three for three on the remaining three that we're all the same or that none of us have any of the same in the overlap it is so difficult and that was without me including some of the like iconic losses and as i dove into this that's why that question sort of arose this was like dude i don't know if we're going to have an opportunity or to talk about like him losing to fatal or stuff like that like where do you put some of these things because they are so significant and then as I'm going back the second and third time I'm like outside of them being significant most of them are also just sick highlights

too like he got put on a poster in the worst ways but not in the way that like somebody who sucks because he was also very good it was such a boom bust career basically. Every time he steps in the cage, it is going one of two ways, and it's always going to be worth your money. And that really stuck out at me. But, Gene, I love the way you reframe it because it is true. Like, I almost did a, I almost did a special walk-offs category for us. It was like, hey, pick your favorite one because, like, that's the thing he's known for. There's so much to do with it.

It's just the volatility of it, too, because I'm glad you mentioned the Fador one where, like, this gets forgotten and this gets lost. And it's like, this is a man who fought for multiple decades, who never had a submission win in his entire career. And he came so close to submitting Prime Fador. Because the volunteer. The guy to beat him. Yeah. Like, Prime, Prime Fador.

And, like, Mark Hunt almost got the only sub of his career against this man. The volatility from Mark Hunt at all times was just so spectacular. But then also, like, we, I don't know how to under, like, I think we understate the walk-off nature of it. because when you call this man the walk-off king, there is no second place. Like, there is no one who's even come close to be in a second place. This man perfected the walk-off knockout to such a degree that, like, it's just there's not really anybody you can compare him to.

And you go through and you watch them over and over again and all these different versions of this knockout. It's the casual nature of it all that really sells it. Like, I have not seen another man, another woman, whoever. seeing another fighter who almost can make like referees doubt themselves with the level of consistency that this man like almost making he almost makes it looks like he makes referees feel dumb if they don't stop this fight like he doesn't like they do and he'll do like this little frustrated face a lot of times where like you look at his you look at his face he's like kind of smirking but also

kind of disappointed of like oh that's all it took really that's all it took to get you and then he kind of walks off and like almost looks disappointed in you like he's not mad he's just disappointed and the whole thing is just it's it's so crazy man it's so crazy it's so great it's incredible i think uh and we just dive into the walk off part of him so i think honestly going back and i can't remember because i didn't make a note of this i think that it got sold that the of the stephen strew fight was where that like mark hunt just just essentially made his bones in this area because because he'd walked off Chris Tuckcher. He made one or two walk off some pride.

The Struve won, Chaheen, is to your point. If I'm remembering correctly, that's the one where whoever the referee was, like, didn't jump in. He walks off as Struv tumbles, and the ref does it. And so then he's like, really, man,

and just goes back up and is about to kill Struv. And then the referee jumps in. It was Herb Dean. It was Herb Dien. Oh, Hokey Pokey-Hur. A little hook, a classic Hokey-Poky-Hurf, literally stepping out, that stepping in and then finally see mark hunt be like really you're going to okay and then he gets

stopped and from that moment forward mark hunt was his own referee that you didn't need him he he had it covered you were going to be fine uh little half-ass internet research shout out to the rewatchables podcast uh i don't know if this is true because this is just something i read on the internet without any confirmation uh but if it is i want to most moment to bring it up here because I think this probably speaks to some point to Mark Hunt the person. And allegedly, at some point, he was discussing his walkoffs and kind of how that aspect of his career and explain that it came from his childhood where he was abused.

And so he did not want to author any unnecessary punishment onto people, which is incredibly sad, super badass, like just a really dope thing to do as a professional prize fighter and really speaks to sort of the layers of Mark Hunt, the individual, which is really important part of why he's like, he was awesome during his entire career. And I think why he was such a fan favorite kind of that speaks to a part of that somewhere in there. Yeah, somehow like walkoffs throughout history, most people when they do have a walkoff knockout, and it's almost like disrespectful in a lot of ways

with the way most people pull them off. Mark Hunt somehow made this a respectable form of mercy to like walk off on these opponents. It's like the way in which he does it again, the casualness of like, I didn't want to do that to you, but you made me. And then it's just looking. He's not showing them up.

I think he's not showing them up. And that's where you see so many other fighters, walk off's go wrong. How many fighters land that shot? And then they do the, they start, they throw their arms up. They do the, or they do the kind of like, they throw their arms wide. Like, yeah, it's over. The fight's over.

And the refs just like staring at them. Like, no, what are you talking about? It's like they don't do the proper walkoff. And again, they're clearly, well, I can say everyone. I think a lot of them are like the Mark Hunt thing where they felt like they've landed the big shot. Like, I don't want to do any more damage. But there are plenty of fighters who have done it for show.

They're doing it for show or they're, they're, you know, maybe they don't even know for sure they've landed that shot. But they feel like with some. theatrics like yeah well he's got to get the stoppers now i've got my arms up the guys down on the ground um and that's just doing it wrong so many people do it wrong um everyone wants to be mark hunt everyone wants to do it that way i remember um i think molly mccan referred to her purse when she did that spinning back elbow or back this whatever she was on she had back-to-back ones it's one of the weirder things that's ever happened the first time she did it and then she referred to it as like mark hunt as because he is he is the standard bearer for this kind of finish he does he does it

with a, it sounds weird to say with class. There's a class to with which he breaks someone's jaw and then turns his back to them. Right? It sounds so insulting, but it's like deeply, it is a deeply respectful. I think so. And it's merciful. Like you said, Sean, it is not a, he is not taking pity on them and the way that you think of that phrase. He is just, he's just walking it off because he doesn't need to hurt you anymore.

The point has been proven. And again, it's almost like, there's like an element of disappointment that he even had to do this, that you put him in this position that he had to do this. The Frank Mir one is one that really jumps out to me because I watched that over and over again. And again, like, Marcotte knocks this man out. And then his reaction, his first reaction isn't like, oh, hey, I just won this fight or to celebrate everything. He like almost scowls of like, gosh, I wish I didn't have to do that to that guy. It just like walks off like really kind of upset at himself. It's like, bro, you just highlight

real deep mirror how is this your reaction that's so ice cold man dude he is so ice cold and let's get into it uh that's before we do jed real quick i want to say i think i think uh mark hunt is the only fighter you guys have done on damn so far with 10 or more fights because brock would also fit this criteria all his opponents have wikipedia injuries not not that that is the like the definition of Notability, but I believe Ronda's in there too, that she did have amateur fights and those fighters, those opponents don't have Wikipedia entry. So if we're just strictly talking about top-tobata-M-A career, he's the only one. And that's- You're totally right.

Like, yeah, and that speaks to how difficult it was for us to make this Mount Rush for. He has a lot. And kickboxing again, the whole other thing. But just in M.A., he has a lot of notable fights. He has a lot of people with names, a lot of people with reputations, with extensive records themselves. It's interesting. So he's the first damn guy.

Maybe the only one that you could possibly do. I'm trying to think of future damn candidates that could have like all their opponents are quote unquote notable according to Wikipedia. It's just Marcont right now. I'm trying to. That's going back through. It's close. Bej just really close.

I was going to say. Really close. PJ might have one person who's not on there because I'm looking at the list of. His debut. Some of the Wikipedia page for Joey Gilbert and then we can fix this. I'm honestly a little bit surprised Joey Gilbert doesn't have a Wikipedia page. But I hadn't even thought of that And I'm going through the list

Like I had a list of fighters we've done And I have this big list of the fighters on deck And just from the pool that I will pull from And yeah I mean if you look at the fighters that are on deck Under that None of those people are going to have All Wikipedia page things

It's just no shot at that Okay maybe one Maybe one coming up next year We'll have one but that is very special. Look, to your point, it really does speak to sort of how weird his career is, like how incredible his career is in some respects, a career that probably can't happen like nowadays,

but also sort of existed as a template for other careers we've seen. Like, Alex Pereira is not that dissimilar to Mark Hunt, right? He's the lesser version of Alex Pereira, just in terms of, He's just version 1.0. Alex Pereira is just the idealized version of it moving forward. Like I think that we can see more people like that. But even them, it's just not going to work out. Like Bo Nichols is not coming into the UFC and they're going to make him fight a couple of people who don't get wiki pages.

They're not going to immediately throw him in there against Hidehiko Yoshita and just be like, figure it out, dude. So there it goes. Great poll. Like, okay. One thing, too, just real quick, because the Alex Pereira comparison jumped out to me a couple different times over the course of watching all this footage. There's two comparisons, right? Because four fights into Mark Hunt's career, he's fighting Vandalay Silva and Crow Cop, who at that

point are like legitimate top 10 pound for pound guys in the sport. And he's beating them. Vendal Silva was arguably the number one pound for pound fighter in the sport when he fought him in his third fight. And he's winning these fights. There's a real anomaly factor to all of this. similar to Alex, but also the big thing just actually watching the action is his ability to generate immense force with like three inches of distance or like six inches of distance.

Alex is really the only other guy I can think of just out the top of my head with this same type of just what the fuck did I watch type of power? Because you can see it in like the eyes of like a lot of the opponents that Mark Hunt is fighting. If you just look at the eyes of the opponents during these fights. The look in there in people's eyes when they realize what's happening and when they taste like that little three inch power, the Samoan power, like Chris Tuxter is a great example. I always say his name wrong, but like whatever that first, that UFC win was, he looks like he's seen the devil when he gets hit with one of those shots. And then Mark Hunt, like, very quickly afterwards, ends it with like the shortest uppercut imaginable. It's like this little

shovel, shovel uppercut that maybe moves five inches. But like he, the look in his eyes is just like, What the fuck? I have never experienced this. And it's just over and over and over in these fights. You can see the reaction in a way that's just very visceral. Because he's got those big tree trunk legs. That really jumped out at me. And it's one of like the various things I have written down that I didn't have

anywhere put. The absolute adoration that UFC commentators had from Mark Hunt's legs was quite amusing as you go back and watch. Basically every time they're like, look at how thick his legs are. It's insane. It's shocking. Before we get into the category, Shaheen, I love that you recognize a Pereira thing

because I had another fighter that kept coming to mind as I watched Mark Hunt. Pereira was the obvious first one to me for the similar reasons and largely just like, oh, this is kind of a similar career arc, right? Like a fairly accomplished kickboxer moves over, sort of exceeds expectations and does this. and in the way he did it as well.

But for those like when you said, you know, you've never seen a guy generate this much power, I thought a ton totally out of nowhere. Just like, man, it's kind of like watching fat Robbie Lawler fighting there. It's like Robbie Lawler has like a lot of the same like that uppercut, which I bring up in a future category. He generates so much power. it's like a very Robbie Lawler-esque uppercut.

Like they're throwing with a lot of similar mechanics. And like I just, those two fighters, Alex Breyer and Robbie Lawler stuck out at me. And if those are going to be comparison points for you, I'm going to love you so much as a fighter. I'm going to just love the shit out of you. And I,

going back through this eye, man, a whole new appreciation for Mark Hunt. So let's get into it. First, before we get into our categories, as always, do a very brief rundown on Mark Hunt's career. It's quite long, but we'll hit some of the highlights, and then we'll dive right into the categories. So Hunt hails from the kickboxing world. Obviously, he began competing K-1 starting in 2000, and he had mixed success.

Frankly, in 2001, he goes on a bit of a losing streak, but he impresses in some of those performances, and then pulls off a bit of a stunner. wins the 2001 K1 World Grand Prix kind of out of nowhere. This is the win that goes on to sort of mark his career for the remainder. He is forevermore Mark Hunt K1 champion, and he parlays that into a move to MMA in 04 for Pride. He competed for a little bit more in K1, but jumps over to Pride. Now he's doing MMA, and he has a lot of success early, then suffers a really bad run in the middle there. We'll get into all of this, but the ultimate part here is he joins the U.S. in 2010 after bouncing around a bit and in some really weird circumstances and ends up far exceeding

expectations for just about everybody involved. Perhaps even himself has a great career with the UFC. Fights for an interim heavyweight title against Fabrice O'R Doom at one point, but it all kind of turned sour in the end. The last few years of his run are marred by a controversy between him and the UFC, which we will touch on an awful lot, and ultimately hangs up the gloves, the MMA gloves at least in 2018. He finished his career with four performance bonuses in the promotion, three fight of the nights, and he's in the UFC's top 10 for a number of heavyweight categories like top 10 heavyweight

fights, top 10 bonuses, knockouts, stuff like that. It is one of those careers, maybe more so than any of the other people we've done in this show, that cannot be defined as well by, you know, a dollars and cents accounting of his accomplishments, but in the context of through which it all stands. So let's get into some of that. context, boys. Let's talk about Mark Hunt with our categories. Support for this show comes from Nordstrom. Oh, what fun. Nordstrom has gifts for all your favorite people all in one place, like beauty sets, sweaters, jewelry and toys with tons under

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The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Into the categories. The first one, as always, I think it's going to be the most difficult one, boys. It's the Mount Rushmore. You got four fights open to interpretation on sort of how you want to parse it out. For me, and we've mentioned it, this was a struggle. I genuinely got to five fights that I was like,

I absolutely have to have all five of them in. and so then I straight up just flipped a coin and got rid of one of them. You could have gotten rid of the other ones. And then that's still leaving out like another three or four that I would put in honorable mentions that I think are significant and notable. I'm going to start us off with the one that I'm going to guess if I had to bet money. It's the one that I would be the most confident in all our lists. It is the reason we are doing Mark Hunt. it is Antonio Bigfoot Silver 1

UFC Brisbane December 7th 2013 was that on both of your lists A K I see you nodding your head Has to be has to be Has to be okay This is the one that I thought I was pretty confident everyone would have After this I kind of think it's a bit of a grab bag

Did you guys rewatch this fight for this podcast? Yeah Did I? It's so much better than I even remembered it being And I remembered it being good it's so good when I this I had this ranked as one of the

10 best fight at UFC fights ever of the Zoufa era when I made a list seven years ago and I was working for another website another good website maybe not a great website like M.Myfighting.com trash trashed a good website called the score

great good website I had this number seven I had it ahead of I have the list in front of me right now I had it ahead of Matt Hughes Frank Trigg 2 and just behind Leonard Garcia and Chen Sung-jong. So pretty good list to be part of. It's probably I'd still put in the top 20

for just talking about, again, Zufa era, UFC or Strike Force or WC fights, whatever, which says a lot. We've had a lot of, this is 2013. We've had a lot of great fights since then. Are this seven years ago? Oh, so the fight was, sorry, I made this list seven years ago. The fight was 10 years ago.

We've had a lot of great fights since then. 10 year anniversary on the day this episode drops. Well, there you go. And I still think it ranks at least in the, the top 20 again there's been so many great fights you could probably put it you know and in the top 10 top 20 top 20 for me still a top 20 one of the five best uh UFC heavyweights what had UFC heavyweight fights ever for sure I don't that is such an understatement if you can name two better UFC heavyweight fights I'm not even sure I can name one better UFC heavyweight fight it might be the

goat heavyweight fight it might be the goat heavyweight fight it might be the go like like At least in the UFC. In the UFC, I honestly think, like, I cannot think of any of it. And I spent some time in like, where is this? Because particularly the commentary and the fight basically immediately anoints it as such. Like, oh, one of the greatest heavyweight fight you'll ever see. The one heavyweight fight that jumps to mind is obviously Crocop Fador. Like that, and that's pride.

It's different. It's very different. That's the standard bearer for great fight. That is an epic fight of meaning and substances is less a. bloody hard-nosed brawl like this absolute wild the difference though is if you show if I show

you know my son who he's not old enough yet but when he's old enough if I show him Crow Cop Fador and with no context and just like hey watch this fight it will lose his interest eventually whereas if I show him this with no context and I'm just like hey watch this he will be wrapped

in attention for this entire fight you know it's good when the commentary crew at various parts of the fight just breaks down in laughter of just like, what the fuck are we watching? It is. It's the greatest draw in MMA history. It's like the most entertaining draw in MMA history.

Man, that's a tour. I hadn't even thought of that. Like I was really great. Frankie Edgar Gray Maynard for a long time, I think people would throw up there. This is better though. This is better.

This is better. This has ebbs and flows. Frankie Edgar Gray Maynard is, Gray is killing him and then Frankie battles back to a draw. This is, but like, I thought in round three that Bigfoot's done. And then in round four, he's got Mountain. It looks like Hunter's done.

And then in round five, oh, Bigfoot's done again. And I forgot this entirely. Steve Percival should, like, I know Carrie Hatley's in the news for being an awful referee. Steve Percival, he did not jeopardize the life of a human being like Carrie Hatley did. but what was that stoppage in the fifth round to check a cut he stops the fight Bigfoot is against the fence dead and a hunt is just laying wood into him I mean just ripping the body the uppercuts like this is the most classic Mark Hunt finishing situation there's a brief pause and Percival's like hold on hold on I got to check the cut

And while he is doing it, he says to the ringside doctor, just clean off some of the blood. I can't see it. It's probably nothing. He acknowledges that it's probably nothing, but he's like, let's stop this finishing combination to make sure the blood's out of the face so we can see if that cut is going to provide long-term damage. It is the most insane stoppage. And Anicon commentaries is like, that's a bit of an odd choice to do that at that point. Bigfoot may have just gotten a gift.

And like, yeah, he did. Because this shouldn't have been a draw. That should have never been stopped. And Hunt should have buried him within the remainder of that round. The referee, Steve Percival, if people will be watched the fight. He gets booed right at the beginning of the fight. The local crowd, not a fan of Steve Percival. It was because earlier in the night there was a fight with, I had to look this up.

I did not remember. Justin Skoggins and Richie Vesulik, early stoppage. I believe it was received as an early stoppage. Yeah. So crowd was not happy about that. I think it was later also. What was the, was the Lombard-Magni fight after this card or before? I don't remember, but that was also a very unpopular thing because I think they thought

he let Magni put too much of a beating on Hector later in the fight. Steve Verst will, not a popular ref in his home country. Not a popular rep. I mean, this was, I had forgot that happened entirely until rewatching this time. I was like, man, that was a really, really bad bit of refereeing. before we move off this fight I'd like to suggest we don't but we have a lot to talk about let me just say one number

let me just say one number real quick 497 strikes thrown in this fight at heavyweight at fucking heavyweight man that's like they cut heavy weight like dudes who cut weight like really real heavy weight is in fact true they they cut a really good pace in this one

like I think it's there's so I let me I'll run through some of a bunch of notes I had here quickly. First of all, I forgot that Marcund was such a reliable sort of fight night main event for a while. Like, I don't, I don't remember. I remember this was a main event. And then I was looking at his other fights. I'm like, oh, that was a main event too.

