“THUD.”
On 13 March, Mark Coleman’s eyelids jolted open, as his bedframe shook. His 11-month-old rottweiler, Lil’ Hammer, cowered under the bed. Chronic nightmares had plagued Coleman since childhood, but it was his dog who woke him around 3am that morning. Coleman left his childhood bedroom – he was on an overnight stay visiting his parents – for a glass of water.
Why are there clouds in the kitchen? a groggy Coleman thought to himself. He reached for the back door’s knob to let in fresh air, burning his hand on the hot metal.
Fire. And not clouds, but smoke, which was collecting quickly. Coleman’s first thought was for his parents, asleep in their bedroom down the hallway of their single-story, L-shaped home. At the age of 10, Coleman had helped his father build this house, and now it was coming down around them. Coleman yelled for his parents in the pitch-black abyss.
Silence.
Coleman had to save his parents. They’d been everything to him, the driving force behind their ultra-competitive middle child since, as a five-year-old, he had declared his intention to become the best athlete in the world. With his parents’ support, Coleman flourished as a high school state champion in wrestling, football and baseball, joined the top-tier Oklahoma State University wrestling team his junior year, and won the 1988 NCAA championship at 190lbs. Years of international competition with the US national team sharpened Coleman’s aggressive style and propelled him to a seventh-place finish at the 1992 Olympics. The dominoes had fallen, but it wouldn’t have happened without his parents. Where they had found the time, money and energy while raising four other children he didn’t know.
“CRACK! CRUNCH!”
The sound of the skylight windows shattering above him shook Coleman into action. Coleman reached his arms out and began doing what wrestlers do – he moved forward. He called for his parents again.
“It was the sickest feeling ever because I thought they were already dead,” says Coleman, who finally heard his mother answer, annoyed that her rowdy son had woken her up filming another one of his crazy 4am fitness videos. Coleman grabbed his father firmly and he and his parents created a chain of interlocked arms.
A usual 10-second walk took minutes. Coleman gently tugged at his 83-year-old-father, shepherding him to the garage, where Coleman finally stopped and turned. Only his father stood behind him. Coleman’s gut wrenched, but he ushered his father into the night and headed back into the house to retrace his steps.
Coleman’s parents had never deserted their son, and they saw him turn to mixed martial arts and become the heavyweight tournament champion at UFC 10 in 1996. In Japan in 2000, Coleman made history by winning Pride Fighting Championship’s illustrious Grand Prix title against some of the best fighters in the world. In three grinding fights over one night, Coleman cemented American wrestling as a mandatory discipline for every fighter who followed in MMA. It is rare that a fighter can be called an architect of the sport they compete in, but Coleman’s “ground and pound” style offered an effective blueprint against Brazilian jiu-jitsu tacticians, ushering in an age of wrestling in MMA that has never abated.
His mother’s encouragement had been paramount, and he was determined to find her in the dark. Eighty years old and a lifelong asthmatic, she hadn’t made it out of the bedroom when Coleman had initially attempted to leave. She had turned on a bedside light, though, which became a beacon for Coleman through the haze. Grabbing his mother, Coleman pulled her with him. His eyes closed at this point: they were of no use open in the darkness. Together, they inched forward, but Coleman tumbled sideways into the bathroom doorway, 50 years of muscle memory kicking in to regain his footing and stop him taking his mother down with him permanently. It was the most important scramble of Coleman’s life and he thought he and his mother weren’t going to make it.
With his bearings gone, Coleman believes divine intervention guided him and his mother to the back door. Coleman dared a third trip to find his training partner. Hammer had helped his owner rebound from multiple hip surgeries, the last just one month before that night. Coleman reached his bed, but he could not find his dog, and he stumbled out the house with his arms empty.
Sedated and intubated in the ambulance, Coleman was in a coma for the next 48 hours. As word spread of his bravery, no one who knew Coleman was surprised. He had always had a heart bigger than the hammerfists he’d rained down on his opponents.
This wasn’t Coleman’s first brush with death, either. Three years earlier, Wes Sims nearly wilted at the stench of vomit and rotting food permeating from the motel room where Coleman had holed up that summer. Sims, who’d met Coleman in 1998 and become a member of his Hammer House fight team, surveyed the filthy room darkened from the blankets draped over the windows. Cans of IPA (Coleman drank three to four six-packs daily), food containers and garbage rose as high as the unit’s sink. Still, Coleman told himself that it was all temporary, that he could control it if he needed to.
Sims looked into Coleman’s yellowed eyes, his face covered in white unruly scruff. Few knew this rock-bottom was 12 years in the making.
In 2012, Sims had watched Coleman – already a heavy drinker from his college days – collapse into the bottle after his doctor told him he’d need career-ending hip replacement surgery. The always-chiseled athlete stopped exercising that day and never returned. Even a heart attack hadn’t slowed Coleman’s self-destruction. Coleman’s alcoholism had caused seismic rifts with his parents, as well as his teenage daughters.
Sims chose his next words carefully.
“There’s nothing I can do tonight,” Sims told his mentor. “So, tonight, I’m going to literally clean this place out because if you die tonight, you don’t want your family to come in and see this.”
Sims worked silently, as Coleman slept, filling five 55-gallon industrial-size trash bags with moldy cardboard and Styrofoam containers full of half-eaten food. He packed another five bags with aluminum cans.
When Sims returned the next morning, he persuaded Coleman, already drunk on a half-bottle of vodka, to check into hospital. Coleman complied because he knew he’d get pain and anxiety medication to help counter withdrawal symptoms. Coleman raged against the hospital staff for a week in withdrawal throes, but Sims checked in on his friend every day, then used that momentum to steer Coleman into a rehab facility.
Surrounded by other addicts, Coleman received the most humbling wake-up call he could have gotten: accept help or die.
During his five months at Seacrest Recovery Center, Coleman’s incessant feelings of failure were diagnosed as depression, his uncontrollable fears of losing loved ones as anxiety. Shy and uncomfortable in his body, alcohol had always given Coleman the confidence to look others in the eye.
“The word acceptance became a big, big word for me,” says the 59-year-old. “You have to accept things now as they come.”
Two days after the house fire, Coleman’s eyelids fluttered open. He asked about his parents, who were safe and recovering at his sister’s home, although he was told that Lil’ Hammer had died of smoke inhalation. He hugged his daughters, both accomplished athletes, and the trio sobbed together.
“It was by far the highest of highs in my life,” Coleman says. “And I’ve made some highs, but at the same time, the lowest of lows. We all shouldn’t be alive.”
Three days out of the hospital, Coleman was exercising again, joined by King Martell, another rottweiler he’d adopted to keep him company. Recovering, staying sober and getting his body to the peak fitness levels he once enjoyed are Coleman’s immediate goals. He welcomes the newfound peace into his life.
“Addiction never taps out,” says Coleman. “We must take it one day at a time. I’ve been sober three years and two months and it’s been, by far, the best three years and two months of my life.”
