Mark Hunt loses in his return to boxing
Mark Hunt was one of those "sideline" fighters in the UFC that I was normally happy to see on a card but he would lose so frequently that there was really no reason for him to ever get a big push for the belt in the heavyweight division in UFC. The one thing that made his fights entertaining was that if he did win he would frequently do so with a "walk away punch" where he doesn't even follow up on the strike to grounded his opponent in the first place.
After years of legal disputes with the UFC, mostly over a Brock Lesnar fight that he lost by decision and Lesnar later tested positive for P.E.D.'s, he dusted off his gloves and returned to boxing, which is a sport he hasn't participated in for many years.
His opponent is an ex rugby player Paul Gallen.
src
I don't know how this all came to happen but I suspect it has something to do with the savage Tweets that the two were sending to one another. While I do not know the details I suspect that Hunt did this intentionally because he probably needs money badly after suing the UFC for years (and thus far, losing that fight) and decided to call out someone that he felt he could beat. Well, he was a bit wrong about that.
I watched pieces of the fight and the real winner of this 6 round bout was no one. Neither of these guys looked very impressive and Hunt in particular looked out of shape and gassed out pretty early in the bout.
Hunt was always one of the borderline fat fighters in UFC but now he is around 20 lbs heavier than he was in UFC and at 279 lbs, he wouldn't even be allowed to fight in most MMA heavyweight divisions as they normally cut off at 265.
src
I will admit that I did not watch the entire fight nor did I watch it live because it was on at a really crazy time of day due to the time zone differences between USA and Australia. That which I did watch seemed kind of sad for both men, but especially for Hunt.
There were times where Hunt would nearly fall down and on one occasion almost throw himself out of the ring because his own fat momentum was destabilizing his ability to remain upright. For the most part the match was a sloppy hugging contest with the occasional heavy strike. Both fighters had to be reminded by the official about the rules of the sport and honestly, they both just looked terrible and like they would absolutely slaughtered if they were fighting an actual professional heavyweight boxer.
You can watch the "highlights" here if you can endure them but mostly this just looked like a sloppy match. If there is one good thing I can say about the ordeal it is that Gallen has one hell of a chin because he took some heavy shots from Hunt including multiple borderline illegal strikes to the back of the head. Gallen would later win the bout by decision and this caused some level of controversy since many observers felt as though Hunt clearly controlled the entire fight and by controlled I mean he appeared slightly less unprofessional in his boxing style.
Mostly there was a ton of head-butting, elbowing, and punches to the back of the head that in a real boxing match would have resulted in a lot of points being taken away from both fighters.
I suppose this is the new trend that perhaps Mike Tyson has helped to kick off because we all keep lining up to see stuff like this that in my opinion, shouldn't really be happening.
Victor Paul Gallen wasted no time and immediately called out another fighter who is not a boxer to be his next opponent. I suppose this policy of calling out ex UFC greats will work for his pocketbook but I may actually sit the next one out because honestly, this was more sad and boring than it was actually exciting.