And that was a main event. They really called upon him to like headline, you know, random cards here and there. So I have some fun facts about that coming out. I can't wait. So this was, this was huge. I also remember not being that jazzed up for this fight. I guess they're both coming off losses. And I was like, okay, whatever.

It's a heavyweight main event. It'll be fun. Whatever. which remind me a little bit of Shogun and Hendo as well. And I think people were a little more excited about that fight, but that was still like this random fight night. And then again, you end up getting one of the best fights of all time, same with this one.

So that helps that, like, the expectations were like moderate, and it just like blew the roof off. And another thing I want to remember is like, man, Mark Hunt and Bigfoot Silva were really good. Like, they were legitimately really good fighters. This isn't a heavyweight slop fest. Like, you see how skilled both these. guys really are like why they're two of the you know two of the most respected heavyweights of

this era like they're very very very skilled all around too we saw d1 mark hunt uh in round three getting just getting a takedown uh the ground work was really solid on both ends of course big foot silver really really good ground guy um mark home was in good like he has a he look he looked i'm not saying i saw an ab poking through but like he look you look good he look fit uh so i hope this another reason people need to rewatch this i think they maybe only remember the fourth and fifth round when stuff started getting like really wild and like started just smashing each other but there was a lot of skill in rounds one to three that set up the chaos and rounds four and five and five-round fight and both guys I thought just did did really

really well and I think it's one reason so important we do the show Jed because big foot Selva has become a punchline obviously every time we run a headline yeah with a guy named me fighting like oh he was just a bomb he was just a bomb he's just big like he's just big that's why he keeps getting both He was actually really, really good once-months. One of the best heavy weights in the world until they had literally stopped allowing him to take the medication that made his life work. Right. That's the thing. He has become a mean.

He's not just a mean. Marcotte's not just a slugger. The guy could fight. The guy was a great striker. He's a very smart striker. Very smart fighter all around. So there's such an important fight for people to rewatch. Bigfoot Civil was a meme or is a meme now.

But like at the moment this fight happened, he's coming off of just fighting for the UFC title, losing to gain. but like at that point in his career, he's more than 20 fights deep, and his only losses are essentially to Fabricio Cormier and Kane. Like he is one of the guys in the heavyweight division in that point. He's like one of the top guys beats Fador, has all these wins. He just came up that crazy comeback over Alistair over him where he was like shouting over Alistair after knocking him out.

Like, dude again is a meme now, but he was for real when this fight happened. And you can see it. You can see why. Like the levels of which he digs deep in. this is nuts compared to like what you see now with him getting slaughtered by dudes who he would just run over back in his day. I think this took something out of him too because he was, it's not like he was iron.

It's not like he was iron chinned before this fight, but afterwards it's just, just knockout after knockout, after knockout, after knock out. Well, he basically never wins again after this fight. He doesn't. It's, I mean, so he does beat Al Palayli, but that's it's, I think is this the fight, the last fight he is allowed to be on TRT? Because that, like, that is a direct, like, that directly coincides with thing because, like, TRT is a whole thing.

We don't need to get, dive into this as more of a Bigfoot conversation, but like, Bigfoot actually had a medical condition, which is why he is Bigfoot. And TRT was like an actual. So I have an answer for you. Correct medical thing. Was it after this fight or? So this fight, when did the TRT get pulled on it? This fight was December 2013.

Bigfoot ends up losing the result of this fight because he tests positive for elevated levels of testosterone which essentially TRT December 2013 by February 2014 so literally like three months later TRT's banned within the sport and he never wins again basically yeah which is not a coincidence and it's like for those listening like yeah

he got off the juice like one that's I would call that stupid in general but neither here nor there Of all the people who needed it, Vitor Belfort probably didn't need TRT, right? Like, Bigfoot Silva has gigantism. Like, there's actually, like, a medical prescription for the medical issues he faces. And they're like, nope, can't do it, buddy. And then he was really bad at fighting when, you know, he got taking off his meds. Remember when Jim Miller had Lyme disease and sucked?

That's just sort of how that goes if you're not medically capable of fighting. And we were just like, no, drugs are evil. And now we have Bigfoot. and the sad remains of his career. I will say, though, hold on, I will say just real quick, in a way, I love how. Positive note, please. Yeah, yeah, she ain't put a positive note on this, please. I love how emblematic this whole situation is for Mark Hunt and Mark Hunt's entire career, though,

because it very much is what he fought his entire career. This big pudgy dude, big Samoan guy, just bringing this natural Samoan power against all these juice to the gill monsters. That was his entire career. It was fighting just dudes who were on every type of gear imaginable and just being the kind of fat guy in there slinging with them. I got stats about that too. Last thing on this fight, actually,

because this is really what I wanted to get. I got a hot take for you. And I'm using this basically as a, we're going to test kitchen this because I've considered in the coming year, maybe fiddling with the categories, maybe removing some, maybe adding some. One of the ones I'm considering adding is a hot take category

where you can suggest the hottest take you have about a fighter's career. And in light of that, I'd like to suggest that this fight, the original fight with Antonio Bigfoot Silva, which does not win 2013 fight of the year because the fight of the year that year is the runner up for it, I believe. But the fight of the year that year is Jones Gustafson won. My hot take is that this fight is better than Jones Gustafson won. it is not as significant but I think in the same way Jeanne you talked about

showing Case the fight with Fadour and Crow Cop if you remove the John Jones versus Alexander Gustafson and the expectations that were there that Gustafsson is a joke and that they're marketing this fight by

he's just really tall and John can't fight somebody who's so tall and then Gustafin overachieving and that fight I'm not saying it's a bad fight obviously very very good fight I think that fight gets the juice that comes with you know the expectations being thwarted and this fight loses a little by being a draw and people hate draws but if you remove those kind of outside things

I think that I would rather watch this fight than watch Jones Gustafin so that so what you just ended with I agree with. If you're making me watch one, I'm choosing this fight every time. 10 times out of 10. It's just an objectively more entertaining fight, but I think in this type of conversation,

you can't remove context because John Jones versus Alexander Gustafin is so much more meaningful. I'm not saying it's a greater fight. It is a much more meaningful fight in that regard. But I'm just saying, I think this is a better fight.

That's my hot take. That's what better means. That's why it's a hot take. If better is just, Sean, you have 30 minutes and I'm making you watch one of these. I agree with you. I don't know. Where do you come down on the hottest take I've got here?

I love that Jones Gustafson fight. I know what you're saying about that the narrative around it kind of affects it, like, both positively and negatively. It gives a little juice. Yeah, yeah. And it's a bit silly when looking back on in retrospect. But that's a great fight. I will say, again, talking about this affirmation list I had for a good.

Was that the number one in your list? No, it was number three. It was number three. behind Henderson and Shogun, and I cheated, and I put both, I put Loller Rory and Loller Condit at number one. Okay, so it's actually number four. It was actually number four if you want to be technical about it. But it's a great fight. I still stand by.

I do think the stakes matter. It doesn't pass. It doesn't work as well with sort of the criteria. I think Shaheen said earlier, which is really smart that, you know, if you show it to someone, like, your kid or something and they're not, they don't really care necessarily about all this context. a fight like Bigfoot and Marcotte's going to jump out more, it's going to hold their attention more.

But I'm sticking with Jones, the Jones Gus won fight for now. But yeah, I understand the point being made. Well, I like it. I wanted to test her on this new idea. And I like it.

We're going to add a hottest take category moving forward because, you know what this show needs more categories? We don't have enough of them. As we're 40 minutes in and we've gone through one melt rush more spot for I don't know where you're going next. I think we're all going to have. No, I don't know. I should even say it.

I'm going to, I would guess more likely than not, we're all going to have my number two addition on here. But I don't think that you have to have this one. I think this is a bit to taste. I'll say, Jed, I bet I have it, but maybe not in the Mount Rushmore. I'm certain that it will be on, everyone will have it as a talking point. Okay. For me, I went for my second, you know, thing in the Rushmore, the,

What's, is it Lincoln? I don't know. What's the structure of Russia? I'm Canadian, so. Trying to think of how they're left to, because it's Washington. We'll get to that. I went Van der Leys Silva Pride Shockwave, 2004, December 31st, 2004. Gentlemen, are you joining me with Van der Le Silve on this Rushmore or no?

Yes. Yes. Okay. I saved it. I saved it, but as I rewatched the entire fight, I was like, boy, this, because the fight is, We all know what moment we're going to discuss. We all know what moment we're going to discuss further. Really, we should have spent 40 minutes on that, and we still might.

And I thought it was going to be just talking about that moment. But the fight itself is an excellent. If you're thinking about the iconic atomic butt drop, of course. But you go back and we watch this fight, it's actually, oh, this is just one of the best fights in 2004. This fight's just like bananas, particularly because we sort of alluded to. to this earlier, but Hunt joins, you know, joins Pride No4. If we were doing a rookie of the year at the time, I feel really confident. Mark Hunt is the 2004 rookie of the year because his year is, hey, he loses Hidehiko, Ushita, Olympic gold or silver medalist, I can't remember,

then blows the doors off Dan Bovish and then wins this fight against Vandalé Silva. At the time, Vandale is one of the top three pound-for-pound fighters in the world. He hadn't lost in like for him lost since losing to tito in 2000 so he's five years five years 18th wins 20 fight unbeaten yeah just an unreal run we talked about vandalay on the vandalea dam a few weeks back this fight was mentioned obviously in that fight or in that episode uh and you know hunt kind of he lost to hitika ushita he didn't look good against dan bobbish like bobish was beating him and then he kind of pulls this random thing out but he's stepping in on three days notice he's replacing Sakaraba.

Obviously, Van der Le is the peak of the sport right now. This is a massive upset. And this fight just rules. Like, you go and watch it and is it the most technically brilliant thing that's ever happened? No, because Mark Hunt can't do those things yet. But it speaks to how good of a, like, natural grappler he was. He certainly had deficiencies and that got exploited later.

But he kind of just took to it, at least defensive. intensively fairly well. And it was just awesome on the Fidi-Landed big power shots. And look, man, the butt drop. The atomic butt drop, baby. It's just one of the best things ever. Credit to Randy Couture

for because you could do so like that comes out of nowhere. If you don't know we're talking about one, go back and watch it. This fight's on YouTube, but you can also go UFC fight pass. I'd pay for it and it's well worth my subscription money.

it is exactly what it sounds like they are in Hunt is standing over top of Vandalea Silva and Vandale is going for up kicks and Hunt just kind of jumps on him but first and the commentary team is tickled and Randy Gatorre who could have said any number of things

and is not always known for being clever or funny goes the atomic butt drop and maybe the best thing he's ever said immediately might be the best thing he's ever said How did he do that? It's as if he, like, knew this and, like, was, I, it honestly might be the best thing Randy's ever said, because it was so natural and so perfect, and it became an internet

thing forever. And if you speak to anyone in MMA and, say, the atomic butt drop day, everyone knows. Like, it is an iconic moment for being silly, but also amazing. Are we missing a pre-fight interview or Mark Hunt's story where he said he was going to do this? Like, how did Randy Couture just pull that? out. I honestly have no idea. I'm just blown away. It's an exceptional bit of commentary work. It is. And to Sheen's point, it might be the best thing he's ever said. Oh, I wrote down, it's not the best thing he's ever said. It might be his greatest contribution to M.MA.

So now you've offered a hot tape. When we do the Randy Couture, damn, they were good. I'm going to have to find that. I don't know. I'm going to find a category for that. That might be more important than anything he's ever done. Well, his top three is easy. Ending the era of Tim Sylvia, because God damn, that was the worst era ever. And ending it and saying not bad for an old man is an iconic bit of really quality work from him. The most miserable era for heavyweight MMA in the UFC in the history of this promotion. Doing what he needed to do against James Tony, because God, that would have been terrible if he had lost that fight.

In retrospect, I think it would have been way funnier. But yeah, the Atomic. It's so iconic. Like, it's, it, it, Raney, you know, doesn't get enough credit for that because that's just an unbelievable bit. He just did it. You just threw it out there. Also, let me, let me just point out that in later interviews, Mark Hunt has referred to this as the E-Honda special,

which, I mean, bro, you're speaking my language. Anytime you can drop a street fighter reference and anything you're doing, I'm here for you. And I love calling this the E-Honda special, too, because. Yeah, that's accurate as well. Yeah. It's a terrific thing. I have a quote in the quote section. I have like a bunch of quotes, all of them from Mark Hunt's book, which I recommend you go get.

But let me just step on that briefly to hit Mark Hunt's quote about this thing. I knew Silva loved an upkick, so I had to be wary of that. But I also really felt like jumping on that prick and wailing on him. I launched myself. Like, it's not done. One, it could in there. It's great. It's like, I launched myself at him.

him with an improvised attack that I think is unlikely to have been attempted in professional MMA before or since. I jumped up and I tried to land my ass on his head as though I was at the swimming pool and the Brazilian was water. It's kind of effective. It was kind of effective. It's incredible. I just really felt like jumping on the pricking.

I now have this hilarious image of like Vanderlake throwing a perfectly timed upkick and just hitting Mark like right in the end. Like that would be that would have been amazing in its own way. I'm glad we got what we got, but that would have been amazing in its own way. He made go, no, let's keep, go keep. I've got to move on for the butt drop. I don't think we have to yet. Hold on.

One last note to the butt drop. This wasn't an isolated incident. He's done this. He's done this to others too. I don't know how to say this name. Yoshuku Nishima. Yosuke Nishijima. Yeah, he goes for a double knee drop.

He's different this man too. He definitely did it to this man. The Nisha Jima, which I have is an honorable mention in one of the upcoming categories or whatever, he is standing over top of Nisha Jima like he's inside control and he just stands up and just double knee drops on his face. I love this strategy. I'm a very tall building that's coming down on your body. Yeah. I weigh 280 and I'm going to put that at you with force.

It's just an unreal maneuver. You really feel like if he had landed this differently, it legitimately could have ended the fight. Like, it didn't look, the way it landed, it did not look comfortable. Vandrelay's head over heels. He kind of, he's a younger man. He's a younger banderling. Thank goodness he could get scorched. Yeah, he's flexible.

And I think he gets just enough his own bottom and legs in the way to sort of push Mark Hunt away from his skull. Because if that lands or his chest, like even on his chest, that's not going to feel good. You're breaking some ribs. It's 280 cannonballing. It does not feel good. It's insane. Enough. If Mark Hunt has contributed great.

deal to this sport as we continue to talk about on this wonderful episode, Dan, they were good. More fat guys need to do this. We just need more fat guys. But it's tricky because you can't, you got to be athletic fat because that was always the sneaky part about Mark Hunt, super athletic. The dudes

throwing high kicks, like he's there. We need Why it's Alexander Romanov not doing this in every single fight? Oh. Hmm. Um, I see, I was, I don't hate it. I think that this is actually should be the calling card of your favorite, my favorite,

all of our favorite, Chris Huggy Bear Barnett. Of course. Why is Chris Barnett not firing butt drops just every, every fight? When he celebrated that Jean Valante knockout with the front flip? The front flip. Just do that over guard. I mean like, could he do that in the middle of a fight? And would it work?

I don't know if it will work, but it would be great. So, A.K., you left this off. I'm assuming you played in a separate category. I did. Well, I think we pretty much can gloss over it when that category comes around. But I do want to add that in this fight, again, because it's not just this one moment. He makes Banderlea into like a lay and prey guy, which sounds insane. We just did the Vanderlea damn saying it's the most ferocious guy.

Prime Axe murder. He was getting rocked. He was getting killed on the feet. He gets dropped several times in this fight. He has to. has to go to his grappling, right? He clearly has much better grappling jiu-jitsu than Marc-Hunt at this point. So he has to do it. And there's a lot of this fight is him just kind of laying on top and hoping for the best. And it's a split decision. But weirdly, if you go by like more modern

rules, it's a pretty clear, like unanimous decision for, for Mark Hunt. The damage is all Mark Hunt. It's one way for Mark Hunt. So it's a really funny fight for watch. It's really a split decision because pride is the company that Vanderley built. Like that's, that's really the split decision here. Markham wins this fight for real. And they couldn't even deny him, which is great. My next one, I would bet one or both of you have this on, but again, I think you could leave this off or slide it to any number of other categories. I wanted one walkoff on my list.

I feel like I needed, I absolutely needed to have Anderson Silva or Antonio Silva. Get the right one. I needed to have Van der Leigh because the Van der Le one is also this enormous fight that sort of Mark Hunt has arrived as a going concern. Get the right. The right one. Get the right one. Get the right one.

This is Roy Nelson. U of C Japan. Oh, you didn't want the Roy Nelson. Oh, we might have got, so she mean, we might agree on this one then. Why? So I had six as my final and Roy Nelson was the one of the last cuts. It wasn't the last cut, but it was one of the last cut. I'm really interested in to see what the right one is then because I went with this one.

One, I mean, this was the knockout of the year in 2014, so that's always going to give you a little bit extra juice. Not for a MMA fighting. Who? It was for the World MMA Awards. What was our 2014 K with the year? I couldn't tell you off him. I'll look that up while other people are talking in a moment.

But it's, I think it's his best walk-off. I'm not committed to that. But doing it against Roy Nelson, who at that point in time had only been knocked out by And Jaralowski like a decade ago or something insane, one, also this fight is hilarious to me because it's two short fat guys who are known for having iron chins and throw in heaters. And in this battle of the same style of fighter, Mark Hunt is just way too, way too powerful against Roy Nelson.

It is a full face plant, which is a lot of his other knockouts like walkoffs are not like a full face drop like Roy Nelson does. and I think it's just like a really good one. So this was my nominee, my selection from his walk-off catalog, which is obviously many. It appears that neither of you have included it, though. I have it for later. I have for later. Again, I assume so. But I'm excited that we have some diversity here, because particularly with Brock,

wasn't there was like none. So just to close the loop really quickly while you were talking, I looked it up. 2014 knockout of the year for MMA fighting. I forgot that I wrote this article. Mark Hunt, Roy Nelson, not even in the top five. Not even in the top five. What are our top? Because 2014 would have been a year where you just picked your five.

