DUBLIN, MY CELL PHONE AND NAKED MARK COLEMAN
I've seen things in the service of MMA you can't even imagine...
IT HAD BEEN ANOTHER EXHAUSTING DAY OF FRANTIC PR WORK in a wet and wind-whipped Dublin. I just wanted to go back to my hotel room, expense a massive room service meal on my Zuffa credit card, and maybe watch some TV.
It was around 10pm on Wednesday January 14, 2009. I was in the host hotel for UFC 93, the first UFC event ever in the Irish capital, but I had one more PR hit on my ‘to do’ list.
US based reporter Dave Meltzer needed to talk with co-headliner Mark “The Hammer” Coleman over the phone. Coleman had pushed the interview back several times but had promised to get the interview done immediately following his fight-time grappling session in the fighter workout room.
I met him as arranged.
“Let me dry off,” the ground and pound icon gasped. “We’ll do it from my room.”
So I dutifully followed the breathless and sweat drenched former UFC heavyweight champion to the elevators.
When we got inside his hotel room, I noted it was identical to my own… or at least it would have been before Coleman checked in.
What with all the training gear they bring to fight week, every fighter hotel room is inevitably a mess… but Coleman’s domicile looked like a grenade had gone off during a botched burglary of a TapOut warehouse.
OVER-SIZED GYM BAGS, SHORTS, RASHGUARDS AND DISAVOWED COMPRESSION SHORTS were flung everywhere. Wet clothes covered almost every inch of the floor and frayed Thai pads were piled four foot deep on the armchair in the far corner, and on the computer desk and even on the TV unit opposite the bed.
“Don’t stand on my gear!” Coleman boomed as he turned left into the bathroom. And then, through a closed door: “Go sit down.”
Okay, Champ, I thought, but sit where, exactly?
The bed was made up so I parked my arse there, sinking into the end of the too-soft mattress like a stone. Like the one in my room, the bed was too low to the ground for my liking. My arse came to a halt close to the floor; my knees uncomfortably level with my chest.
With Coleman no doubt about to take a well-earned post-workout shower, I took out my beloved, top of the line, Zuffa-paid-for BlackBerry Bold® and texted Meltzer we’d call in about 10 minutes.
Then I took the chance to catch up on emails. My thumbs danced across the Blackberry’s physical keyboard, back-lighted and beautiful, a real joy to use. I bloody adored that phone! To this day, I can’t understand how iPhone and Android won the cell phone wars.
Anyway, I was replying to some email or another when a pair of bare feet appeared to the right of my line of sight. Then Coleman’s real man voice boomed literally overhead: “Ready? We doing this interview?”
My head rolled up and… to my horror… Mark Coleman stood there absolutely naked.
He was artificially tanned. His entire body looked creasoaked, like those spooky wooden carvings you see outside lonely gas stations.
And, yeah, I do mean his entire body.
I locked my startled gaze on Coleman’s face within a nanosecond –but it was too late! I got an eyeful of Mark’s, ahem, hammer plus a pair of testicles way bigger than I’d have expected on a man who’d spent a decade in PRIDE.
I was suddenly aware of how small these hotel rooms were.
“Don’t – don’t you wanna take a shower first, Mark?” I managed to ask the man who both needed and, indeed, looked ready for a shower.
“Naw, call Meltzer. It’s getting late.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said as if I’d been the one to pushing the interview back all along. “But it’s not late in San Jose where Dave is. We’ve got time for you to take a quick shower or, y’know, put on some pants.”
“Naw, call Meltzer. I’m good. Let’s do it now.”
As soon as Big Dave answered ‘Hello’, Coleman took my phone – my beloved Blackberry Bold®! - and began his interview.
As he spoke, Coleman paced back and forth up and down the narrow walking space between the bed and the TV. Naked. With his meat and side order of fruit literally right in front of my eyes.
YEAH, YEAH, IT’S JOCK CULTURE TO STROLL ABOUT BUTT-NAKED and not to give a fuck who sees it. Mark was just treating me like one of the boys, I get it...
It’s just that he was pacing so close to where I was sat and every step sent his junk bobbing about like an aged headbangers at an Iron Maiden concert.
Why is this happening to me? I remember thinking. I only took the job so I could hang out with Michael Bisping and Rampage Jackson in nightclubs. I didn’t sign up for this!
Dave Meltzer works from home in a backroom office that resembles a waste paper recycling facility. With his creature comforts close to hand and no rush hour traffic to beat, Meltzer conducts interviews at a leisurely pace.
Fully ten minutes passed without the interview going anywhere near the subject of Coleman’s imminent fight with Shogun Rua. And all I could do is sit there as Coleman’s cock whipped itself side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
I mean, I couldn’t even do what everyone does in embarrassing situations – focus on my phone – because, of course, the entire problem was that naked Mark Coleman had my fucking phone.
Horror piled upon horror. The former UFC heavyweight champ began to scratch the side of his air-drying ballsack.
Guys, I heard it.
I knew what would follow - but foreknowledge didn’t make it any less traumatic.
Slowly, and with the terrible inertia of a ferry drifting into a lighthouse, Coleman swapped my phone from his right hand to his left, all the better to free up the right to tend to the other side of his itchy bollocks.
Yes - now you get it - the sausage fingers that were just scratching post-workout scrotum were now wrapped around my Blackberry Bold®!
The nightmare just wouldn’t end. I couldn’t make out what Meltzer asked to set him off, but Coleman suddenly began booming into the handset and stomping up and down the room. The additional motion sent his bell-end clattering about like a Funko bobblehead during a fucking earthquake.
That's it! Professional or unprofessional - I’m outta here! I thought at last.
With no fucks left to give, I snatched my bollock-juice Blackberry out of the fighter’s hand and - very careful not to put it near my face, yelled into the receiver: “THANKS, DAVE! MARK’S GOTTA GO SHOWER NOW! BYE!”
And then: “GREAT VISITING WITH YOU, MARK! SEE YOU AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE TOMORROW!” I said as swung open the hotel room door.
Then I was in the elevator hitting the button for the ground floor over and over and moments later I burst into the brightly lit lobby and sprinted towards the front desk.
“I need sanitary wipes! Now!” I roared at the blameless front desk clerks.
I used half a tub of wipes on my phone and the other half on my hands. I scrubbed so hard and fast it’s a miracle I didn’t set myself on fire.
Then I gave serious thought to asking for another tub - along with a pencil or some sort of thin stick - so I could shove wipes up my nose in a desperate attempt to wipe the image of Coleman’s leathery nutsack from my brain.
Instead, I shuffled back to my own hotel room. I called Meltzer somewhat to apologize for cutting him short but mainly to let him know the ordeal I’d gone through on his behalf.
And that Dave Meltzer, who I’d considered a friend for years, howled with unsympathetic laughter.
Later, I pondered if going on all night drinking sessions with Michael Bisping could possibly be worth the indignity of what I just endured.
Then I smiled.
Of course it was!
Bisping is a riot to go out on all night benders with.
But that, my friends, is a story for another time…
