Injury the cruelest blow for Kiwi fighter
WHEN everything seems to be going your way, fate can sometimes land the cruelest blow on even the toughest and most hardened.
Just ask Kiwi UFC fighter Mark Hunt.
The former K-1 world champion has enjoyed a career renaissance in the UFC, winning three of his four fights so far, and even being linked to a heavyweight title challenge against Junior Dos Santos.
Yet on the verge of his biggest fight to date, Hunt has been forced to pull out of his bout with Dutchman Stefan Struve INUFC146 next Sunday in Las Vegas, due to a tear in his posterior cruciate ligament (PCL).
It will the first time in Hunt’s long career in mixed martial arts that he has been forced to withdraw due to injury, and the Aucklandborn fighter was understandably disappointed.
‘‘I’ve never been injured before. I put so much work into this fight, I trained so hard for it. It was just so disappointing for me,’’ he told mmafighting.com.
Hunt suffered the knee injury during training at the American Top Team gym in Coconut Creek, Florida, last week, when the 38-year-old was completing a series of sprints with resistance bands.
‘‘It was actually the last sprint of the day,’’ he said.
‘‘You run up, you do some combinations and it drags you back, but I felt something hurt in my knee.
‘‘It was like it just went stiff all of a sudden. It was a sharp pain, and that was it.’’
Hunt, who believes he has been carrying the injury for some time, said he was still eager to fight Struve following the injury but was talked out of it by Top Team founder and chief trainer, Marcus ‘‘Conan’’ Silveira.
‘‘Conan told me today and helped me feel a lot better about not taking the fight,’’ Hunt said. ‘‘He goes ‘when fighters go into the Octagon or ring, they go in 100 per cent. They go in [with] bazookas, guns and everything. You don’t go in there, into a fight, with a butter knife’.
‘‘I don’t think Stefan Struve would have liked to beat me the way I’m injured anyway. I might as well have said, ‘take the fight, have it’. I don’t want it,’’ he added. American Lavar Johnson will now fight Struve in the heavyweight clash. The fight is on the main card for the heavyweight title bout between Dos Santos and Frank Mir. Mir was only announced to fight a month ago after original challenger Alistair Overeem failed a drug test in Las Vegas. Hunt’s name was one mentioned as a possible replacement for Overeem. He will undergo knee surgery in California this week, and will be out of training for at least six weeks. Though disappointed to miss the fight, the Kiwi UFC star is determined to fight ‘‘a different day’’. ‘‘I still want to do the fight, but my brain says it’s no good,’’ Hunt said. ‘‘You’ll have one kick in the leg, or one something and then it will be just a waste of time, anyway. ‘‘Be smart about it and come back a different day and fight.’’