We weren't doing a voting panel. Yeah. I wasn't even on M.AFind.com. So this was just. So it was a trash website. This was Shaheen's list. Number five, Machita defeat C.B. Dalloway. Okay.

good knockout. Number four, Dan Henderson defeats Shogun. The second, the rematch. Yeah, this is a rematch. Number three, Joe Schilling, Melvin Manhoof, which that's, you should look that up.

That's really sick knockout. That's a really good poll. I don't have a huge issue to that. That's a good poll, Shahim. Number two, stun gun Kim. That was you going deep cut. Stungun Kim defeats John Hathaway, which was the spinning back elbow knockout.

Yeah. Which was sick. And then I ended up giving it to rest in peace, Josh Saman, starching Eddie Gordon with a head kick considering all of the story about Josh's girlfriend having died on that day, the anniversary,

all of it. Like, it was a really emotional thing. You broke down in tears. Like, there's a whole, like, backstory to it. So that was, that ended up winning. Also, visually, just a pretty spectacular. I mean, crazy spectacular. He was down two rounds to zero, too. I'm actually willing to say stun gun should have won for that year. That, the stun gun,

that's probably better. But, yeah. Okay. interesting then let's pivot away from my last one because sheen you appear to have thoughts this one didn't make your final list what is your what are you slotting in here then so i had so i like you it was like i got to get at least one walkoff you got to have one you got to have one if we're not going to do a whole separate rushmore for walkoffs you got to at least get one if you're trying to tell the story of mark hunt and four fights one of them has to be a walkoff it just got to be there so i had come down to the roy nelson one which you said i mean

one of only two men ever, Kio Prime Big Country, prime Big Country had the greatest chin ever, like that was just a real feat, earned him a title shot in the UFC, et cetera. But I had to just go to one of the most aesthetically pleasing KOs ever. And you should know what I mean by that when I say that. It's Stefan Struth.

It's the lunging, jumping, height difference, just ridiculous left hand that Mark Hunt throws his entire body into. There's a perfect angle. where the camera is behind Stefan Struv, and you see Mark Hunt just take a running start, literally like an anime, and throw his entire body into that left hand,

and Stefan Struv just crumbles. It's just, it's so perfect. Everything about it is perfect. We need more Stefan Struves in the world of M.A. One, shout out to Stefan Struv, who's now doing, like, media stuff. You know, still around, still contributing. We need more,

gangly weird dudes who are great at getting knocked out because you just you gotta have more of these guys stephen strew when he got knocked out it was always spectacular because there's just so much of him that when he collapses like a building it looks like a building demolition inside of the gauge so it's terrific so i don't have any issues with choosing that one over roy nelson he's so long and skinny that any time you match him up against the short fat guy it's just perfection That is perfection, just aesthetically. I love it. Give me a whole card of big tall guy versus short fat guy.

And let me just, we were talking about the scoreboard idea of PFL versus Belator of just having a scoreboard the whole year. Give me the short fat guy versus the tall, skinny guy scoreboard, that whole entire event and just set up the event like that. Come on. This. I would a thousand percent book Fight Circus. I know you listen.

One of your fight circus events just needs to be this. Like, this is right in your wheelhouse. I will pay $100 for this event. I will pay $100. John, not, are you listening? John, that you got $100 from Chey and L. Shady. You get several more from several other people who are into some. This is obviously dopey and brilliant idea.

I'm pretty sure that at least according to the on-screen listing of their heights, that this is the biggest differential that's DeFon Street ever have with an opponent because I've had to be a 5-10. They still think it's Dennis. Dennis Stonish has lifted six feet. If you guys watch the Struve Stonish fight, I don't think there's any way that Dennis Stoenich is six feet tall. I'm not convinced that he's taller than Mark Hunt, frankly.

But statistically, it says Stoneich is six feet tall, Mark Hunt, five foot 10, and four step on Struv is seven feet tall. So this is officially, according to MMA records, the biggest differential for a step on Struv opponent. And it shows, and like you guys said, it's wonderful. But by definition, that has to be the biggest differential in UFC history. Yes. Oh, yes.

There's no other weight class where that could happen. Also, one of the things that stuck out with me on this one is comparing it to another similar aesthetic fight, which is the Simi-Shilt kickboxing match. Because Simi-Shilt 6-11, the difference in that versus Hunt and Struve, like, it gets to what you were saying, Sheen, he is tall and gangly, where Simi-Shilt is tall and thick. Yeah. And so if you go watch the K-1 of Simi Shilton, Mark Hunt, it legitimately looks like I'm fighting like a fourth grader.

Like it is the size disparity just looks absolutely cartoonish. This one just looks really funny, but it doesn't look like, oh, this isn't a reasonable fight to make between that fat man and that tall. And it's like, yeah, they both were way roughly similar things. And that just like speaks to how perfect stuff. and Struv is as this exact foil to the short fat mark hunt. This was, by the way, also a UFC on Fuel TV 8 in Saitama, which is kind of like, we've mentioned Vandrelay so many times,

obviously we just mentioned the whole fight. This is kind of a sister damn almost, I feel like, to the Vanderlay episode. Because I know we're going to talk about some pride stuff as well, I think. More pride stuff, I should say. Because this was, yeah, this was that same show on Saitama. I think we all had Vandrle and Brian Stan on our Vandrlea Mount Rushmore, I think. I think we all had. I don't know if someone left it off.

I might not have had it. You might not have had it. But it's up there. It's a strong candidate, right? And that was the main event. So that was the main, Co-main. We had two Mount Rushmore fights.

I was just looking at the card now. Did any other fighter have a Mount Rushmore moment? Maybe, and I was like, maybe Heung-Gu-Lam, if we ever did a... Remember when that guy was the thing? Yon-Gu-Lam, if we ever did a Mount Rush, a damn for him, unlikely. I guess this, just UFC debut would be on there.

But, yeah, but that's not bad, though. That's not bad for a random fight night in Saitama to have two amount of rush more fights. No, particularly because this was that stretch where they went to Saitama back like several years in a row and then they've sort of stopped doing it. But look, and they will get into a lot of hunts, you know, issues at the UFC. But when he joined the UFC and they kept him around, they immediately knew where their bread was buttered. He fought in Saitama three of his first like five fights in the promotion or something like that.

They knew where he was a draw and popular. And also, I mean, that adds to it. The Roy Nelson also is in Saitama, you know. These were all, they knew what they were doing with it. In case you couldn't tell, I'm with Shaheen. This was my walk-off choice for my Mar-Rushmore. So I also, yeah, I also went to fun Struv. A couple other notes here.

Struve was a two-to-one favorite, which makes sense because who had he just beaten before fighting Mark Hunt? Steve and future heavyweight champion and future favorite, Jeff Michoud, Al-Timer, Steve A. So, so Struv, and he was on a run. It was like three or four straight wins. So I think Strupe was like we were, this was the annual, man, maybe Stefan Strupp's putting it together moment, I believe.

And then sure enough did not go his way. If anything, I feel like this was the final nail and like, you know, this guy might not be able to ever develop an effective jab. I think we were like when he got knocked up by a guy who is more than a foot shorter than him, that jab is not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. This probably actually was the fight that ended that. This fight is so funny.

too because every time, every time Mark Hunt hits Stefan, he's basically having to jump. Like, he's having to leave his feet to land any of these punches. And it's like an anime. I've said that twice already. But like, this whole, this fight is so nonsensical and I love it. And it worked because he knocked him out. It worked. It worked.

You guys have convinced me. I'm going to change my list. Roy Nelson, you're out. Stefan Struve, you're in as the walk-up option. Can you do that? I can't do that. I'm in charge of the show. I can do anything I want.

You just rechiseled your amount of Rushmore. Wow. You know, sometimes you got to, as a man who lives in the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta, sometimes you got to blow up shitty mountainside carvings and replace them with better things. Sometimes you have stone mountain Georgia. Lackluster OCs and then you got to bring in the goat Mike Bobo. Let's not. We don't need to get.

Free Mike Bobo. We were getting along. We were getting along. get sidetracked here. My final Mount Rushmore then. So as I have it, I've listed three, AK, do we have, we have two from you? Sheehan, we have three from you.

Yes. Correct? Okay, my last one, this is where I curved it up. I don't think y'all will have this wrong there, but if so, I love to have you in this great company. I went with a K-1 fight because I feel like you've got to have K-1. It's Markham. I got to.

I think there's an obvious choice he could make. I wasn't going to make it because not only do you have, if you're going to have a Mark Hunt story told, you got to talk about K1, you got to talk about Jerome Labanard. Four times. Every one of them is sick. If you haven't, go find them.

They are out there. They are all insane. I chose Jerome Labanor 2. It's the K1 World 2001 Grand Prix quarter finals. It is the one win Mark Hunt gets over JLB. It is the win that sets him up. up. It's the quarterfinals. He wins the sims in the finals. This is where Mark Hunt becomes K-1 champion, the title that follows him for the rest of his career. You know, you could pick

the K-1 win over Francis Fielho, but that fight is honestly one of the few Mark Hunt fights that actually isn't that fun to watch if you go back and watch it. So I thought that this kind of just threaded all the needles. I get K-1, I get JLB, I get the Grand Prix title win all there. It's an incredible knockouts, just absolutely stunner. Also, I wasn't super big into K-1 at the time, but you go back and look at it, one of the biggest upsets in K-1 history, J-LB at the time,

I'd won 14 in a row. Champion, like, won several things, and this is, like, statistically one of the biggest upsets in the history of K-1. So this rounded out my Rushmore, AK, I saw you nodding along a lot. Did you join me? Yeah, I'm not going to,

to pretend I was watching K1 kickboxing around the early 2000 late 90s. I was not. So I had to do a very quick review of some of his bigger moments, bigger fights, do some reading. And sure enough, this one just jumps right off the page. It is the only time he beat Jerome Lepanner. And the story behind it, and I'm going by, there was a little bit of note on Wikipedia, but I wants no more.

So I had to go, of course, to Reddit, the most trustworthy. Dude, I spend a lot of time on Reddit for these, like, this prep, you spend a lot of time in Reddit. So shoutouts to. Ninja Raptor 4444. I'm just going to read out what they said about the... The scholar. Yes, the scholar.

They said, the backstory's cool, too. LeBanner had beaten Hunt the year before. So it was a massive shock when Hunt chose LeBanner as his opponent for the quarterfinals. Mark later mentioned that on the night they picked opponents. He had just had his legendary war against childhood mate Ray Sefo, which though he lost, Seffo was too injured to continue. And I'll add my own note here, Hunt then went on to sort of take his place in the finals of that other tournament and won that one.

So Hunt, and then back to this comment, Hunt was still running on sheer adrenaline and went on to beat kickboxing legend Adam Watt the same night. That's what I'm talking about. He basically chose to rematch the banner because when it came to time to choose, he was too tired to walk to a further opponent. So I had to get the picture of them being on a stage and then asking Hunt who you wanted to court to find out of gangsters. How gangsters do? You are like willingly choosing to fight a man who has already been. you who already at that point Jerome O'Bannar, living legend of kickboxing already at that point. You are willingly putting your finger in his chest when you have an actual choice.

Like that, how gangster is that man? Hey, hey, do you want to fight this bear or do you want to walk a little further and go fight that chihuahua? I just gave me the bear. I don't want that's too bad. I don't have time for this. I don't have time. I'll just fight the bear. I'll be okay.

And then he Fs him up. Also, if you watch him up. Dude, that's the thing. If you watch his knockout. Oh, cool. God, it's a bad one. It's a real bad one. The fight's insane, too, because, like, I just forgot how fun K1 is because K1 is just all action.

Like, all of the K1 fights are just like, it's really short rounds. It's all offense. Everybody's just got to get after it. And this fight, they are just chucking them at each other. And then Hunt kills him. Hunt's like taunting him. He's like, tell him to come hit me. Come hit me.

He talks them. It's, man. It's great. This was, whew, is it? So this rounded me out. A.K., this was on you. Shaheen,

did this round you out? So I ultimately just didn't have a K-1 appearance in my top four. Again, I think that's reasonable. That's what I kept going back and forth. Like, I don't feel good about this because that's such a big part of Hunt's legacy is just this early stuff.

But like, the only title he ever wins is the K-1 title. But I ultimately, it was one of my last cuts to, too. It wasn't my final K-1 cut. I can tell you what that is if you want. But this was probably like on the borderline of cuts there. I mean, it was hard to keep this off.

Well, let's round out yours and then we can close down with AK, who is now given us three. So, Shaheen, what rounded out your Mount Rushmore and then we can get to honorable mentions? All right. So what rounded out the Mount Rushmore ultimately is probably his best win ever, which is the Crow Cop win. Crow cop is my first honorable mention. So this was the one that ended up getting cut as I was flipping coins to decide what's out. It's just to beat prime Crow Cop at this point, which again, what was this? Like his fourth professional M.M.A.

It was right after beating Vanderlete. Yeah. Van der Leigh Crow Cop back to back in your third and fourth fight. And like, beat him. It wasn't a flu. It established a Mark Hunt is not a fluke in MMA because he kind of was just. like is this did that really just happen with the vandalay stuff established no like he's easier another pound for pound top win eats a flush head kick eats like a flush cemetery headkick

and just keeps on going establishes the legend of this chin that is this is where the legend of mark hunt is born yeah this fight the vandalay silver fight is when he is introduced to the mhm a world that's like here's a dude this is the fight that makes him an internet hero for years to come And it's just unreal. It's unfathomable. Like Alex Pereira is maybe a good example, but even that is not a good comparison. This would be like some rando coming into the UFC and then beating, I don't know, like what's a good comparison for like proper day MMA of like these two wins back to back?

Dude. Like someone coming in and beating this would be someone coming in and beaten Volcanowski and Mokachev in back to back fights. and it's like a meme guy like a meme guy who's supposed to be bad but it's also if like he eats a flush uppercut from Francis and Gano and I was just like yeah we good whatever

keep coming like it's just it's an insane one it is it got left off mine in the number five spot but yeah I think I didn't like I said at the top of this I hated my Mount Rushmore because I couldn't find four

that like I didn't know how to cut any of these out like you could cut out the walk off but then did you tell the story mark hunt it's so hard so i think it's a great it's a great call it's his best m mow win and he got it so early it probably is his best of a win isn't it like it has to be right it has to be what like that's a that's a crow cop who's really only lost to like fadour and kevin ranalman also for context like he had lost to crow cop in kickboxing prior to this so it is not like this is not a oh hey now he's fighting crow cop so he's got it's like no he'd already lost the crocrop in kickboxing and he comes in and beats him and like he beats crocop like there's again

split decision that no he just won the fight he won that fight he was pretty cleanly won the fight yeah so that was my fourth that's a that's a great fourth aka yeah what did what was your fourth for the mount russe jeanne i'm with you i'm with you because i think this is why also vanderlay i think I think I chose between this in Vanderley for the Mountain Rushmore. I think that's what it came down to. And while the Vanderley fight is better, it's more fun. This is a more significant win. This is more meaningful.

It's someone who's actually a heavyweight. Not that mattered that much, I guess, in pride. But Vanderley was considerably smaller if you want to talk about it. You know, it is a different weight class. It was weird circumstances under which that fight happened. Mirko, again, this heavyweight versus heavyweight. Mirko, two fights removed from the fade-or fight. He was the number two heavyweight in the world.

He's still that, dude. And Mark Hunt takes the fight to him, man. Like, he is the aggressor. You know, he is, he's coming forward. He is like, you can see Crowcops doing all the right things. He's pushing him off. He's looking to set up that head kick. But man, Hunt is just, he's just kind of figured out.

Or if he doesn't have him figured out, he doesn't care. He's just kind of going to go for it anyway. There's a moment at the end where Crowcock kind of tries to brush him off. Like he just, he brushes him off, starts to walk away, like waves his finger like, oh, you didn't get the better of that exchange. So Hunt just rushes him, right? It just rushes into it with like a flying knee. And he gets taken down.

But just the audacity. just like, you know what? I am doing everything I can to win this fight. I don't care. I don't care that you'd be before. I don't care that this is my fourth M.A fight. I am going to beat you. And sure enough, he does.

Another quote unquote split call. I thought this was pretty clear for Marcund, frankly. And the drama of the moment is really nice. And because I feel like maybe we've talked about another episode of Dan, we're talking about pride guys. But I love the pride Zoom, the winner's Zoom. You know, the rapid Zoom once the decision is read on the guy. It's so good.

It's so good. It gets a little shaky because then people start brushing in, and then the camera's trying to navigate through all these bodies and all that. But that's part of it. That's part of the thrill of that moment. And we see that both in the Vanderlai and the Crow Cop win. And it's so exciting. And again, Mark Hunt's not jumping around.

He's not like, she's not throwing his fist to the air. He's not woo woo-wooing. He's just kind of like, oh, cool, I got the win. I think his post-fight species just thanks everyone for coming. And that's it just gives the mic back. It's so cool. It's such a big win. And he handles it so coolly.

It's just amazing. I don't know anyone else who would react this way in this situation. It's really something. That sequence you mentioned of him Russian Crow Cop after all that. That to me is just so emblematic of all of this. Because there are a few men in the history of this sport who have been so capable of just staring down the scariest monsters that MMA has ever created and just laughing in their face. It's ridiculous.

It's uncanny. And by the way, KroKob, after this, went back to just messing people up. It wasn't like, oh, this was like right before his uneven UFs. No, he went another win streak. Then we got the sort of less than satisfying UFC run. But this is such a good. It aged so well.

It was an amazing win at the time. It aged well. It's just so wild. His fourth MMA fight. Also, this fight, I found this out after the fact, because again, from Mark Hunt's book, Born to Fight, highly recommended if you haven't read it, he informs that this fight,

he didn't realize it, but was a title Eliminator. Like, he ends up having two more fights or three more fights before he fights Fador, but apparently the decision that he would fight Fador was basically made after this fight. Pride was a very silly

organization. Like, yeah, you're going to fight Fador, but like, next year. Next December. Yeah, yeah. Next December. They wanted to do it at the Pride shockwave in December again, and so instead he just fought three more times

in 06 before then. I wish UFC would do that. I wish B'Neill Darry should have been guaranteed, like a title shot like four fights ago. I was like, yeah, take a couple more fights in between. It doesn't matter if you lose it. It didn't even. Get steamrolled by Josh Barnett. We're still going to put you in the title fight at Shock Wave 06, baby.

