Mark Hunt's long, strange journey to becoming an irony-free contender

For about five minutes there in the spring of 2012, it seemed like Mark Hunt had the whole world behind him.

Hunt (10-8-1 MMA, 5-2-1 UFC) was on a three-fight winning streak, one which had finally brought his record as an MMA fighter to a semi-respectable 8-7, and he had finally proved to the UFC that he was more than just a fat kickboxer with the ground game of a disinterested white belt. He was getting somewhere, this guy who the UFC had very recently offered to pay off just to keep him home on the couch and out of the octagon. He was proving himself.

Then came that whole ugly mess with Alistair Overeem popping positive for elevated testosterone levels, leaving then-UFC heavyweight champ Junior Dos Santos without a dance partner at UFC 146. Hey, said some Internet smart-aleck, why not put Hunt in there as a replacement?

And so was born the #RallyForMarkHunt, a bit of social media activism that was fun and useless and maybe a little bit condescending. What gave the movement legs was that it seemed counterintuitive. Mark Hunt? A challenger for the UFC heavyweight title? As in, the same guy who went four whole years without a win at one point in his career? It was ridiculous to the point of being perfect; plus it seemed like UFC executives would hate it, which only made the idea more appealing. It was part attempted hijacking and part genuine affection, but it was difficult to say which people were motivated by which impulse, or to what extent.

On one hand, who didn’t want to see Hunt cold-clock another victim and then swagger off in search of a Vegas buffet fit for a champion? On the other, how could Mark freaking Hunt seriously be the UFC’s top heavyweight? I mean, honestly?

This is why, when Hunt put Roy Nelson’s (20-10 MMA, 7-6 UFC) face into the canvas with a second-round knockout at UFC Fight Night 52 today and then followed it up by declaring his desire to move up the rankings and “get a title shot,” you could almost hear the chuckle of disbelief from fans everywhere.

Oh, Mark. A title shot? In the UFC? At your age? It’s almost as if this guy thinks he’s something other than a hard-headed slugger with just enough grappling expertise to get by. It’s almost as if he thinks he might be the best fighter in the world. Which, of course, he does.

That’s always the disconnect, when you talk to Hunt. He doesn’t say much, and what he does say makes it seem like he’d prefer to say even less, but ask him how he feels about those fans who hold him up as some kind of lovable tough guy and the man gets damn near verbose. He’s not here to be your underdog, your fat guy who can take a punch. He’s not particularly interested in talking about how the UFC once thought he was so terrible it would be better off paying him not to fight. He is not impressed with moral victories or atta-boy points.

He wants to prove that he’s the best in the world, which makes him no different from pretty much everyone else in the UFC. So why is that so hard for people to understand?

You could argue that part of it is age. He’s 40, after all, and he’s spent much of his adult life absorbing blows to the head with the bored indifference of a man who doesn’t mind waiting his turn. You can’t do that forever, and for a pro fighter, 40 seems pretty close to forever as it is.

Then there’s his ground game. It exists, contrary to what you may have heard. It’s also improved dramatically since the PRIDE days when even Wanderlei Silva managed to put him on his back with a little Jiu-Jitsu 101, but it still seems like the quiet kid in class who might know the answer, but is mostly hoping that the teacher never calls on him.

You add in his history, his ups and downs, and how little of a damn he seems to give about appearing cool or interesting or in any way remarkable in interviews or appearances, and you have a guy who maybe just doesn’t seem like championship material.

Which is stupid, of course, because none of that really matters. What matters is what he can do – and what he can do now, rather than five years ago or five years from now.

And, as we saw on Saturday, one of the things he can do is knock out the kind of guys who generally don’t get knocked out. He can take a fellow hard-hitting tough guy and turn his whole world upside-down with one punch.

Who’s to say he couldn’t do the same to whatever dumb notions we might have of what a great fighter looks like? In what way, exactly, would that be anything other than entirely appropriate for a man like Hunt?

For more on UFC Fight Night 52, check out the UFC Events section of the site.