Mark Hunt is disappointed in last fight, but wants to 'dance' again
Mark Hunt took a historic beating last month at home in Australia at the hands of Stipe Miocic. The tough kickboxer's face was a swollen mess afterwards, but he told Submission Radio that he's back to looking good.
"Well, I'm back to modelling, of course. You know I'm always - Calvin Klein rang me up the other day. I did that, then I went back to face modelling, (laughs) nah," he joked.
"It wasn't a good night in the office. I made a couple of mistakes that night, and I wasted a whole camp."
Hunt said that he's finally realized that he walks around too heavy to fight up to par. Because he has to struggle so mightily to make the heavyweight limit of 265 pounds, Hunt was left without much energy to actually fight Miocic after cutting weight.
"I wasted my whole camp, and I can't apologize enough to my team and all the guys that were with me. You know because I shouldn't even have to cut weight for these things," he said.
"I normally sit around close to 140 (kilograms, about 308 pounds) on my off time. So right now I'm trying to bring my fat arse back to 110-115 so I can actually compete with these guys. That wasn't a good night in my office. That wasn't even a fight. That was me getting a hiding. And so I don't want to do that ever again, otherwise why am I even competing? I might as well just hang it up.
"But I do apologize. I can't apologize enough to my team that I've wasted all their time. It was like 12 weeks of wasting time. And what I mean by that, because I went into the fight, you know the way I did feel like I was doing OK in the rounds after eight five-minute rounds in sparring with three guys. But the last bit of the fine tuning didn't work out, because I didn't have any crabs the night before. Troubled waters before the fight. So you know, four rounds, five rounds of getting a beatdown is not really good."
Losing a chance at another title fight didn't sting as badly as losing in his adopted home of Australia. "The fact is, I've never lost back at home," he said.
"I wanted to keep that record standing, and I never lost a rematch ever. That's another thing I want to keep standing. But it wasn't the fact that I didn't get a title shot, it's that I wasted everyone's time with it that by making a couple of little errors And the guys are too good at the top to make those errors."
Despite getting beaten so badly by Miocic -- who set a UFC record for most strikes landed in a fight -- Hunt said that he always felt he had a chance to come back. "I thought I could hang in in the fight, even though I was getting beaten down," he said.
"I thought, 'Look, man, I need to get a good couple of shots,' but it just got worse and worse, and my hole got bigger and bigger. It wasn't good for anyone to watch."
Even so, Hunt does not pity himself and wants none from his ardent fans. At the end of the day, Hunt says he chose to be there and loves being a professional fighter.
"People were feeling pity for me, and I'm like, 'Don't feel pity for me. I feel really blessed as a fighter to be competing at the top end,'" he said.
"I might not love that night, but like I said, I'm not a 9-to-5 person, and yeah, I always feel blessed that (he can) still be competing with the top guys at my age."
As such, Hunt certainly wants to fight again, even though he's 42 years old and has lost two straight. Who he fights doesn't matter so much.
"I will dance with anybody," he said.
"I like doing the tango and waltz, the waltz especially."