Let's go. Love it. Fantastic. So we ended up having a lot of overlap, which I was a bit surprised because I think there's a ton of ways to go. Let's dive into some honorable mentions because I think you could talk a lot of different honorable mentions here. I briefly, and by briefly, I mean, I just straight up did. I did a separate Mount Rushmore of losses because there were just several losses that I think

are important. And so I decided to put those in my honorable mentions because I honestly considered putting any number of them in the actual Mount Rushmore. They were earlier cuts, but the first one, the biggest one, Melvin Man, who is. Dynamite 2008. We talked about it on the Melvin Manhoof Dam. This still, I think it may be the most impressive thing I've ever seen in a cage. Yes.

Or a ring. Like everything we said about Mark Hunt and how he could not be defeated with a two by four and how Crowcock kicked him in the face, Melvin Manhoof just sleeps him in 18 seconds. Like Mark Hunt charges in and I said it on the. damn for Melvin. I'm so happy we did that. The Melvin damn, that was a damn for us, y'all. It was one for them. Brock Lesnar was a damn for them. Melvin

was a damn for us and I said it then. I distinctly remember after that listening to the Sherdog Radio Network and Jordan Breen talking about this insane thing happening and being like, I don't even care who Melvin Man have fights. I just want to see him try to knock things out. Like, can he

knock out a horse? He might be able to. He just slept on 18 seconds. And remember feeling that in my like, yeah, I don't, I don't, I didn't know this was possible. So that's all my melt. I just, I just want to say. Yeah. Five foot eight, 200 pound man knocking out one of the greatest iron adamantium chins in the history of combat sports in 18 seconds. Unbrew.

Unfucking believable. It's a freaking missile. It's insane. We've sort of hinted and talked around it. Fado Emilienenko in Shockwave 06, like this is, I mean, this is, I think, the moment when Mark Hunt probably actually did come on my radar as like, oh, I should genuinely pay attention to him as opposed to like, you already knew the legend of Mark Hunt, but by then he had lost a Barnett. It seemed like he was a kickbox who had gotten some favorable matches. And then he's like almost taps Fado or twice. And it's listening to Frank Trigg

Talk through this on commentary and being like, oh, oh, he's got that. Like, I didn't know Mark Hunt could do this. And you're just like watching Fador's arm. And then Fador gets up and he's like, I rarely agree with the things that they say in some of these. Like, Fado looks angry. I'm like, actually, yeah,

Fado looks really pissed off right now that he almost got tapped out by Mark freaking hot. And then he just goes Terminator mode on him. like that's a super significant loss in mark hunt's career um which i'll i'll loop back to in a couple of future categories uh we haven't and straight up i don't even know where you would put the fabrice over doom loss in any category here which is kind of why i did this mount russmore of losses the ver doom loss is like super significant he is fighting for a ufc interim title and he nearly wanted He nearly wanted.

Unbelievable. And like, I were distinctly remember at the time, the narrative being like, I can't believe where we are with Mark Hunt. Like, Mark Hunt was a joke. Kind of still is, sort of is, sort of is a joke. And now he is fighting for an interim belt and like deserves to. This was not some kind of gimmick BS. Like, he deserved to have that shot.

And he almost pulls it off. And then it goes so bad. such a out of nowhere way from Verdun. It was a stunning sort of change of pace at the time. And like that feels really significant to his career, you know? Well, so let me speak about this a little bit because I was in Mexico City for that. Oh, were you? Okay. I was. And I remember all of this very vividly in this moment that we were having with Mark Hunt because we haven't really talked about this UFC title run very much so far on this program.

but to me that's such an important part of just whatever Mark Hunt's underdog story is because essentially for people who are uninitiated and maybe aren't aware of some of this, when the UFC buys Pride in 2007, they just sort of acquire a lot of the contracts with Pride, very similar to the PFL Bell's situation. So they acquire Mark Hunt's contract, and Mark Hunt at that point is owed a very specific number of fights, but he's on this losing streak. It's a five-fight losing streak at the time. He wasn't even at the time.

So they acquired this contract 2007. And Mark Hunt has lost two in a row. They don't really know what to do with Mark Hunt. And then they kind of allow him to fight in Japan a couple more times in Dream. He loses all of those fights, one of which is the manhoof fight. The other one is Gagar Musassi, who another very small man compared to Mark Hunt subs them in like 80 seconds. And so that's where we are at the beginning of 2009 is Mark Hunt's lost five in a row. The UFC is just kind of like, I don't know.

All by stoppage, four by arm lock. Two by much smaller men. And the UFC just really doesn't know what's the last. do with him. So they basically offer him like half a million dollars to just say, hey, we'll buy out your contract. You don't need to come fight for us. You can just do whatever you want. And this lunatic is like, no, I, F that, I want to fight. Let me fight this contract. And so they give him the fights. And he fights the immortal Sean McCorkel for his UFC debut and loses again in like the first round in a really stupid, embarrassing way. It's like 63 seconds. Just get steamroll.

Submitted again, 63 seconds. And at that point, I think he has like one or two fights left on his deal. They're just like, all right, whatever, man. Just run through this contract so we can get rid of you. He's on a terrible, terrible losing streak, six straight. At that point, his pro-MMA record is five and seven. Five and seven. The guy who beat Vanderlai and Croweck is now five and seven, and everyone's just writing him off.

And then he goes on this run. He goes on this crazy UFC run of all these fights we've mentioned. And I remember the Mexico City won so vividly because Markham wasn't supposed to be there. It was short notice. was stepping in as a replacement because the cane got injured, I believe. And so then it was just, you had to, there's this whole jockeying for it. And Mexico City treated that man like a hero all week because it was just this incredible underdog story. I think also he was going through immense personal struggles within his own personal life of like within his relationship,

something like that. So there's just a lot going on. I remember the weight being a really big issue that week too of just like this is really short notice. It's a giant man. He might not be able to make the weight. It makes the weight. And like in that first round, he drops Fabrizio twice. And it's almost just this bisming level of what the hell? How is this guy about to win the UFC title? And then he runs out of steam and loses in the second round. But just like the the steps it took to get to that point is one of the greatest underdog stories in the history of the UFC. Had he won, his career record would have been 11, 8, and 1. It just most outland. as the chip.

11.1 with wins over for Doom, Crow Cop, and Vader-Lays Silva. Yeah, just, yeah, it's, and so, yeah, like, again, that was on my Rushmore list. Like, how do I, I have to leave it off because there's so much other stuff, but really significant. I had Simi Shilt on my Mount Rushmore of losses, just because, for all the mentions I reasoned, talked about earlier, 13 inches of height. And it's just quite funny to watch the, the physical differences, and then Simi just kills him with a spinning back kick to the body.

Oddly enough, despite the man having one of the most battle tested and proven Chinsenema history, people didn't rip him to the body nearly enough, and Simi Schilt sent him to the land of wind, then ghosts with one of those. And then the ovarine knee, like I was, so I just had a whole pile of Mount Rushmore

of losses that were significant. it. The Overeign rematch, and he was insane. It was. I don't want to cut in. So if you have something to say that. No, no. It's just like, it's if you just go rewatch it, it's just like, I mean, I have other things to talk about this looping back later, but that, that is the fight. I left off Brock Lesnar because we're going to talk about him plenty. It's a no contest. It wasn't a loss. Also. It's no contest. So it can't make it. Fair point. The overeign knee loss is when I was like, oh. Okay, we could probably count Mark Hunt out now.

Like, I think we're done. And maybe a little wary because we counted him out before. And then he sort of had this incredible career resurgence. But you're like, okay, he's starting to, this legendary chin is starting to get pretty consistently cracked now. He's getting older. I distinctly remember after over and being like, all right, that's the end of Mark Hunt, the fringe title contender. But hopefully we still have several years of him left. and then we ended up not really having that as we'll get into.

So that was my Mount Rushmore of losses that I pigeonholed under honorable mentions for Mount Rushmore. Stunned. I'm stunned at one of these omissions. Please elaborate because I probably have it included in a future category if I have omitted from this. My last cut to My route Mount Rushmore, and I had it in there briefly until this morning, last second I switched it out. is the Ray Seafo fight. Because the Ray Seafo highlight is probably Mark Hunt's

most famous highlight of all time. Just the gif of them going back and forth and Mark Hunt being like, yeah. It's the Max Holloway point to the ground thing before Max Holloway, but with 250 pound men. It's just,

that whole fight is insane, but that single, like 30 seconds is one of the coolest 30 seconds in the history of combat sports. I mean, that's a great point. It also fits really neatly into a future category we'll talk about, which is where I have it. Oh, okay, okay.

I know what that's going. I mean, again, if you want to put this in, it totally makes sense. Also, yeah, weren't they training partners? Is I, is that training partners, friends, yeah? I mean, I knew that they were like hung up, but I think at one point there, and so it's just like, this is sort of the, this is the fight I think about or a fight that I think you should think about when it's like, oh, they're training partners. they'll never fight each other. Or you could just be lunatics and friends and training partners and just beat the souls out of each other

because I've done that with my friends. Like, I'm friends with all the people I train with. I still try to beat the hell out of them. Why can't you do that for money? And get paid. Yeah, exactly. Get paid for something you've been doing for free guys.

Yeah. If you're good at something, never do it for free. And they never, people never think about this. You're like, oh, we can't fight each other. Blah. Lay, be more like these two gentlemen,

which. Grinning. Grinning. the entire time begging each other to knock with the other out. Just begging each other. Just I, there are a couple of times in his career where Mark Hunt is just like, hey man, my hands are going to get above my waist and just throw, see what happens. And also my chin's not going to get tucked.

Like, I'm going to put this right here for you. It's right here. Let's go and see, see what comes on here. So, man, I mean, it's great for context. That is one of my mentions in the upcoming Randolplex award. I have three things there. That's one of them. Any other honorable mentions you guys want to tuck in here,

or should we finally, after 90 minutes? I think we have to. The good thing is, and not to rush this podcast long, it's pleasure to talk about the great Mark Hyde. The good thing is, I think we're going to touch upon some of these fights again in future categories, things like that. So we don't have to, we'll do our best not to repeat everything he said, but it's just so fun to talk about some of these moments.

They're so fun. It is. Yeah, I, again, if we did Mount Rushmore of K-1, which I think you can, Ray CFO's for sure. And that one, also, Ray Sefo rocking it out in Fubu Shorts is just. Handsome, you forget how handsome this man was when he was younger. He's, he did style. I don't forget because I see him every time the PFL comes to Atlanta, I hang out with him. Like, he's still, it's still a, it's a more handsome man than I am.

He's good looking at. Sure. And he beat my ass. So, you know, he's got everything you need there. Next category. I know we took a long time, but, you know, we just really had to enjoy all the wonders that Mark Hunt has provided us. I think some of these will move at least a little bit faster, but I'm honestly not sure.

I got a lot of depth here. This is the I'm not impressed by your performance award. I'm not impressed by your performance. This is for. you know, the career low light. And again, I could have put my Mount Rushmore of losses in here, but I went a different way, put that up there. I've got one that jumped out and then I had, you know,

I thought about a couple of honorable mentions, but I want to throw it to y'all first, AK, what is your, I'm not impressed by your performance? I'll be the bummer. I mean, listen, the Brock listener, everything, just everything. My note was. I think that I expected at least one of you to have that one. My note was before the fight, during the fight,

after the fight, everything about this sucked. And there's a very, very, very good chance that this is the most watched fight of Hunt's career. I guess if you go, I could guess you go into, maybe there's some, I don't know. You're probably right. You're probably right. Pride that is peaked.

You know, I'm sure he got a lot of eyeballs there. It's probably not even close, man. You're very much right. It is definitely not even close. For a lot of people, this was their only or one of their few glimpses of the wonderful Mark Hunt's. And they just saw a not super physically impressed looking guy, get laid on by a hulking, obviously stir right enough fighter.

This is, and the aftermath, again, I don't want to get all the details, which is since they're pretty cluttered in my head because the ensuing lawsuit where Mark Hunt accused the UFC and Dana White and other people involved, and Brock Lesnar, of racketeering, conspiracy, suggesting that they knew that he was using performance-enhancing drugs and that they allowed him to, of course, get through the test even though he later failed a post-fight test, but by then, of course, that was months after this fight had happened.

There was a lot of charges that Hunt had levied against the UFC, which sadly he had no way of proving. I know I just said clearly stare at it up Brock Lesnar, and yes, he failed the test after, but the things that Hunt was demanding, the thing that Hunt, he wants justice, like the utmost justice of UFC are just not going to come. His whole thing is that he's, you know,

that he cannot prove. He cannot prove that the UFC knew what was going on. We all knew it. He said it in a free fight interview. I should have written down the exact quote, but the whole, I don't care if this guy's juiced up, I'm going to knock him out, something like that. And we all look back on that quote and just shake our heads now.

This is one of the most depressing combat sports stories ever. It has cost hunt hundreds of thousands of dollars. Millions. And we're doing this show now, recapping the highlights, because frankly, to a large segment of the NBA community, this is all they know him for, and 20 years from now, all that they're going to remember him for. The guy who lost this, again, almost ridiculous U.S.C. trial with the U.S. and with

Brocklessnerner, other people. So it's just such a bummer, and I wish. It pretty much ruined his life. And I hate to say it because we all know he's right, not that not that he's right. Honestly, I won't say for sure that the UFC knew Brockless and Nerschina. That's a whole other thing. I don't want to get to that. I can get sued. I don't want to get to that. But we all knew that. because there's not the cleanest fighter. And that's at the heart of this. But for Hunt to pursue it legally, I think was just such a huge mistake.

And I think we saw that play out in real time. And it's just, I feel horribly having to bring it up. Well, there's two sides of this. There's two sides of this, right? Because one, it made him persona non-grata within the UFC. And so he will never be recognized for a lot of the moments that we were talking about. Hunt, Silva will probably never be a Hall of Fame fight when obviously it should be. Like he will never get his flowers from the UFC because if you hear Daniel White talk about Mark Hunt now, that gives you a little clue about how the UFC feels about him.

It's just unfortunate. And like you said, I think for a whole generation and probably generations moving forward of fans, this is who Mark Hunt is. He's the guy who had an atrocious fight with Brock Lesnar and then complained about it a lot and lost a lot of money, just trying to do something about it. But then also, too, it's the other side of it of like it genuinely ruined his professional life. like four years. Like this cost this man so much money. I hope that Mark Hunt is okay financially. I know he made a lot of money over the course of his career.

This probably took a gigantic chunk out of it. It is super, super unfortunate. All for like a terrible, terrible, terrible fight. I was in the arena for that fight. It was just God awful. And it was so disappointing because I so badly, I know we're supposed to be unbiased when we watch these events. I so badly wanted Mark Hunt to knock fucking Brock Lesnar out.

it was never going to happen once. It was never going to happen. Wasn't even remotely possible. I'm going to go ahead and step on a future category. So this is where we've renamed, or I've recommissioned the category, the nitpick category. I've changed that to the Fighter Consulting and Management Services Award, where you get to be the Fighters manager, retroactive career manager and our consultant and get to change one decision they made be that. choice of ring walkout or a tire, et cetera. And this was my obvious answer for that.

It was simply don't take the Brock Lesnar fight and certainly don't sue afterwards because everything you guys said is right. Outside of destroying his career, which this functionally did, as then the remainder of his UFC career was very animosity, like high-level animosity. And he's already in his 40s. And so instead of having some fun end of career fights, it could be it was just this and he lost millions of dollars. And irreparably tarnished his reputation with a whole host of people who, you know, that just sucks that that's how they view him with. Honestly, my two, I distinctly remember at the time because I think I was on, I just started with enemy fighting sort of as this had happened.

and I think one of the first things I it's UFC 201 and it's in Atlanta and Ariel and Esther and Casey are here and we do like a reaction sort of pod to this happening right this the Mark Hunt lawsuit stuff and I remember my exact take at the time they were much more pro Mark Hunt than I was and I was like I think this is really stupid I won I think this isn't going to work out for him. well, this is going to go quite poorly for him in the long run, I suspect. And two, I'm not trying to cast dispersions on Marc Hunt, but this just feels like sour grapes, man, like, because he had quotes going into the fight. I don't care if he's on steroids. I'm still going to knock him out. And then after you lose, that changes. And I'm not here to say that it's, you know, that he shouldn't feel some type of way and that it's

unfair, but like, at some part of him knew that there was a possibility of it. And it was always just such a weird thing to me, his stance here, because I truly don't know what triggered it. Like, I think part of him knew going in that that was probably the case. And then even afterwards, when you think of Mark Hunt now, guys, like, and when you went back, does this feel like this comports with his personality for most of his career? Like he was a generally a pretty happy go lucky kind of dude, like stoic, respectful. Like, didn't really let things bother him.

But for whatever reason, this got under his skin to such a way where he got really nasty about it. And again, I'm not saying he's wrong or whatever to be nasty about it. But like, I think it influenced how I view him, not as his legacy as a fighter, but like his personality and how much this became part of him. Is that tracking with you all? I think there's a straw that broke the camel's back element to this. And also the magnitude of the fight, like we said, the biggest fight of his career. Because this was after Antonio Silva had tested positive. This was after Frank Meir had tested positive.

So at this point, this is this third guy that he's, that he's least, you know, that we know about, that has failed a drug test or that he expected to fail a drug test. So there was definitely that element of it. And in a way, I think it does jive with his sportsman. attitude because he was like, you know what, I cannot, I am not respecting my profession. I am not respecting martial arts if I let this guy get away with this. Not this guy. You know, not this guy. I respect Bigfoot. We were in the case together. You know, whatever. At least, at least I respect this guy. Frank Mear, former UFC champion. I mean, so is Brock. But, you know, more traditional mixed martial arts background. I respect Frank Mear. I do not respect Brock. I hate

how this fight went. And we should keep in mind. He did beat Bigfoot in the rematch too. And he did be Frank Mirren the rematch. So maybe there's a little sour grapes because he did not beat Brock Lesnar, but I just think it was a confluence of events. And I don't think it's against his character because I think he's standing up for something. We just never seen him be so vocal about it and certainly not take this kind of action against it. And that's the thing. It always felt like, because I, Jed, I agree with you that the sour grapes element always rung the strongest for me because also like, dude, you find Japan, man. Like, you find in Japan a lot. Like you're on pride a lot where they explicitly stated in contracts that they did not test for performance-enhancing drugs.

