Mark Hunt is pulling no punches with his feelings on Brock Lesnar, USADA, and the UFC after UFC 200, going on an epic rant on Monday about the entire situation on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.
Hunt’s ire is directed significantly at PED users in the sport, but also at the UFC for what he feels is a system they purport to be on the up and up but in actuality is anything but legitimate.
“These motherf***ers should be penalized hard. Dirty, scummy, cheating scum. That’s how that monkey won his world title. He didn’t do it by doing it clean. He did it by cheating, just like the rest of these cheaters,” Hunt said of Lesnar. “The best outcome is if the company that I work for says, ‘you’ve been cheating, you lose all of your [fight earnings], and since it was cheating, you get fined. You get sued and you get a fine. You’re going to straight to court, criminal court, because what you’ve done is an offense.’ That’s what I want done. So that these guys who are cheating don’t have more incentive to do it, because they do it for financial gain. If you take all of that away, they get nothing.
“Make them banned for five or 10 years. There goes your career. Five, 10 years, you have no career left and not only that, you lose all of your money. You’re done as a fighter. That’ll stop you from doing it. That’s what I want to see done. I won’t be a part of any company who says ‘we don’t mind you cheating or doing this or that,’ otherwise then every monkey will be [cheating].”
Hunt thinks the UFC perhaps knew of Lesnar using before signing him, which is what he believes led to them granting him an exemption from the USADA policy which would have required four months of testing before his return. He called for a fighter’s union in response, and absolutely eviscerated the UFC organization as a whole.
“I think this is a time that a union needs to be formed. All of these fighters need to get together, because we’re sending the wrong message. The message we’re sending out to all of these people who are watching this sport, aw man, you can get away with f***ing anything. To make it in the UFC, you stick a needle in your ass, end up getting millions of dollars if you make it to the top. That’s easy. Better that, give you an exemption for four months, and not only that, they’ll give you your own press conference. That fool had his own press conference and made everyone wait for his own press conference. What a joke.
“I’ll go and work somewhere else. Like I said, I don’t give a sh*t. If we’ve got to sue their asses, well then f*** you, you’re going to get sued. You scummy c*nts. The problem is everyone these days, ‘man, I want to get into the UFC.’ F*** the UFC. You’re sh*t. You motherf***ers don’t look after nobody. We’ll let this f***ing white piece of sh*t f***ing stick needles in his ass and say, ‘oh, he’s going to take us all the way to the f***ing bank.’ Let’s give him f***ing millions of dollars and not worry about this motherf***er. You know what? F*** that and f*** your sh*t company. Look at that for a contract. You can sue me on that, motherf***ers.
“People are scared for years because the company is going to get them,” Hunt continued. “Well, f*** the company. They don’t give a sh*t about you or anyone else. If I walk away now, I don’t care. I walk away knowing that I haven’t cheated to get in this spot. I can keep my head [up] and say, you know, I might have to make a lot of different sacrifices to change the way things are, but so be it. That’s fine. At least I knew that I went to the top and all you find at the top are dirty f***ing scummy cheaters, and a company that’s going to help them do it.
“I’ll be comfortable with that. There’s no way I even worry about that. You get told that it’s a clean sport, and people are testing, they’re doing this and that, that’s fine you’re doing all that testing, but what penalties are these monkeys giving them? You’re not giving no penalties at all. USADA, f***ing NASA, whatever the f*** they are, what penalties are they giving them? Nothing. They’re just saying, ‘oh hey, we caught this guy cheating and he has to give us all this money.’ Why the f*** should you get it? Why should they get that sh*t? They’re not the ones who lost. They’re not the ones who had their brand go down. I didn’t say anything when I beat the other two guys who I fought who were cheating, and probably the rest of the other cheaters that I fought, but at the end of the day, enough is enough.”
Penick’s Analysis: Well, Hunt’s mistaken about a couple things, most glaringly that the UFC or USADA is collecting the money from drug cheats. They’ve already come out and said that’s not happening, and in order for that to happen they’d need to go through a new round of contracts to get that language even in there as an option for them. Hunt is clearly ready to take a hard line with the UFC, and lawsuits may indeed result, but in some ways it’s understandable for him to feel the way he does. At the same time, this is a stance he took into the event, accusing Lesnar of being on steroids and of being “juiced to the gills,” and he took the fight anyway for a disclosed payday higher than any he’d received in the UFC before. Coming out this much on fire after the fact when he was saying he’d go knock Lesnar out anyway makes this entirely about Lesnar’s paycheck and not the drug test failure. He’s trying desperately to get a bigger cut because of Lesnar’s failed test, and it hurts some of his argument with his pre-fight comments. Still, it’s going to be quite interesting to watch the fall out of this interview and what’s next between Hunt and the UFC.
[Photo (c) Matt Roberts via USA Today Sports]
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