Born to Fight by Mark Hunt, Ben Mckelvey Read Free Book Online Page B

fisherman at his ancestral home, the Cook Islands; run a plantation in PNG; and fought some of the world’s best fighters in the discipline of
Muay Thai
, which is a variation on kickboxing that allows elbow and knee strikes.
    I liked Sam from the get-go. He was honest, quiet, strong, fair and left no doubt as to who was in charge in his presence.
    When I walked into DTMs the next Thursday, the place had been transformed. The dance floor had been cleared of baggy-pant- and short-skirt-wearing teenagers to make way for a boxing ring. The crowd had been converted too,from party kids to an older, uglier crowd, and when I came out from the toilets and towards the ring, I saw mullets, prison tatts and gappy smiles either side of me.
    Sam had taught me what he could, but I had pretty much no training, and no one expects an eighteen-year-old kid with no training to win an organised fight. I walked to the ring almost completely free of stress, feeling calm even when I got there and found a much larger Islander, older and certainly more experienced than me. Surely if this guy started beating the daylights out of me, someone would stop it.
    ‘Oh shit,’ I kept thinking to myself over and over again. Not, ‘Oh shit, how did I get into this?’ Or, ‘Oh shit, how do I get out of this?’ Just, ‘Oh shit I’m here in a
Muay Thai
fight in a nightclub and everyone is staring at me.’
    It was a very strange feeling and, I tell you, I didn’t mind the attention at all. When the announcer said my name, people started cheering, not because anyone knew who I was, but because I was one of Sam’s guys, fighting in one of Sam’s events. I was the hometown boy and I liked their cheers.
    When the bell rang, it felt strange to be wearing gloves, but other than that I felt comfortable. For a good part of the first round I only threw punches, but later I thought Ishould throw in a few kicks, because, you know, this was a kickboxing fight after all.
    After my untrained shin slapped into my opponent’s leg and a shock ran up through my body, I realised that these kicks were probably slowing me more than him so I went back to punches.
    As time ticked past through the first round, I grew more and more confident. Fighting just one guy, on a flat surface, with no bins or kerbs to fall over was actually pretty easy going.
    When I came out for the second round I was ready to look for that spot where his chin would be open for business. With naked fists and often wildly swinging opponents, it was much easier to find that spot on the streets, but I was confident, with a little patience, that I’d get to this guy’s spot. A scenario started playing in my mind. The ring was the same, but beyond it wasn’t a nightclub, it was a stadium – the MGM Grand Garden Arena. There were thousands of people and lights and cameras, and I was stacked with muscles. I was darker skinned, too. I was Mike Tyson. My head had been playing a news clip I’d seen on TV of Mike Tyson knocking some poor fella out. It was a clean, one-punch knockout, but which punch was it?
    Then I saw it – a naked jaw and dropped hands. I threw a straight right at my opponent, landing it square on thejaw. It was the same punch as the one I’d seen Iron Mike throw, and the results were the same. This dude was out cold. The crowd cheered and shouted, saying only good things, nice things.
    ‘They need to put this kid in the movies,’ a woman yelled. A ripple of laughter followed. It felt good. It felt really good. I started dancing around the ring – we were in a nightclub, after all.
    ‘Good shit, son,’ Sam said to me after the fight, handing me a six-pack. Those beers didn’t last long.
    ‘You know, I reckon we should probably do this again.’
    I reckoned he was right.

Chapter 4
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
1994
    I told my wife at the time, ‘I’m going to get a crew of hoods and street kids together and I don’t care how bad they are, I’m going to bring ’em in and turn ’em