Like you knew the score. Your whole career, you knew the score and you were fine with it. It was just- And you were fine with it going into this one. It was- You were an unquote saying, I don't care if he takes steroids. I'm going to knock his head off. That's a quote. But I think what AK said hits the nail on the head. Not this guy.

Not this guy. Fuck this guy. This guy cannot be doing this to me. I think there was a real element of like just not respecting Brock Lesnar as a martial artist in the same way that he would have with Mirko or Freud, it up Vandale or even Bigfoot or any of these dudes who were just clearly on the juice that Mark Hunt had no problem fighting K-1. Like half of two-thirds of his K-1 opponents. You're not telling me any of the K-1 people are pan-clean, you know? Mark Hunt just did not have that level of respect for Brock, and I feel like that will forever eat at him of like, I can't believe that this guy got one over.

Because also, like, the joyful, the gleefulness of, like, all of it from Brock to have just being so unapologetic about it. Like, yeah, yeah, sucks to suck, boy. I'm over here making a ton of money doing something else now. What you're going to do? Like, that's... We didn't talk about it enough on the Brock. We honestly, it is a plus heel maneuver. Like, it's one of the greatest heel maneuvers I've ever seen to come in out of, like, parachute in, cheat, like, outrageously and unashamedly, not even.

and care, laughing the dude's face who then ruins his, basically his life and career after this as a result. And just be like, peace, I'm out. I don't care. I got the dove. Like, that is an incredible villain behavior for Brock. And Brock has a lot more money than Mark Hunt. So this whole legal thing, listen, I'm sure it costs him something to, but it's for him,

it's water off a duck's back. I mean, he went. Let me tell you, it didn't cost him. It didn't cost him because Mark Hunt had to pay the legal fees. Mark Hunt had to pay the damages in legal fees. for everyone involved. And the UFC has quite a cadre of attorneys racking up some fees there.

Jed, let me tell you, I double dipped here, so this is also my nitpick thing, so you can just skip over me when we get to that category because I just can't stress how regrettable this whole situation was. And as we were talking about it, like it made me sad all over again. I love Mark Hunt.

I'm genuinely bummed out right now. That's what you're talking about it. Yeah, it's such a sad thing to bring up. So I hope the other things we have in this other category are a little bit funnier, then we can sort of laugh at it, because there's nothing funny about this. And the absurdity of rock success, as we just said, if I had to choose between, name any dream fight,

like Andrew Silver's George St. Pierre happening, or Habib Tony or whatever, picking any one of those fights to happen and picking, or I could erase this whole Mark Hunt's Lesnar episode from Mark Hunt's career, I would so easily pick the Hunt-Lesner thing. It's such a bummer, it's such a downer. If I could just make all this not happen, that would erase the fight, erase whatever. Whatever needs to be erased.

But also though, like, I would just get rid of it. The fight is whatever. If the fight happens and then Brock gets popped and we move on. Yes. That's who cares. Like, it's fine. You made a bag. You made a ton of money fighting this dude.

Like, if we- We thought you knew. We all thought you knew what was happening here. If this, if the loss, if the lawsuit never happens, it just the loss happens, then it gets voided out and we move on. No one ever says, well, Brock beat Mark. Hunt, there would be an asterisk on that always. Anytime it was brought up, it would be like, well, yeah,

Brock didn't really beat Mark Hunt. And we would move on, and Mark Hunt would be so much richer today that he was. Also, like, to carry, to extend that out, this fight would literally just never be talked about. Never. Just never. The fight was boring. It didn't mean anything. It was like, no one would ever talk about the fight ever for either man.

I would have forgotten that it happened by now. I would have forgotten that it happened. I would have forgotten that it happened. That's it. Yeah. And instead it is arguably the defining moment of his career and ruins a whole lot of shit. So I think that's a great. I'm not impressed by your performance.

I just, I put it up. Please tell me you have other funnier. Please tell me of other funnier ones. So I went with the choice I made here was the most obvious one. I took the lowest hanging fruit as far as in cage goes when Sean McCorkle is just such a ass loss. We talked about Shaheen kind of did the whole breakdown

of it earlier, but you know the UFC didn't even want to give him Sean McCorkle. It was the most pitiable thing to be like, dude, we really don't want you here. Just take this money and leave. No, okay, fight Sean

McCorkel. Fight big sexy. Why don't you just go fight big sexy Sean McCorkel? And Sean McCorkel, who is not going to fighting just runs over him. And you're like, oh, this is, this is sad. Like, this was, this was easily the saddest moment of his career until the Brock stuff happened. And then the fact that it leads into such an incredible comeback is like kind of a sort of an interesting anecdote. But, uh, Sheena, it appears that you also are here with me on the Sean

McCorkel is the lowest moment of this man's in cage career. Well, I was almost here with you, because I have Sean McCorkel on the list. Oh, so what's your number one? That's not the lowest. The lowest is how it ended. Oh, so I alternated those. I have Justin Willis as my number two. Because at this point, like if you look at Wikipedia,

you can very clearly see what was happening around this time, right? The UFC and Mark Hunt are not getting along. And so they end Mark Hunt's career. He knocks out Derek Lewis and then they end his career, just giving him three grapplers in a row. And Justin Willis is not a man who should ever have a win. over Mark Hunt and the fact that he does is just supremely disappointing and depressing. And that's ultimately Mark Hunt's retirement fight is just getting slayed on by this dude

who was not good. And it's just like, Mark Hunt ends his career, and this was really my pick, with a losing record. He is the best fighter in history to have a losing MMA record, like the best MMA fighter in history to have a losing professional record. And it's because of this end of career BS. that was going on between them. And just, it bums me out anytime I look at this record and see Justin Willis having

a win over this guy. Hey, give it a few more years. BJ might also get a losing record before it's all said and done. He is not far away. Those picks are perfect, though, because if you, if you, if someone didn't know anything about Mark Hunt and you said this person's UFC career started with a loss to Sean McCorkle and a loss and then ended with a loss to Justin Willis, you would not be able to imagine the middle.

It was a four-fight career? You would not imagine the middle part was so significant, was such a major part of the U.S.C. It's a tough sandwich. Right? It's so weird. Now, the way you guys just laid it out, I'm like, that's weird. That's really bizarre.

I don't even think about it like that. Also, the fact that Justin Willis, like, AK to your point at the top of the episode, I'm not sure why Justin Willis has a Wikipedia page. He really doesn't need one. He just sort of vanished, like, after this. He loses to Curtis Blades or somebody in his next fight, and then he's just never heard from again.

Well, if you look him up now, he's in the looney bin. He's off his rocker now. Oh, is that where he is? He's off his rocker now. If you look, it's disappointing. That's unfortunate. Sad. Oh, that's, man, well, this category just brought bummer.

This is a real bummer. In every angle of it. That is very disappointing. So let's leave the category and let's go to the next one. Yes, please. the who the fuck is that guy award for the strangest weirdest most obscure fighter

that Mark Hunt ever faced in his career I got I got two of them we have mentioned one in this episode already I think that's going to be sort of recurring as this builds out Yasuke and Isha Nishijima Pride 31 we talked about it Sheen brought it up with this man and Mark Hunt delivering the wonderful double knee drop silliness.

But I think I wanted this fight in because if you watch this fight, this fight rules. This fight is incredibly fun to watch. Nisha Jima's like, he's a pro boxer who wasn't very good, makes his MMA debut against Mark Hunt. Goes 0 and 5 in his MMA career. So tough scenes.

I think all of them were in pride. He fought Yoshida, Cyborg Santos, Phil Barone, Melvin Manhoof, and Mark Hunt. like they gave him a run of people who can do combat and he just was hanging out. This fight's incredibly fun. If you, this isn't high on the list of stuff to watch, but if you're really killing time, watch it because Nizu Jima is so incredibly game in this fight despite being clubbed.

And Mark Hunt is so gassed that it is hard to imagine a man being more tired. And there's a part in the second round where, Hunt has Nishuima in the corner and like he's trying to do the finishing Mortal Kombat Kill Structure. And he is so tired that he just stands and looks at him with his arms at his waist. Like not standing and baiting him. He is just standing there tired and looking at him. And Nisha Jima just hits him a bunch.

And Mark doesn't even try to stop it. He just allows him to hit and then fires an uppercut after the combination goes. It's an incredible thing. It's a terrific knockout from Hunt in the final round. And this dude is super weird. So I wanted to talk about this fight because I had way more fun than I thought when I went back to watch it. And it's felt like a good place to put it. I have one honorable mention, but let's get to y'all first, Shaheen.

Who is your who the fuck is that guy? Well, I just want to add about the Nisha G. knockout. That man takes like three full seconds to fall for that knockout. And Mark Hunt just sits there watching him, kind of admiring the handiwork and be like, huh, this is weird. This is like a really weird thing I'm watching. Might be his first M.A. walk off. The Dan Boebusch, he does walk him off and Dan Boebusch kind of. That's a little weird.

The Dan Boebush Keogh is genuinely funny. It's super funny because no one really knows what's happening. And then Bobish sort of just falls over and Mark looks at him and he's and then the ref's like, okay, we're out. We're done. Also, this is much more traditional walkoff. Bowb was just like this cartoonishly large man wearing these incredibly small American flag tites. It's just, it's all great.

It's vintage pride. It's beating the hell out of Mark Hunt for most of that fight. It's awesome. It's so good. So my pride was great. So, I mean, there is so many options with this, but ultimately I just kind of defaulted to like, I don't expect a 280 pound man to fight Gaggard and Musassi. Oh, why not? Gaygard's a lunatic.

Yeah. Like, that's ultimately, which is where I always come back to. If like, Gaggard's the coolest, man. I love Gagard so much. Like, yeah, sure, I'll fight Mark Hunt. Why not? bro's like fighting at 185. Okay.

100 pound weight advantage of disadvantage. And the fight is not competitive at all. Also, shout out to Dream because this was the Super Hulk Grand Prix. What a name. Just. So good. What a name. What a name.

What a belt. What a field. Just all of it. Everything is like if we would plan one of, if we would plan a tournament on one of our shows, we would play in the Super Hulk tournament. These are the type of ideas we have. And they just poured money into it. We're like, we're going to actually do this.

Dream. Dream had a short but vibrant life that I respected a great deal. AK, what do you have for the Who the Fuck is that guy award? This is where Sean McCorkel landed for me. Oh, okay. Lots to talk about, I mean, I know we mentioned a much time. Big sexy? Yeah.

And we remember it pretty distinctly. But there's not a lot of people who recalled that the McCrackle fight happened. And one thing to add is, the other thing he was famous for was being like an internet like forum guy do you remember that he was like known for me an internet forum guy he's the one is super weird and I'm here he is I think he's the one who blue who like popularized talking about Matthews's book I think he was Sean McCorkel because Matthews's book was all yeah it was him right Matt Hughes's book is one of the most insane pieces of literature ever put together I'm so glad we can talk about this real quick because I've never

actually has anybody here read that book no no I have not you have was so I I've always heard that McCorkel's characterization of a lot of this stuff was just false. He was just making stuff up. Am I right or wrong? I mean, I don't remember McCorkel's characterization of stuff, so I need more specific. So like, there are parts of that book that are just insane. So I don't like, I don't know that. There are stuff that I would not like admit to publicly, much less in writing.

I've always just been under the impression that he basically. laid out an entirely false book and attributed it to Matt Hughes. And then for years, everybody, because nobody's going to read that book, everybody just assumed he was correct. And so for like a long time, that was like, oh, that was my understanding of Matt Hughes's life and book was what Sean McCorkel wrote on this stupid Sherdog for him. Well, when we do the Sean McCorkel dam in the year 2084, I will dig back up those old forum posts from Sean Corkwell. Yeah, now I'm curious. I also took it as just as gospel, his account of the Matthews book.

But yeah, that's the other weird thing that Sean McCorkel was famous for. And then he beats Mark Hunt, loses his step and struve, losing to Kristen Moorcraft out of the UFC. Still fights a few more years after that. But that was it. That was his UFC run. I mean, that was just so bizarre. He has this. He'll always have this win over Mark Hunt, a very one-sided, like not even close win.

Also, the other name. Real quick. How weird is it that Mark Hunt's UFC career is sandwiched by really, really terrible embarrassing losses to guys nickname Big Sexy and Big Pretty? That is random. That is. I honestly didn't remember that Justin Woolis is Big Pretty. That's odd.

That's so random. I mean, the other name. Oh, wait, hold up, AK, because while we're on Sean McCorkel, I just want to very briefly divert us to Sean McCorkel's Wikipedia, which has two terrific factors. about it. One is in the summer of 2022, McCorkel announced his new occupation as a specialty breeder of show quality XL American bullies, which is just a super random thing. Those are dogs, I assume? Yeah, American Bulldogs. Okay. And then in October, he started a podcast called the McCorkel Minute. So go check out the McCorkel minute, guys. I would like to know who added this note because I have a feeling it may be. That it's Sean McCorkel.

S-MAC 5-5-55-5-5. We know he's legible. We know he knows how the internet works. I strongly suspect both of those facts are added by Big Sexy himself. So I have not heard of this podcast. The other thing I want to would have been, do we all remember he boxed last year? That's my runner-up.

Yeah, he went out on a win. He boxed his own. He's boxed radically. I see four on his record, four fights, did not win before last year, 2022. It took 20 years off to have an in-air-20-year-old. Sunny Bill Williams, Sunny William Williams, actually. Sunny Bill Williams.

Amazing. Sunny William Williams beats him that fourth round TKO, goes on to win, you know, ends his combat sports career and a win. So, but I remember we covered that in MAPFINE.com, and I still don't recall anyone just talking about it. Dude, Sunny William Williams? 9-0 before that fight. Sunny William Williams was like,

a super accomplished rugby player. He's like a New Zealand national hero, multiple World Cup champion. Like, thing. Also, it's kind of incredibly fitting that the end of Mark Hunt's career was fighting two former rugby players in boxing matches,

where he loses to Paul Gallen, which is just freaking depressing, but then beats Sonny William, William. So Sonny Bill was my runner up in this. this particular category, A.K. So good, good, strong choice. Any other honorable mentions for you all here before we move on?

Okay, then our next category. The Randolplex Award, which I'm going to be honest, is strongly considered renaming after our lovely gentleman here. This is the best single career highlight. And I got to tell you, the number one thing, we've talked about it. The first thing I think of when I think of Mark Hunt, might not be the first thing you guys think of. it's the atomic butt drop.

Give me the atomic butt drop. One of the greatest highlights in the history. It's certainly one of the funniest. Maybe not like the, it's the exact opposite of the spectrum from the Randolphlex, you know? So I will insert Randy Gator's atomic butt drop call right here into the pod. It's going to be great. You're going to hear it.

And it's going to be fantastic. Jed, I always say, MMA is supposed to be fun. And no sequence, no move. epitomizes that more than the Mark Hunt atomic butt drop. It's just, I hate when people say, well, M. May fight has to look like this and, well, you can't do this in a fight because that's stupid or that's not going to work or who, it's fighting is supposed to be fun.

This is combat sports. It's sports entertainment. I know a lot of combat sports fans are lows to call combat sports entertainment. That's a loaded phrase, AK. Guys, I'm sorry, it is, man. It is. MMA is sports entertainment. It is the one, the maybe the best for, I love for wrestling, but MMA is maybe the best form of

sports entertainment ever created. It's so fun when it's what it's supposed to be and when you take all these limits off of it. And that's what happened. In this one moment, that's what Mark Hunt did. He took all the limits of what a fight is quote unquote supposed to be and said, I'm a big ass MFer. I'm just going to drop all my weight in this guy and see what happens. And like we said before, it kind of worked. If he knocked him out, it would have been the greatest knockout in my history as it is, I think, again, one of the funniest moments and easel, easy, easy Randolplex Award winner. Dude, if he knocks him out. out, the sport just changes forever.

Like, I don't know how. I think the world changes forever. We might have world peace if Mark Hunt sat on a man to a K.O. And sat on Vandalis, just unreal. I got two honorable mentions here, but Shaheen, what do you have for this particular category? So, atomic butt drop was ultimately my honorable mention. Okay. just because I love the race,

fearful gift so much. That was my winner. The race evil gift. So the race fo is my number three. So okay. Just that, everything about that is everything I love with combat sports. One that I don't know if either are y'all going to mention,

but just over the course of me doing research for this, I had forgotten in that deep within my brain. This was in there somewhere. The Heromo Amata knockout from his kickboxing days. Does anybody know what I'm talking about right now? when I say that. Does that bring any bills at all? This is the hook, the man, let me Google this because I don't want to be incorrect.

In Mark Hunt's kickboxing career, he knocks out a man named Haromo Amata, and it is horrific. There is a woman on the commentary desk doing commentary when Mark Hunt is fighting this fight, and she legitimately shrieks when this knockout shot lands. It is so horrific. She is so shocked by what she just saw, but also what she just heard. Because I have never heard a punch sound like this. I saw a YouTube comment that said it sounds, it's made the sound a cantalote makes when it's thrown off a tall bridge.

It is one of the wildest, most visceral sounds to a knockout punch that I have genuinely ever heard. And Jen just watched it as I'm talking and I saw your face and it was tremendous. I mean, the sound really pops. It is disgusting, bro. Everybody watching this, if you have a shot, a chance, pause this, go Google that. Haromo Amata Mark Hunt and just listen to the sound of that punch. It is disgusting.

Also, you just got to love Honto. The Japanese commentary calling him Honto is just so, so I can't understand a word that's being said, and then you hear Honto, and then it's a bunch more words I can't say. and then a man looks like he dies. He didn't, which we're happy about. I was watching it without the audio first because I was listening to you guys, but I had the clip on. And on YouTube, they have a sound wave thing. You can actually see the sound wave.

And it just spikes up 90, like, into the air at that moment. And then I watched it with the sound, and I heard the punch. I heard the scream. The scream sounds fake. Like it sounds like a TikTok edit. Like someone's putting this clip out on TikTok to go viral and they just like edit it in a screen from another TikTok cliff. That is crazy.

Yeah. That is crazy. K1 Mark Hunt was a problem, man. That's just fantastic. That's a great one. My other one, the number two, I had three, and my one's the butt drop.

