After years of doing battle on a keyboard as much as inside a cage, things got very real for Sean McCorkle (9-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) this week. The Indianapolis-based heavyweight caught up with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) on the way to pick up his son, who he wanted to take along as producers filmed him throwing punches in misty air with UFC gloves. (The clip will play before he makes his walk to the octagon.)
He is no longer just a guy on the Internet. He is fighting in the UFC.
"It actually hit me Tuesday because I had to check in to my hotel, and I actually sat there and talked to Mark Hunt for about 10 minutes," said McCorkle, who meets Hunt in the opening bout of UFC 119 at Indianapolis' Conseco Fieldhouse. "It hit me I'm actually going to fight him."
The 6-foot-7 McCorkle is a bigger version of countless fighters who've toiled on the regional circuit in hopes of a shot in the big show. But he's stood out from the pack by wholeheartedly embracing the dog-eat-dog word of one Internet forum, mainly the boards of MixedMartialArts.com's "The Underground," where some of the sport's most passionate fans gather to debate and deride each other.
A whole lot of industry professionals keep close tabs on these boards, and that could be what got McCorkle a four-fight UFC contract and a fight Saturday against Hunt, an iron-headed PRIDE and K-1 veteran who's faced some of the most dangerous men in the planet. It also could be his 9-0 professional record – or his draw as a local fighter.
It almost didn't happen. A super heavyweight, McCorkle was used to fighting at 300-plus pounds, a weight that made it difficult to keep busy on the regional circuit. He was 320 pounds when his manager, Monte Cox, called in the middle of the night and asked if he could talk.
"I was actually over at the girl's house that I was dating," he remembered. "To be brutally honest, I was a little bit tipsy because I had a little bit to drink that night – and by tipsy, I mean completely drunk.
"He asked me if I could make 265 in three months. I said I could make it in one month if the money's right. He said, 'Well, do you want to fight in the UFC when it comes to Indianapolis in September?' When I tried to clear my head and realized I wasn't dreaming, I said, 'Monte, I don't know. It would depend on the money.'"
Most up-and-coming fighters would balk at that statement; a UFC contract is, after all, the holy grail for pretty much every fighter in the business. But McCorkle had been around the block a few times – dozens of times on the Internet – and he wanted the circumstances to be right.
"He was kind of shocked a little bit when I said that," McCorkle said of Cox's reaction. "I'm not interested in fighting the best guys in the world for $3,000 to show and $3,000 to win. If that's what the offer is, sorry. I'll probably pass."
Cox said it would be "considerably" more than that. McCorkle had another stipulation as well. With no opponent on the table, he wanted some say in whom he fought.
"I want to let them know that I don't have any problem turning down bad opponents, like me fighting the loser of (Shane) Carwin and (Brock) Lesnar for $8,000. I wasn't interested in being used to build someone else up. Not that they would to that to me, but I was just pretty wise to that from the beginning."
He told Cox to give him an hour to think about it. He wobbled to the bathroom and weighed himself – he hadn't been 265 pounds since he was 18 years old – and called back to take the deal.
"The next morning I was like, 'Man, did I make a mistake?'" he said.
McCorkle was nervous he'd get to 285 pounds and discover he couldn't get any smaller. The weight cut would be the hardest part. The second hardest part would be keeping his mouth shut on the Internet.
Every time someone asked him about his next fight, he spat, "I can't talk about it." Of course, that drove frenzied speculation among his keyboard brethren, and before he knew it, word had leaked he had a UFC deal in pocket. He told only his 9-year-old son, who asked if he'd be on the UFC video game. But until the promotion announced it, he was under a gag order.
"It was absolutely excruciating," McCorkle said.
Eventually, things worked themselves out. He hired a former bodybuilder to manage an extremely strict diet and workout regimen, and the weight began to shed.
He's now hovering just above the 265-pound weight limit and thinks he might be able to get down to 230 pounds in future fights.
He has no illusions about how he'll approach Saturday's fight.
"I'm a 2-to-1 underdog, and I guess that's just from no one knowing who I am," he said. "But I would be absolutely shocked if I didn't win this fight.
"In my history of fighting and everything I've watched, a really good striker with a really good ground guy is a bad matchup for the striker, especially when the ground guy is bigger and stronger than him. I can pretty much get anyone on the ground in the world if I don't care what position we end up in. It's not that hard to tackle somebody."
Hunt has not fought since May 2009, when he was submitted by former Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi in DREAM, though he, too, has undergone a remarkable physical transformation after tipping the scales in the high 200s. Still, he has not won an MMA fight since May 2006.
Despite his apparent advantage on paper, McCorkle admits he's nervous about fighting in front of his family and friends; he doesn't want to be the one who asks "what happened?" as his training partners crowd around him.
But he already has a strategy to deal with Internet critics if he loses.
"I've been saying forever that if I was in shape and motivated, there weren't more than 10 men in the world who could beat me," he said. "If I lose, I'm going to say, 'Well, obviously there were 11. I forgot him in the count.'"
For more on UFC 119, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.com.
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