Mark is in the Hunt

Jared Smith

All he ever had was two demon fists, and all he ever wanted was an opportunity.

Amidst all the glitz and glamour that has been thrown on and then harshly scratched off from the big UFC 200 show tomorrow afternoon NZ time - with management disputes and now drug issues taking away two stellar main events - it is the humble Auckland-born Samoan Mark Hunt who has stepped into the breech against man-mountain Brock Lesnar in the showcase match.

While Lesnar, the former UFC champion and professional wrestler star, is the box office attraction, it still takes two to tango and the 42-year-old Hunt's highlight reel knockouts and reputation of being "King of the Walk-offs" means the UFC's biggest show should not lose any steam.

Originally, Hunt was not even scheduled to be on the UFC 200 card, where chatty Irishman Connor McGregor was set to rematch against Stockton bad boy Nate Diaz until McGregor, remembering being choked out in their last meeting in March, had a falling out with the promotion over making extra media appearances when he wanted to train harder for his bigger opponent in Diaz.

Scrambling to find another fight that would sell, the UFC promoted their biggest grudge match between light heavyweights Daniel Cormier and hated rival Jon Jones, while being thrown a lifeline as Lesnar called to say he was interested in an MMA comeback after nearly five years.

Then on the eve of this weekend's battle the troubled Jones, who has had run-ins with the law and a history of recreational drug use, failed an out-of-competition drug test sanctioned by the USADA.

With no time to test Jones' B Sample before the show, which could yet exonerate him of using performance enhancing drugs, the UFC has come to Lesnar and Hunt to save their bacon.

The same Hunt who back in 2009 the UFC was willing to pay US$450,000 just to go away.

Discovered for professional fighting by an Auckland bouncer who watched him drop a couple of guys in a brawl outside a nightclub, Hunt took up kick boxing at the turn of the millennium and made an immediate splash overseas when he won the 2001 K1 World Grand Prix inside the Tokyo Dome.

In our rugby-obsessed culture, Hunt was the New Zealand world champion who no-one in New Zealand knew about.

Switching over to MMA, even with a parochial Kiwi eye it can be said his results were middling for the Pride MMA organisation - 'middling' to the point where he had lost five fights in four years by the time the UFC purchased the Japanese promotion.

UFC boss Dana White didn't see anything marketable about the rotund heavyweight, whose contact UFC had inherited in the purchase, and so offered him a reasonably generous buyout.

But Hunt just wanted to fight, to prove them all wrong, even to the point of taking legal action to make the company honour his deal.

And so in a barely promoted undercard bout of UFC 119, Hunt fought fellow debuting heavyweight Sean McCorkle and was promptly submitted in just over a minute.

So far, White's assessment was looking correct.

However, since that evening, Hunt has redoubled his efforts, taken his dieting seriously, and with an attitude of "anyone, anywhere, anytime", he has amassed an impressive 7-3-1 record, highlighted by his impressive knockouts and main event battles against noted UFC champions - often being the guy to step in at short notice when other fighters pull out.

Is it any coincidence as UFC tightened up their drug rules and handed monitoring over to the independent USADA - the same guys who busted Lance Armstrong - that a Kiwi boy like Mark Hunt who just trains hard with his natural gifts has a career now out-lasting more athletic, physically impressive specimens who have suddenly gone on losing streaks or been caught out on tests?

Hunt has suffered from others failings before, as his brutal stalemate with giant Antônio Silva in December 2013 - regarded as the best heavyweight fight of all time - was tainted when Silva tested positive post fight, with his record amended to a 'no contest' while Hunt was left with the draw on his sheet.

Facing a clean Silva in November last year, Hunt dropped him in the fourth minute of Round 1 to make a definitive statement.

Hunt's frustrations have to mirror those of another dominant and naturally gifted Kiwi athlete who cannot seem to drag her sport out of the quagmire of drug allegations.

Preparing to make history as a third-straight gold medallist in Rio, shot putter Valerie Adams is now the only one of the three athletes who stood on the dais at London 2012 to have remained there.

As we all know, Belarusian Nadzeya Ostapchuk was exposed for using metenolone soon after the event and although Adams had the honour of receiving a gold medal in a ceremony on home soil, it did not console her for the frustration of feeling like a runnerup and not getting to stand on top of the perch in London.

Then just last month, the bronze and upgraded silver medallist Evgeniia Kolodko was revealed to have failed retrospective tests from the same event.

Unfortunately, it's nothing new for Adams - when she debuted at the 2004 Athens Games she would miss making the Top 8 and getting three more chances to throw.

Four of the athletes who finished ahead of her have since received doping bans.

Even now, regarded as one of the most dominant athletes in her sport and nearly untouchable, Adams is - in terms of distances - only 23rd of all time.

Somehow, despite all the advances in training techniques and sports science of the past 20 years, she still cannot reach the world record throws made by Soviet-backed athletes from the 1960s to 1980s.

Under natural conditions, that is not physically possible.

What a great shame that our big Kiwi athletes, born strong and then driven to succeed, must always have their accomplishments railroaded or overshadowed by the stigma of drug cheats.