Three, race FO and the just being lunatics. Two, it's the other thing I think of immediately when I think of Mark Hunt is after the butt drop. It's the crow cop head kick. just no selling a ducking into that's even the war like he ducks down into it and it's like we're fine don't worry about it all that sweat that just sprayed off my head in this artistic vision don't even care about it i'm good boarding for flight 246 to toronto is delayed 50 minutes oh what sounds like ojo time play ojo great idea feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games

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Save up the 50% November 13th to 20th. Conditions apply, details online. Next category. This was ripe for me because I pulled a lot of them. Right-leg Hospital, Left Lake Cemetery Award. So the best quote by or about the fighter. I got a number from his book. There's also obviously other places to go. But I'd love to hear some of you all first.

A.K., what do you have for the... Yeah. Let me be the downer again. Let me be the downer again, Chad. Let me... That's really my lot of life's being the downer. Because this is, again, more post-Brock Lezner stuff, not regarding Lesner specifically. But again, I don't think we ever hear these kind of quotes.

If he's not in this down period that follows that fight. from the Players Tribune. I know everyone's read the story. This is expertly transcribed by yourself, Jed, in addition of the Morning Report, so I grab this particular segment. Oh, go me. Now, you go you.

And now, Mark did kind of later say he was misquoted, which I believe and don't believe. For one thing, it's the Players Tribune. I love the Players Tribune. There's, we know, you know, you go into these things knowing these are not word for word, you know, transcriptions of what,

these guys said, right? They dressed it up in a way to make it more dramatic, to make it more readable. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. I just want, I hope when people read the Players Tribune, they're aware that that's how these stars are being filtered. Someone is helping them write these stories, obviously. But this is how the quote came out. This is how they put printed it. I'll probably end my life fighting. I've been fighting since I was a child, fighting to get out of my circumstances. I used to make $300 a week, struggling to put food on the table, but I'd become one of the highest paid fires in the world. I feel that's destiny. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. And if I die fighting, that's fine. I just hope that

if it does happen, it will be in an honest and fair competition. My body is fucked, but my mind is still here. I've still got my senses about me and I know what's right and wrong, which is the main thing. Sometimes I don't sleep well. You can hear me starting to stutter and slur my words. My memory is not that good anymore. I'll forget something I did yesterday, but I can remember the shit I did years and years ago. That's just the price I paid, the price of being a fighter. But I fought a lot of drug cheats and caught a lot of punished from guys who were cheating, and that's not right. For again, for a guy who we said was not the most verbose athlete when he was, you know,

competing, not a man of many words, for him to lay it all out so plainly in print. And again, for all to see, this will now live on the internet forever, regardless of how accurate it is, was really striking at the time. And again, even more so, I think, as we look back. And we just really hope Marcotte's okay, man. And we really hope the guy's okay. Man, you really are bringing a lot of super negative. I'm so sorry.

I am so sorry, please. This is why I went first. Pick us up. Pick us up. I'm so sorry. I can pick you up. I can pick you up because as A.K. is saying this very deep, meaningful quote, I was looking around for something very specifically that I knew I wanted to find and I ended up stumbling

upon a couple other ones. Mark Hahn is an incredible internet troll. Oh, he is great. He is such a good internet troll in terms of the memes he produces with his internet comments in the forum comments because they're stream of consciousness, pure stream of consciousness, lots of shorthand, no punctuation, just 40 swear words per minute, just incredible, incredible stuff. And so, you know, I back in the day, not as much anymore, but back in the day, I was on MMA

Reddit a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And you couldn't go any, you couldn't go more than two threads without seeing the famous Mark Hunt copy pasta, which was... Copypasta. which was again, I'm going to say it now, stream of consciousness, and I just need you to imagine that every U is just a U, like the letter U, and that a lot of these words are misspelled and that none of it makes any sense. And this was in response to some random fan, because that's what he would do.

How about you go and fuck off my page, then you piece of shit, you think I need a stupid fuck with like you telling me about looking good, who the fuck are you, take your worthless advice and get the fuck out of here? That stream of consciousness sentence was all over Reddit for like five. years on every possible thing and also I want to throw one more out I'm not sure what this was in reference to the only thing you are good at these days you little

bitch is sticky needles in yo punk ass you bitch fact is you a weak ass shortcut taker like the rest of you old bitch ass friends little dick Lesner at Wurdoom at Wond and the rest of these pussies who cheat cheating ass little pig oik motherfucker that's

God that's brilliant give that man an Oscar for script writing. That is genius. Let me tell you something. He definitely did not write his Players Tribune article by himself. He probably didn't write his book either. I am not convinced that he wrote. This actually works brilliantly because all of my quotes are pulled from the book. It's an incredible book.

Perfect. Perfect. Is there an oink-o-o-o-o-fucker? There's not, which is why I think if you listen to some of the quotes to mutt to give you, you may draw your own conclusions about who author what parts of it, whether it was Mark Hunt or his co-author, Ben McCelvey, you can decide how much you think Mark was involved in the writing of his biography born to fight. One, you'll enjoy this one. It's one of the first ones that stuck out to me when I went back through. This is him sort of talking about making the move into combat or whatever.

I'd only seen these famous K-1 fighters on VHS, and it's certainly never been in a ring with one. I half expected them to be superhuman, like Goku and Dragon Ball Z, or Ryu and Street Fighter, and I hadn't discounted the possibility that LeBanner was about to haduken me across the ring. It's just like, oh. That's so good.

It's really, really good. I already did the butt drop one. I just felt like jumping on that prick and wailing on him, which I'm going to be honest. I'm going to use that a lot in my life. I'm just going to jump on that pregnant whale on him. There's an extended piece of the book that I don't want to get into all of it. One of the things I like is he talks about the Fador fight,

and it's, you know, talking about almost getting the win, you know what nearly good is a submission is like nearly winning the lottery? No one wants to hear about that shit, which is just like a perfect line about the like, dude, you almost Ameri Khan and Fador? Who gives the fuck? Can you repeat that one more? You know what, nearly getting a submission is like nearly winning the lottery.

No one wants to hear about that shit. It's an incredible bit from the thing. It's so good. It's so good. I got two more. One, this is just maybe the best thing I've ever read. It's a little longer, so bear with me. He is talking about fighting in Japan.

It's like, in the press conference preceding the big event, the Japanese media wanted to know what kind of training. I was doing for my defense. I'm mostly concentrating on sleep training, I said. There were some follow-ups. Honto-san, can you please tell me how you do this sleep training? Yeah, basically what you do is you think about training really, really hard. And when you think you can't think about any more, then you go to sleep.

The newspaper stories that came out the next day talked about hyperbaric chambers and visualizations and the power of extreme concentration. I do love the Japanese. It's just such a ridiculous story. It's an incredible gag. His book's awesome. Like, Born to Fight. Again, Ben McAley probably wrote most of it, but it's terrific.

And the last one I wanted here, oh, I guess actually there's two. One, this is a variation. Actually, this might not be from his book. I think this was from somewhere else. It's a variation on the, you punch a black belt, they turn into a brown belt quote, which is. Oh, I had this before I looked up the internet comments. It's a real Mark Hunt variation. That's a way better version of it.

it's everyone's a world-class grappler until they get punched in the face. So that's how I deal with ground fighters. I hit him in the head and there goes your fucking black belt. It's just such a cold-ass quote. That's so good. I thought you were going to say, so this is another one. They can be King Kong, Godzilla, or whatever. I don't care what they have.

Once you get a punch in the face, all those skills are gone. I love that. That's also, dude, he had it. And so this one, this is just, if you were part of a time, this is going to make you feel very happy. And if it's not, then sorry for you. This is a big section of the book, and it's talking about after the Yasuki Nishajima fight

and sort of pride dealings. And like, oh, so after the fight was called into hotel suite, and when I saw the Russian champ coming out of the room, talking about Fador, I started to glean what was going on. I had a little chit-chat with Fador, asked him what they had for me. And then he pointed at his bag and said, I don't know, they had this for me.

He goes and he sees Sakharara and a few guys who look like muscle and a Korean guy who was in charge, who acted like he was in charge. And the room had a table struggling under the weight of many giant piles of cryptocurrency stacked neatly. There's a little bit of talk going on. He's like about him wanting to get, you know, paid and them talking about, oh, we'll pay you in cash if you want. And he ends it by saying, in that hotel room, I got a little preview of the future of the future downfall of pride. But the time I didn't concern myself with the organization's shady behind-the-scenes dealings. I was like, yeah, that sounds like peak pride right there. Just bring you into a room like, hey, oh, you want some of this big money?

We'll give you a big pile of cash if you want. That's fine. Who cares? So, read his book is a short version of this. It's a really, really good. As far as the movies go, it's one of the better ones. So next category, we're finally getting through it, boys, because we've been going two hours and there's still quite a lot left.

That's good. We got deep. We did. This next category probably won't be that deep because two of us have already given most of our answers here. It's the Fighter Consulting and Management Services Award. If you could change one decision, you know, outfit, something like that. My choice was the Brock Lesnar fight, simply not accepting it. I think if you do that instead of the sad career end we outlined, we could get a lot of other cooler stuff that may have happened by just been a happier. exit from the sport. I think everyone would just be better for it. And at the time, I would have

counseled him. Hey, man, just take the L. Let's just take the L and move on. It's not, not worth that. And I honestly suspect Mark probably would agree at this point that the many years of his life and the millions of dollars spent on this were not worth the outcome that he achieved. I do have an honorable mention, but I know, okay, I know you had this here, Shaheen. What did you have for the nitpicking award. Just don't do the lawsuit. The fight is fine. You made a lot of money at the fight.

Don't do the lawsuit. I also wanted to put this one here because we talked about our boy Big Pretty in the Justin Will's fight, but one part that I think we don't, because I didn't remember until afterwards, do you guys remember the walkout here? Because it's one of the best walkouts the UFC's ever done. It's in Adelaide. And for whatever reason, I honestly. honestly don't know because of where they were at with Mark Hunt, but they had a group of dudes

do the Haka. And Mark Hunt walks out into the middle of them. And it's sick. And it's just like, why weren't you doing this the whole time, my man? Like, this isn't all like, because he doesn't have that iconic intro music song. Like, he changed songs. That's not part of the story of Mark Hunt. When you could have just done this.

You could have just been like, hey, every time you're going to have three teammates do a haka and it's going to be freaking sick because the crowd loved it it's like this really awesome thing and then he goes and gets jabbed up by big uh pretty and that sucks but you know like that that that walk out do the walk out more boys like that's that's really a thing we needed here for for mark hunt you want to see a little more mark hunt the showman he doesn't have to be the showman just have people around him be a just do the haka because the haka's intimidating as fuck I wouldn't want to fight some dude who just had a bunch of his boys

do the hawkaw. I'd probably just jumped afterwards. It's awful. Next category. Fador's sweater of absolute victory. This is for a piece of memorabilia from the fighter's career. I got two.

I went low-hanging fruit for one of them, the 01 K-1 Grand Prix World trophy. Love a trophy. K-1 trophies are cool. It's big trophy. Big trophy. It would fit. It'd be a showpiece.

talk about it you know um it's great one but i think the one i would actually take uh the oceana superfighter shorts the blue and gold like the early pride career he was always rocking those uh maybe they're not quite like truck ladle bj pin iconic you know spider shorts but they're like a tier down on those that sort of level of iconic short we never got him in the uc because he just wore board shorts like everyone else it was lame but uh the blue and gold oceanas super fighters and pride were pretty sick pair of shorts, particularly in context of Marcotte. Yeah, that was one of my pick. I had two as well, the blue shorts.

To me, they're iconic. I can't, if I visualize Marconin in my head, those are the shorts I see. Those are the shorts. Yeah, wearing that. Also, I think just owning a piece of the bloody canvas from the Bigfoot fight would be cool. Like just having that frame, maybe with some gloves or something, and just you could point to that. And again, showpiece, like talk to people about it.

That seems like it would be fun. I like it. Okay, what do you got? You know, I'm always going somewhere weird. I know. This is a standout category for you. Did you guys know? And it's like the one I like doing the least because I don't want, like, I never

memorabilia is like, means people I project, I have a blank wall behind me, you know, when people know, you can't, people can't see now. But when they see the preview shows, I got a blank wall behind me. Memorabilia is so low on my list of things when it comes to fandom. But in this case, it be practical because I want, did you know he did some pro wrestling? I have that in an upcoming category. I had no idea until I had no idea. Yeah, until I started doing some research.

He did literally two matches. I think his career is two matches long for Japan's hustle promotion. It looks like some, you know, some hardcore comedy stuff. I'm just shout us to Piotisu Central.com, who did a recap of this. I don't know if there's footage of it. You think this would be easy to find on YouTube. Could not find it. Maybe it's on Daily Motion or some other on the dark web somewhere.

And apparently anyway, he does not in the whole match. He shows up at the end. He pops up out of an elevator or the elevator platform, maybe in the stage he walks he doesn't walk knocks a couple of people out celebrates with the winners and then accidentally knocks them out so it sounds great i don't think you're reading it does it justice i would love to have some some vhs tape of this if someone has it or or a scratched up DVD whatever but i really would like to see these two uh these two pro wrestling matches he was apparently involved in so send me those tapes i have an important question for you aka as uh i would

say the big the pro wrestling person here sheen i know you've dabbled but uh i k definitely more so than me i think A.K. definitely more so. One, we'll mention that this pro wrestling happened in that kind of weird gap between pride acquiring and the UFC not wanting him to fight for them. Yeah. 07.08, yeah. Is there a current or former pro wrestler who their finishing maneuver is the butt drop? Because I'm just saying there's a window. If not, is that like actually a thing people use the butt drop? Yeah, that would have been his, especially if you're a Samoan.

If you're a Samoan background. Oh, is that like a classic Samoan. Moen finisher, the butt drop? There's two things that are going to make you do. You're going to have a super hard head, which he does, and you're going to be headbutting people. And you're going to be dropping, you're going to be dropping your butt on people. Even, even, I don't know, if you remember, Yokozuno, Yokosuno, Yoko Zuna. So this is Japanese.

So this is just full-blown stereotypes. Yeah, of course. Yokosuna, former W.F. World Champion, back when it was DutF. He was Samoan. He was someone. He's called him Yokosuna. He was supposed to be Japanese. He was actually Samoan guy. So, yes, that's, that is the niche that Mark Hunt would fit into pretty nicely. Oh, man.

I'm kind of bummed that that sounds like slightly racist. Extremely. That's a shame, though. I would be way more fun if this was a unique pro wrestling finisher for him than just like, ah, Samoan dude, drop your ass on him, please. She got a big butt. Pro wrestling can use you. Well, I have this tucked into a future category.

So, okay. Our next category, the Habib Tony Award for the fight that never happened. wanted to see. This was a very interesting category, fellas, because straight up, I didn't have any trouble finding names to put here. I had an incredible amount of trouble finding someone that actually fit the,

I wanted to see part of this. I didn't really, there's no fight that I feel like we really left out on. I have one that I chose that probably would have been the most fun. And then I have a whole list of weird fights that didn't fall. through. But how did you guys feel about this one? Was there something that jumped out of you right away that you're like, yeah, that's the fight that we needed. It never happened.

Can I guess which one you picked? You can. I really doubt you're going to get it. Okay. It wasn't a, I'll say, because this was easy for me. Once I went through some of his fights that fell through, it was easy. I went to one else. So you didn't go with one that was like scheduled. I didn't. There is one of the ones that was scheduled that I think would have made a lot of sense. And it's on the list to talk about here. But there's one that was never scheduled that I don't think anyone has probably ever

thought about, but the minute I thought about it, I was like, hell yeah. It's also like maybe the the easiest sort of a default guy to match up with a heavyweight in this regard. Shaheen, do you want to go first? Sure. I am a degenerate. So I went really off the board with most of my picks. I'm kind of just doing circus fights, if I'm being honest. I have one really off the board pick. So if we overlap, this would be the greatest moment in this podcast history. So I'll do the non-circ circus pick first because I have one non-circicus pick and that seems obvious. It's Francis Inganu. I wish we could have gotten pre-broken chin Mark Hunt with the I generate immeasurable force in three inches Mark Hunt and I can eat shots for days versus

the death punch of Francis and Gano just to see that in some immovable object. versus the you know that whole thing that dynamic would have been really fun it's kind of a fantasy matchmaking because the timelines never match up yeah that's fine that would have been fun we can do you know pre thing it's easy but other than that I have four circus fights that all should have happened and frankly I'm bummed out in retrospect didn't happen uh bob sap because how the fuck did that not happen shocking I don't know so there is some overlap in uh well both of these actually. So, I don't know to what extent you dug deep on this, Shaheen. Bob Sap was never close to happening, but Bob Sap did ultimately fill in a spot for Mark Hunt

in a situation. Butterbean, though. It was supposed to happen. Was supposed to happen. That's my pick. That's my pick. That's my one. I did not know. I had never heard this before that they were supposed to fight. I was not aware. It was the dumbest thing you've ever heard in your life because it happened to them twice. So for those un-initiated, he was scheduled to fight Butterbean, aka Eric Edge. At Pride 32, these are the prides in America. Yeah, sadly, not in Japan because we would have gotten it. The freaking Las Vegas Commission ruined this for us.

InSack was like they ruled the bout uncompetitive. So we are clear. At the time, Mark Hunt was 5 and 2 and had just gotten steamrolled by Josh Barnett. Butterbean was 6-2 and 1 and also his whole boxing. career and the NSAC was like i'm sorry hunt has beaten uh miracle crow cop and van der lee silver by split decisions he is far too good for butter bean this is we cannot sanction this 10 years later power slap is going strong but they were like let me can't do butter bean versus unto that's a bridge too far i have also heard if you look this up i have also heard later that people

said it was actually visa issues from mark hunt and not the not competitive thing but When I go to official records, they all say it was the NSA. But I have seen other interviews later that say it was a visa. So that story is that Pride then tried to sell this post hoc, that it was visa issues. But in actuality, this was just a thing. And you can then confirm this because at Pride 33, they did the same shit with West Sims. He couldn't fight West Sims, who was like 19 and 8. But they were like, too uncompetitive, can't do it.

Mark Hunt's too good. It was still visa of stuff. Absolutely insane. We can't be sure. We can't be sure. It is a disputed account. I think we have to share. But I agree.

It does sound like there was some chicanery though. But yeah. This one would have been fun. It should have happened. Butterbeen's a great circus fight, Sheen. Oh, my God. How did we not get that? I love the image of it.

In my mind, it happened. In my mind, it happened. I refuse to believe it didn't. It would give me everything I want out of a circus fight, too. It's so good. Those are just going to stand in trade. There's no sloppy wrestling in that. Like,

that's just... No, no, no. Butterbean instead fought former WW wrestler Sean O'Hare, who actually had, like, won some of MMA fights before that, and he knocked him out. Butterbean knocked him out in 29 seconds.

That sounds very competitive. Great job, Nevada. Thanks. Way to uphold the sanctity of competition. That's a real dark era for Nevada commission. Pat Lundval just kind of doing shit. God, I hated them. Just cooking.

Just real quick. my other two ones though because I still haven't said my favorite one. My runner up is Mark Hunt versus the Manoa Man. Because I don't know how we didn't get this. I didn't even think of that. That's so good. That's the perfect Mano man fight. Like come on. I want to see him try to do a flying arm bar on Mark Hunt.

Why isn't this not in my life? But the number one. And it goes back to a callback to what we started. Please tell me you did the dumb thing that I did. I hope so. I hope we're on the same page. is it goes back to where I started with this of why I included Stefan Strouve in my list.

I just love the aesthetics. I just love the aesthetics. Give me Hongman Choy. Oh, no, you didn't do it. One of the two. Or not Bigfoot Sova. Who's the Giant Silva? Give me Giant Silva or Hong Man Choy.

One of the two. I would accept either of those fights. Give me Mark Hunt just trying to jump as high as he can to knock these men out. I'm okay with it. with any of me. Now I think I know what Jed's going to say, but I'll, if he doesn't say it, I will throw that out as a post.

Okay. One of my circus fights, so I had mentioned of the Butterbee and the West Simps things because they were real weird. Also, just to throw it out there. At one point, he was supposed to fight Big Nog, or at least that idea was floated. It was for Shockwave 2002, but Nog didn't want to do it, basically. This was when he was just a K-1 guy, Shockwood's crossover events. Nog wanted to do a one-in-one, do a one-MMA fight, one kickboxing fight,

and Hunt was like, I don't want to do that. I'll just kickbox you. And so then that's why we got Bob Sap versus Nog, because Nog was like, okay, if you don't want to do this, we'll pivot. They pivoted to the mixed rules bout with Bob Sapp, and then that whole iconic moment of that fight. So put that on the list. I have two circus fights, one of them I'll say for the very last,

because I think there's still a chance it could happen if we start a movement. But I don't know why and how we didn't get Sakaraba versus Mark Hunt. Doesn't that just feel like Prime Pride just doing silliness right there? I would have loved that fights. It would have been so stupid and I would have enjoyed every freaking second of it. So, AK, is that the one you thought I was going with? No, I thought you were going to throw like him and Kimbo or something.

But I don't think that's close to the- I briefly thought about that. I was like that's not, that's actually not competitive. Yeah, that's actually like, the spirit of that is not. Not just that. I'm trying to look at it. I'm like, there's no,

like, realistic world where that was even being discussed or it's just not a thing. It's like it's a fun thing to say now, but like it was not, everything we're saying here feels like vaguely possible. There's no world where he's going to fight. Couldn't ever really happen. Their careers.

No, no. It's not. So I had on the list, Andrei Olavski, it just sort of feels weird for how long their careers overlap. that the two of them never fought. He never fought the coat.

Never fought the good heavyweight. Here's the one I wanted. My number one, the actual choice I have here, because I think this man is actually just like the heavyweight, you know, Justin Gage or whatever. Put him in,

I don't care. It's have him fight him. It's going to be a banger. It's Igor Vafchanchin. Like, Bob Chanchin versus Mark Hunt. Like, come on, man.

Tell me that fight's not just absolute banana. It's just it. This is. So that's the one I settled on. But boys, I think we can pick up. Once I'm done getting John Jones to quit being a coward and fight Tom Aspinall, we're then going to pivot.

And our new mission will be to get Mark Hunt, you know, he's a boxer now. He's out there boxing. There's a man out there who loves to fight really old, former MMA legends in boxing matches. Give me Mark Hunt versus Jake Paul. In the square circle, let's do it. What's happening right now? You tell me right now.

I see the look on Shaheen's face. Tell me right now you wouldn't pay the 50 bucks to watch that. We still have weight classes. They sell them. He still. Who cares? I don't think Jake Paul is going to fight open. I don't think Jake Paul would take the fight, but tell me you wouldn't pay money to watch that.

Bro, I would pay $200 to watch that. It is the of all the Jake Paul fights that could happen. easily the one that I'm the most interested in. And you know what? What a great F you that would be from Jake Paul to Dana White, right? Like, oh, you think you, you hate, you hate Mark Hunt. You kick this guy out of the curve. Guess what?

I'm going to give him the biggest, biggest payday he's ever had to make up for all the bullshit you put him through. Plus, think about it. Like, Mark Hunt, he, like, I would still think Mark Hunt should win this fight, but he is really old. He's not a, like, he's a wide person, but he's not tall. Jake Paul had me a little bit taller. Joe Paul's much younger.

like and then this gets past the you only fight dudes who are smaller than you there's a there's an angle to sell jake paul on wanting to do this let's let's make it happen boys because that would be so much freaking fun of all the episodes of damn where i thought we might mention jake paul i'm so fucking mark hunt was not the one that's it would be so much fun i'm struggling to control myself right now I'm not going to lie. Like, you've done weird things to me right now. I'm trying to put myself back together. I'm so it.

Look, when people are like, Jed, how do you have a career? I'm like, because I miss a lot, but every once in a while, I got stuff like this in the chamber and that's just dealing. So we're going to make that happen in 2025, boys. That's the new mission. Next category. I'm not part of this. I'm not part of this. You so are part of this.

Join the movement. Next category. TJ Grant, Alternate Universe Award, the sliding doors moment for the career. So we've talked a lot about it, you know, the Mark, or the, the Brock Lesnar thing. I think that's the easy choice. We don't have to do that. We don't need to have to that. And it's also not the one I put here.

I went, no. I went back to the other thing we talked about. And it is the, what if he just takes the buyout? When the UFC's like, hey, dude, don't come here. It's like, I'll take a half million dollars to not work. That seems like a great deal. You're going to give me half a million bucks. and I get to go on my merry way.

Because at the time, I thought experimented, and I went down the road here. At the time, you know, a lot of the pride dudes had moved into affliction for that, like, one and a half events or whatever. So I think there's a very real world where he just ends up in affliction, does that one thing, and then, you know,

essentially follows the fador path of goes to affliction, heads to strike force. If that happens, it's really interesting where his career ends up, because ultimately strike force does get acquired. So maybe he does end up in the U. see eventually after a win streak. Maybe he, in strike force, we get, we get ultimately a fate or rematch in strike force or affliction.

I know that that is a fight that Mark Hunt had always wanted. He thought that they would eventually run things back. He could still get a big foot fight in strike force. Like, there's still sort of a lot of the similar fights that could happen there. If his career isn't going that well, maybe ultimately he just ends up back in K1. He's like, all right, I did MMA for a bit and goes back, does the K1 thing. thing. I honestly can't, I don't know what would have happened, but I think there's a real world where he still has a bunch of really good fights, maybe even ends up in Bellator and doing the Bellator thing down the stretch. And his career is certainly much less popular and much less accessible, but he might be even more beloved by like hardcore darlings because it's, hey, Mark Hunt still was out here doing real Mark Hunty things, just not in the UFC for 15 years.

any thoughts on this? Where are you all out on the sliding doors moment of this man's life? He probably, yeah, this was it. This was the obvious choice because really so much changes. But he definitely keeps fighting. I mean, he definitely keeps fighting. It's not like, oh, he just takes the money and pisses off. It's like we definitely see more of him.

Probably reunite to this boy, Sefo, right? World Series of Fighting? I don't remember them. What was their heavyweight division like? I honestly cannot recall. I don't think it was a standout division. Dude, the only thing I think from World Series of fighting is lightweight, so. Yes, so maybe, but hey, this is the name that I think they could bring in to sort of build a heavyweight derision around,

or at least to have a few marquee heavyweight fights. So I think he hooks up with this boy stuff. Well, maybe not for like five years or something, but I do think that's where it starts. And then I think Bellator, I do think he goes down to Belator, right? Just if he never ends up getting picked up by the UFC again, which actually is probably what would happen, he would take the money, go fight elsewhere, and then UFC would just add him to the heavyweight division later. but if by some chance we're saying never fights for the UFC after the oh ever just ever ever then it's it's w soft belator and who knows what else so i like you guys had the similar what if

because that to me is the biggest one right is just what if he accepts that buyout where does all this play out and how is he remembered but i think i maybe had a different take on it than you guys because i don't know if any of this happens at this point i that to me the way the mark hunt story played out, it always felt as if he was so motivated to prove himself to the UFC, to prove he belonged, to prove that there's a reason I'm here. And if he just takes that buyout, I don't know if that motivation is there. I don't know if we get many more Mark Hunt moments at that point. I don't know if he is motivated to try as hard as he was for the majority of that UFC run. I don't know if he ends up losing more really just bad fights because he was.

on a really bad run. I think there's a very real world where he loses a couple more times than it's just like, all right, well, I guess this is over. I don't know. It's a crossroads. I'm glad we didn't have to go down because it would be sad if all these moments didn't end up happening. But that feels like a very real possibility if this happens. Dude, it's a huge one because like, I don't know about you. If someone's going to offer me half a million dollars to not do something, I'm going to take it. It almost doesn't matter what it is like hey it's not hey you can have a half million dollars but you can't go fight anywhere else for this time so we're going to pay you to not take this and leave this is hush

money just stop talking to us and go away like this is the deal that's like that's honestly probably the best deal anyone in the history of the UFC has been offered like like he could he would have made more money than 95% of UFC fighters to not compete and then could have still made more on top and was like, no, it's giving my fights guys. It's a wild moment, wild, wild stuff. Do you have anything else in this category? Are we on the, are we on the March again? Nothing. All right. Dan Henderson H-bomb Award is for, if you take a piece of their game, add it to yours, or if you're creating a fighter, what is the one thing you want?

I had three things here, but I think we've touched on a lot of them, so I don't think we need to dive too deep, and we maybe get back a little bit of time here. Obviously, the chin is a huge thing. This was not my number one, though, fellas, because Marcon has legendary chin. A lot of other people have great chins. I think arguably Mark Hunt's chin isn't the best in the history of the sport.

I think I actually took the chin of Carlos Condit when we did this originally, and Carlos Condit, unbelievable chin, I want the walk-offs. I want the ability to end the fight on my terms, despite maybe the referee not agreeing with me and the Jedi mind trick and all of it. He's the best walk-offer in the history.

And Chehene, you said at the very top of this, there's nobody even close. There's nobody else in the conversation. If you're the best at something, that's what I want for my Dan Henderson-H-bomb. Do you guys agree? Oh, yeah. Give me the ability to do you.

shame the ref into making a decision he doesn't want. So like almost like make it feel like he like make him doubt himself. Give me that. Give me that power, that Jedi mind trick like you said. I like what you guys saying. I'm going with, there's no nice way. I'm going with the cajones. I'm going with the huevos.

I need the daring do. Maybe that's the nicest way to put it. The daring do. The daring do. Of Marcotte. The guy who says, this is the most Canadian thing I've ever heard you say. Well, it would have been if I hadn't said the other two words before.

I need the guy who says, yeah, this guy's tired of me, but I'm going to jump up and punch him. This is my technique to close the distance. Jump up, punch him on the chin. I need that guy. Simple and effective. I need the guy who says, I want to jump in this guy and wail on him. What's the best way to get there? You know what?

I'm going to jump on him. I'm literally going to jump on him butt first and hope for the best. That's it. No plan. And I'm going to, he faced some of the hardest punch. Just heavyweight. So many hard points. I'm going to, you know, while I regain my strength, just drop my arms down, let the guy crack me a few times.

And then, oh, okay, I'm back, and now I'm going to fire back. I need that. It's more than mentality. It is like a lifestyle, you know, I need that guy. He's going to do that because there's a lot of fighters who I wonder how different their careers could be. If they were a little more adventurous, if they had a fraction of the adventurousness of one Mr. Mark Hunt. So I'll take that. I'll take his adventurous, his cavalier attitude.

I love that. Special shout out here for me. His left hook and his uppercuts, we talked about the upper cuts. He also just had a very distinct, like a middle distance left hook where it's not looping, but it does kind of get around the guard of people. And it's sort of this leaping. It's just, if you showed me, no, just a, you know, a silhouette image throwing the punch, you're like, that's Mark Hunt's left hook.

It's very distinct. And I always liked it a great deal. our next category Brad Ims Fun with Stats Award named after Brad Ims Hill Billy Hartthrob Heavyweight Who famously won back-to-back fights with Go-GoPotus This is you have fun with some stats out there

I had a few contenders here Either you fellas have one you're really excited about Brad Ims I don't know that I got one I'm really excited about For me my main one is one I've already said Which was Mark Hunt is in my mind easily the best fighter in MMA history to have a losing professional

MMA record, which is still just incredibly disappointing and depressing. It is a little disappointing, but hey, stand out one way or another, you know. We've got to make your own legacy. He pulled that off. I got a few for you. One, let's play a fun game, fellas. A number of

takedowns, Mark Huntland and his entire MMA career, over under is set at six and a half. Are you taking the over? You taking the under? Over. The over for AK, Heen? I think it's exactly six. Ten!

That is two more takedowns than Chocoladale. Collegiatey Russell Chocoladale ever landed. Mark Hunt's got him beat, which is very shocking. And I was like, oh, that's a fun over-under game. Two other ones that I have here. First, 41%. That number, ladies and gentlemen, as we've alluded to several times in the saying, that is the percentage of Mark Hunt's MMA fights that came

against opposition, who at one point in time failed a drug test. Of his 29 fights, 27 unique opponents, 10 of them failed drug tests, that is not factoring in at least three others that I would bet a considerable sum of money at one point or another got on the gear. The 10 who failed, Vandale, Crowcott, Barnett, Overeem, Rothwell, JDS, Bigfoot, Silva, Frank Mir, Fabrice O'Roodoom, Brock Lesnar. When he gives the quote that says, I'd be champ already if it wasn't for cheaters, I'm not sure that's true, but you can recognize that when basically half of your fights

come against people getting a little extra assistance, that can probably be a frustrating experience. So, yeah, yeah, that's pretty tough. That one jumped out at me. All right. And my last one, this is less of. Mark Hunt thing, but it was a thing that kind of jumped out at me as it was going through things. Mark Hunt fought eight times in his 18 UFC fights. Eight of them took place in Australia and New

Zealand. He also did three in Saitama. So of his 18 fights, 11 of them were on home ground, basically, if you consider Saitama an extension as a place where he is very, very welcome. It just really stuck out to me looking. I was like, man, they really got him going in those places. is and Stepe fought in Cleveland once. Like, Steve A, heavyweight champion, go, they let him fight in Ohio one time. But Mark Hunt, let's go. You have a base company, fight in Ohio once. We're going to go to New Zealand every other day from Mark Hunt.

And this is one reason why his career, I think, was so memorable, right? Just like, that was crowd reactions. If there's one good thing about him not fighting with the UFC past 2018, It's that he did not have to compete in the godawful apex era. I do not need to see Mark Hunt getting his brains beaten in or beating some of the dude's brains in in the frigging confines of the UFC apex. I never need to see it. I'm glad we never will because, right, that's a huge, him fighting in Saitama,

him fighting in New Zealand, Australia is just that's the way. Biscane, like it's just the crowd's always there for him. That's how it should be. That's dope. Next category. Easy's category the whole day for me, boys. The Sean Farris Award actor who should play him in a movie. I don't care that I went low-hanging fruit.

There was one man. I didn't even pretend to look anywhere else. I went young Tamara Morrison. Yeah. You got to go young. He's a little old now. He's obviously old to do it now. But we get to do this.

I mean, for those who are unaware, Tomor Morrison is the dude who plays Bobafet in the book of Bobafet. And is in like, you know, he's a New Zealand actor who's been around. for a long time and been been steadily working frankly looks a lot like mark hunt we need to you know put on a little bit of pounds around the midsection but damn fine actor this was the i honestly might be the easiest i've ever had in this entire category yeah that was the first yeah i i think if you'd like do a google image search of mark hunt like it just took a random picture of it if you've found like a cleaner shaven mark hunts and like did a reverse google image search

it would probably like bring up some Tamara Morrison's by accident. I actually really could. Like, is that what comes dad? Like is that? Is that who that is? Yeah. That's the choice. Of course, if we could, if he was just a little bit younger, he is over 60 now.

But it's the right. I forgot he's an Aquaman too, which is coming out this week. Playing a dad, playing an older dad. Playing Jason Momoa's dad in Aquaman. We should just get Mamoa. Screw it. I just get Mamma. I did briefly consider Ty to a missile.

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And Ty would be great. Typey's so good at it. Time's too big, though. Part of Hunt is being 5'10. I can't do that. I went with a young man, a former Power Rangers actor,

a man who's had a small role in some major Hollywood movies, including Hobbs and Shaw. Jed, he was one of the Samoan crew, the Rock Samoan crew in Hobbs and Shaw. His name's John Toey, and you guys look at pictures of him. Definitely does not match the resemblance

of Tumor Morrison. A little bit more, I think, physically is where we want to be with, so if we could somehow combine them. We just use AI and combine John Toey and Tamer & Morrison, take Tamer & Mercer's face, throw it on there and get the Timor Morrison performance. I think we can have something going there. Yeah. I will say Tui does have the wideness down. Also, Tui's 48. Yes, but that's okay,

but he could play. If we're going to have to do a young guy anyway, give me young Morrison. That's perfect. Listen, he could pass for whatever age. I don't know how, it depends why I'm I'll say, we'll say, Tui, too, he looks terrific for being 48. He does. And then there's the kid from, do you guys see that movie The Hunt for the Wilder people? Nope. Okay, there's a kid in there. A lot of he's a large young man.

Is it wilder people or will their people? Well, I think, I say wilder people, but that's because I'm dumb. Oh. Oh, this kid. Now, the only problem is he's very young. Also, he's too young. You're going with, um, this is also. The Kid from Deadpool.

Sure. I don't watch those movies. Oh, yeah. Far more people will know him. Okay. Far more people will know him as the kid from Deadpool, too, that is the crux of the film. Philistines. He's like the fourth lead in that movie.

Well, if you must use such a base reference, yes. He's also in Godzilla versus Kong. The Young Man for Dead Chronicles, too. But yes, he's too young. That's the only problem. He's way too young. the other way. He can do the young scenes. We need the child scenes of more.

There we go. And then age down to Mara Morrison for some of the older scenes. We spent the boys. We did it. Well done. Cole Conrad career change reward. We're almost done. This is Mark Conn. We're not a fighter. What would he be doing? This is where I put. Did you guys know Mark Hunt pro wrestled? Because I didn't. I also tucked in another fun fact. I didn't have anywhere else to put.

When in my various researches, I found video of him arm wrestling. Jerome Labanner on what I believe to be a Japanese television show. Oh my. It's quite funny because I think LeBanner's taking it a little bit more seriously, but they're both sort of in on the joke. It's great. I don't know how or why that happened,

and I could find literally no context about it other than the video itself. Who wins? Oh, LeBanner wins. I'll send you guys the video because it doesn't take very long. So that was just, I just wanted to tuck this here, because I didn't have a great answer. Based on, you know, some of his stories seems like probably his life wasn't going in a great path prior to finding fighting. So probably wouldn't be a happy thing to put for Cole Conrad.

This will be the last time I'll bring this show down, I swear. But I did think like, oh, he's going to be. I do think he'd become muscle for some sort of New Zealand gangster or maybe one of those cool movie hitmen. You know what I mean? Those like movie hit men really griseled who's like going down, you know, but he has a code. He has a code. And at some point in his life, if Martin didn't find fighting, he would be murdering people. That's what I'm saying.

Maybe murdering bad people. Like in the movies, murdering bad people. And then he has a code. He finds that one last job that redeems him. You know what I mean? So that's less job is always the one. Of course. It redeems him, but the people he killed are stood dead.

Yeah, but they were bad people. They're bad people. So it's okay. So what do you mean? Listen. We have to go down this road because I think he is your first damn subject that is, that was in jail before becoming a fighter. I'm pretty sure. Boy, I mean, I don't know.

I'm not. I'm not certain about that. I'd have to look at the list. Rhonda Rousey was a friggin' oligian. Yeah, Rhonda Rousey was a frigging Olympian. Down Cormey was an Olympic level. No, no, Bisping. We did a damn on Bisping.

Oh, what was his, the same thing, kind of delinquency? some sort of just youthful. Did you never read Bisping's book? You should read Bisping's book. What did he do? He got in a bar fight and spent like 60 days. It might have only been 30 days in jail, like actual prison because he got in a bar fight. He had kicked some dude unconscious and went to jail for it.

And like when he got out, he was like, yeah, it was really formative experience. I didn't talk about it a lot at the time. But, you know, like I had a wife and a new baby. And it was just like, this is fucked up. and I got to do it. Like, yeah, so Bisping is, I would say Bisping is the number, as the first thing. He had a family. He had a family, though.

He was going to, he was going to sort things out. Poor Mark Hunt was just going to be punching people randomly the screens. Going to jail is according to his book, like a pretty key moment of his life. And ostensibly, it's something similar-ish happened to you with Mark, okay, this is why we're different. We were going down the same, with the same driving force. You went hit man gang muscle. I went bouncer.

Honorable. He'll probably still kind of be physically hurting people, but it'll be a bouncer at a bar as opposed to a career criminal. At two, Shaheen, at two, bouncer? Yeah, bouncer slash bodyguard. That was sort of where I was leaning with this. Someone would hire him to stand there, look at medicine.

He can do real well. This is real good at that. our final category and fellas I'll be honest this is the hardest category for me of the day we talked about it off air the Leon Edwards

look at me now for the career peak what's the the apex the top moment he's got an incredibly weird career I don't know what Mark Hunt's peak is I settled

his like fourth MAME fight I think there's a great argument for that what I settled on and I was deeply deeply unhappy with it. I just went with the K1 World Championship because

like that's obviously when Mark Hunt inevitably passes, knock on wood, it's not something we're hoping happens anytime soon. I think the top thing that will be in his obituary, it'll be K1 champion. You know, Mark Hunt passed on this day. He's a K1

champion. He fought for many years in the UFC, but K1 champion will be the lead line there. So that's where I went. But like I said, I don't feel great about it. It was just, I couldn't figure out where else to put it. Yeah. I have been on several episodes of this program, and I have not struggled once to decide the peak of someone's career or someone's career for this category. It's the first time.

I have no idea. I have no idea. Because it could be the K-1. It could be the very early pride stuff. Could be K-KOP, for sure, like you said. And it could be what I settled with. But again, I don't know. Mark Hunt's so weak.

He already has such a long, distinguished career, but it's all, it doesn't feel like there's some exceptional peak to it. I put 2014. I put 2014. He has tons of momentum. He has seven figure contract in the UFC. He's prime for a title shot. He's probably peak popularity, peak earning.

So just in general, if you're talking about the apex of his career, peak popularity, peak earning potential, biggest matchup, that probably is it. I agree. Also, the Lesnar stuff hasn't happened yet. So I went that, but I don't know that I feel great about it because you're right. His best moments came much earlier than that. It's really weird because when I was trying to figure out where I went, that was kind of where I was torn between the two. Because, yeah, if you do look at it, like, it's, he doesn't draw like, you know, a career arc so much as it's a career, like, what's EKG line?

Yeah. Like it's just going. It's up and down, up and down. But like it probably, if there is an arc at all to it, Roy Nelson, that kind of CO is a little bit. Everything after that feels a little less because after that's the Verdume loss and then that sort of sets in motion. He still gets wins.

But then the Mark Hunt thing, it can't be anything after the Brock Lesnar thing. That's obviously anything. It has to be pre that. It's real tough. So I totally get what you're coming from. you might be right i just i don't i don't know i don't know i can help us solve this i don't know what's up with you guys it was easy for me it was easy for me because uh it's yeah come on guys it's me uh this one i want to put i want to put this in the mountrush more and then i just very easily

shifted down here and and uh that's a pro move that's a pro damn podcasting move right yeah and it was almost like a temporary thing at first but the more i thought about it and how this moment made me feel i was like yeah this this is at least for me when i was like i really viewed Mark Hunt as like that dude is one of those guys. So 2014, Shaheen is right. So I just boiled it down to the Roy Nelson knockout specifically. Again, it was that or true

if you're going to pick the walk off. It's a great moment. I mean, he just cracks them and it's hilarious. Leon Roberts almost ruins it by like pushing him from behind. And I'm like, oh man, it would have been the worst thing ever if Mark Hunt tripped over Nelson's carcass and like blew his knee out. But even that, he kind of like very calmly like glides over somehow still

ends up on his feet and like what barely reacts to the shove like um so that moment itself is just amazing but i i think and yes he was calm as always but i think he was really feeling himself i think that's where he really started to believe like man i am i am that guy i am because we had kind of false start when he fights junior we just know juniors a better fighter than him at judo santos junior at that point one of the two best heavyweights in the world so him losing to junior not not a huge deal And that could have been it. Like that could have been it. I didn't talk about that one a lot.

I know. That fight's incredible. Great fight. Great fight. That fight's incredible fighting. I mean, wins fight of the night and probably should have been like a top knockout. Like that's an unreal finish too. And that could have been the end of the Mark Hunt run.

Like that could have been like, oh, that's it. He's not going to like he, he, junior beats him. We know his ceiling now. Right. It felt like that could have been it. That's literally the first time we've mentioned this show in three and a half hour or that fight in three and a half hours. But like it's a. genuinely great heavyweight skillful fight.

Like I immensely respect the opinion of Jack Slack because he's obviously very good at breaking down the technical aspects of this game. He's the best at it. And when that fight happened, he called that the most skillful heavyweight fight in the history of the sport. And I mean, you just like, at least on the striking capacities. Like the little games and traps and stuff that's being set in that fight are unbelievable. Yeah.

So, but then after that fight, he has the big foot solo fight. And suddenly we, and even then you're still still kind of like, is he really a world title competitor? He's a fun fights guy, but it was awesome. We did see another level there. And then the Roy Nelson knockout, man, it was like, you, we mentioned he'd only been knocked out twice. After that, he still was only knocked out once. In 44 pro fights, Roy Nelson was only knocked out three times. And so once before, hunt, then hunt, and then Sergei Karatano later. So it's still an incredibly difficult thing to do. It's not like Nelson's chin disappear and it was just getting cracked after that. It was still this nearly impossible

task. So clean, it's no doubter. I didn't expect it. I did not expect it. I did not expect it. I did not expect. I thought that was going fun three-round decision. I remember at the time, I was like, there's no way. I don't think are these guys knocking the other guy out? And I think he really believed. And I know I did. I was like, I think this guy actually could fight for a UFC title. And though he wasn't like, you know, it wasn't the plan. Sure enough, his next fight, he is the replacement, you know, to step in for this interim title fight. And it felt believable. It really felt like, man, maybe he can beat for Reese Over Doom, you know? I don't think I picked him at the time, but that he made it that far was so amazing. I think I did. Yeah. And, and,

that we really felt like he deserved it. So that for me is the clear peak. When he, when he that walk off on Ryan Nelson, I'm like, he's, he's the man. I don't know if he's one of the top five best headways in the world, honestly, but he is the man. And he deserves a chance to prove that he's, that he belongs up there. And again, whatever, fell short, fine. But boy, I made it farther than a lot of people thought he would. And I just love that chaos so much. So 2014, I think is the right answer. But I would go as far as say, just that Roy Nelson walk off. That's my, that's my look at me now, big time. It's a great argument. Also, shout out to Sergey Karatanov.

It would have been a great. Could have made that fight. That would have been a banger at some point. And I will say I also gave a brief bit of consideration of Frank Mir here as being like that because, I mean, that's the last high moment. Obviously, Brock happens after this. But to get the, to be the guy in line to get the Brock comeback fight, like that's pretty meaningful at the time. Right. Like, he still has some juice left.

It was a super weird one for this category. His career just didn't have a lot of highs or the highs were all relatively equal. It had several highs, but none of them were like, ah, this one is much more. And arguably those came so early, it feels weird to be like, well, actually, his career was pretty much on the downslope after he won the K-1 title in 2001 or whatever. When we inevitably do And Jarolovsky, that's going to also be a real weird. What's Anderolovsky's career peak? is it winning the UFC belt and then he fought 20 more years after the fact but that's for later because

for now we're at the end we're closing shop we have been um i think we're at a full three hours at this point in time so mark hunt you're going to be the longest dan that's ever there been and we still got a little bit more to say so whatever else you got to say right now boys let's let's send our boy Hunt off with some kind words of affection and your remaining thoughts on him. A.K., let's start with you. I had one sentence right now here. I'll elaborate more, but throughout the majority of his career, Mark Hunt was good enough to beat the best in the world in MMA or kickboxing.

I mean, this is a fact. And it sounds so weird, given that his, you look at his, Emmy record, it's not the most impressive, but just by the sheer numbers, the win-loss column. He's had plenty of loss to kickboxing, too. Like I think, he's fought the best. He didn't always beat the best. We talked about the Jerome LeBanner feud. I mean, Jerome beat him three times.

But boy, that one, that one time he beat him really stands out. And kind of won is all you need when you're talking a guy like Mark Hunt. Because we know that there's moments where he also looked like a journeyman. We talk about Sean McCorkle, 18 second knock out to Melvin Manhoof. Just getting ran through near the end of that pride or that run in Japan. But at his best, more. more than just an action guy, more than just like a curiosity. You know, we see somebody that was a heavyweight,

ah, just a curiosity, heavyweight knocker guy. He was somehow both. He was one of the most fun fighters ever, but someone who legitimately got a shot at, at least the interim version of the top title in MMA, the UFC Heavyweight Jampship. And really, you felt like he could have won it. And he lost, and that's fine.

And this is what he needs to remember for. Not all the other stuff, not the lesser stuff again. We talked about it. It's important. It's part of history. I get it. You can't ignore it. But there's very few people.

Again, we talked about Robbie Loller a lot. We talked about Vandrle, so he fits in that category of guys who was just so, so, so, so super fun, fought their own way. Yeah, they took their lumps. They got a lot of weird losses on there. But, man, at their best, you really believed they could have been the champion of whatever combat sport they were competing in. And that's just such a fun thing to say.

So I hope people remember Mark Hunt fondly. We said before, I hope he lives a long life. You know, I hope he lives to be 100 years old. And that with time, he can look back on his career fondly and fans can look back on his career fondly and, you know, just has a bit of a happier ending than kind of what we've gotten so far. Brilliant words. Shaheen, close us down. Well, first of all, he's a man of many names. We haven't really mentioned this, but just some amazing nicknames for this man. The KFC King, the Super Samoan, Hunter.

Super Samoan is such a good nickname. It's so good. It's perfect. It's the walk-off king, all of it. There's so many good nicknames for this man. And that to me, Mark Hunt is why this show exists. Like, he so much embodies the spirit of, I think, what you try to accomplish with this show. And when you first pitched me this show, why I enjoyed the idea so much.

Because he is not someone, he is someone who defies Wikipedia, who defies tapology, someone who 30 years from now, somebody who has not even born yet, who is a combat sports fan, will look at Wikipedia, look at Tapology, and see a man with a losing MMA record who never won a notable MMA title and wonder why in the hell he should care about Mark Hunt. And everything that we just spoke about is why we should care,

because he defies what the record books said. He was such a unique, wholly unique career. He was the precursor to Alex Pereira. And it's just there are so many, again, I have watched this man for decades, and there were so much stuff I even forgot before you had me on this task of looking it back up and sort of going back through the rabbit hole. It's just tremendous.

He gave us, when you can give us so many memories that we have forgotten probably half of them, like that's when you know you left an imprint and you left a mark on combat sports. And Mark Hunt so very much did that. And what AK said is absolutely correct. There are very few people who are in this game who at any given point could beat the number one person in the world at their given sport. And Mark Hunt was always that guy. For most of his career, he, if you put him against the very best person in the entire world, dude has a chance to win. Dude has a decent damn chance to win. And there are not a lot of guys you could say that about.

And again, he beat like the number two heavyweight in MMA in like his fourth MMA fight. A lot of stuff about Mark Hunt's career doesn't make sense, but ultimately he was a ton of fun. And I will always remember him fondly and I'm so glad people will be able to remember him in this way and hopefully that will continue moving forward where 20 years from now that people have some level of understanding of why this person mattered rather than just dismissing him off the records. Yeah. This is my second favorite damn we've ever done just the prep on it, which I didn't think honestly coming in.

I was just like, I like Mark Hunt. This will be really fun because I always enjoy these and you get into it. It's like, it's like you said, Gene, I forgot how much of this is brilliant and so much fun. And, you know, it's not even 20 years down the line, like future generations. You go on Reddit right now. You go look at, you know, people talking about Mark Hunt, even at the time. And certainly still now to this day, it's like, yeah, it's a 500 fighter. He's not very good.

Why do you guys care? It's like, because, man, he, it's, it's the game is about more than wins and losses in in so many respects. And there are, yeah, he never won a title. Like, you never want a MMA title of any kind. There are dozens of major MMA champions who we won't ever do dams on, who we couldn't do dams on. But we just spent three hours talking about Mark Hunt and straight up, we didn't get to it all.

For sure. We just can't keep doing this because no one's going to listen to a five-hour podcast episode and y'all might kill me for having you here for that long. But like, we didn't get until our three is when we brought up the JDS fight. Like it's, there's so much to this man's career that it doesn't matter that he is a 500 fighter or less than 500 fighter that is almost incidental, almost meaningless to the story of him and to what, to his contributions to the sport. and it is why I wanted to do this podcast, guys like him,

and honestly, really guys like him, because I say it kind of a lot when we do this, like, oh, man, this guy's career is better than I remember or whatever. Mark Hans was so much better than I remember because, like, part of me is like, I did this show was built around Carlos Condon and Robbie Law. I was like, I just want to talk about those dudes forever, right? Like, that's where this show wants to be. Mark Khan is one of those guys.

And even amongst us, people who are as deep in this game as possible. We still kind of forget that he's one of those dudes, that he's a guy who every time he fought, what's the most boring Mark Hunt fight? Someone please tell me what is the most boring Mark Hunt fight? I think, honest to God, I think the answer has been Rothwell. Yeah. I think that's it.

It's Brock Lesnar. Yes. I guess that's true. But I blocked that out because it's so bad. But like, yeah, outside of Brock Lesnar, which is a massively significant. fight and a fight that is endlessly worth talking about outside of what happened. The only other time he was marginally not entertaining was Ben Rothwell. Like, what are we talking about?

At altitude? Who gets to, who has a career like that at heavyweight? Like, it is, I love Andrei-Alovsky. Andrea Olavski's career is not as good as Mark Hunt's career, despite the fact that Drilovsky is actually has an incredible career in a lot of respects. It is this dude typifies like what I wanted to celebrate with this show and what I think MMA fandom largely gets wrong about fighters and to a point that I even forgot it. And that was what I thought come like that was what I was reminded of going in.

And it's like you said at the top. And here's what we're in. Sheen is, dude, if you just Google Mark Hunt on like YouTube him and you will find yourself slipping hours away needlessly. Like, oh, I didn't realize I spent three hours watching Marc Hunt and Ray Sefo just chuck them at each other or his series of wars with Jerome Banner, any of the K-1 stuff, or the UFC or dream or pride. There is so much rich, rich, like violence that he gave to us that is worthy of being celebrated

and should be. And so I'm sad that his career ended the way it did. I hope that we'll get to have a re-kind of a re-reckoning about him moving forward at some point in time. And until that day goes, Markon, if you're listening, know that we love the shit out of you. And this was so much fun. And that, damn, you were good. And that's it, ladies and gentlemen. Another episode is in the book.

Honestly, God, I think this is going to be the longest one ever. And guess what? We got one more before the years out. One more coming down the pipe. And we're finishing. I wanted to set the tone at the end of the day. the year, fellas. And we're finishing with a man we talked about several times today on this very episode going right back to the heavyweight well. Mirko Krokop to close out 2023. He is our

next damn inductee. Until then, thank you, Alexander Cayley. Thank you, Shihina Ashadi, for joining me, taking all this time to talk about the wonderful Mark Hunt. Thank you, Mr. Hunt, Honto son, king of the walk-off, super Samoan. See you next time. Love you. network.