Coleman: Proud man? I don’t care. I’m grateful, thank you
Mark Coleman: “Proud man? I don’t care. I’m grateful, thank you, maybe somehow I can return the favor to all these people, every one of them.”
Make a donation, Save the Hammer
UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman appeared Monday on Ariel Helwani‘s The MMA Hour and discussed his recent medical issues. “The Hammer” got a hip replacement approximately two years ago, but damaged the artificial hip while working takedowns as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter. When his surgeon went into look at the affected area, he found a wide spread infection.
The infection has not cleared, and Coleman, 50, is bedridden at home until it does, at which point the new hip replacement can be made. He is also having problems making the $800 per month insurance costs and associated expenses, so Hammer House fighter Wes Sims set up a Save The Hammer GoFundMe page to help cover medical bills. Some $45,000 has been raised of the $100,000 goal. The largest single donation is believed to be from fellow fighter Mark Hunt, he donated $5,000.
“I’m just taking this like a fight,” said Coleman as transcribed by Dave Doyle for MMAFighting.com. “I gotta fight through this.”
“I got a hip replacement surgery two years ago, it felt great, but some things went wrong down the line, it popped out 5-6 times after I did The Ultimate Fighter show. It was fine there and that was a great experience, but when I got back home, basically it was just popping out once a freaking week. … I’m basically walking around scared to bend over, scared to do anything because of this thing. I finally get into the surgeon, and he decided he was going to not replace the whole hip that he did two years ago, he’s going to replace the socket, bigger ball and socket.”
“When he cut me open, basically he saw a big old mess of some sort of staph infection or whatever and it was everywhere.”
“I need to get rid of infection so I can go back in there and put in a new hip that I can rehab, rebuild, and hopefully just get back to relatively normal life. Because there are a lot of people with hip replacements who did it right, who are doing great. I had some complications, I don’t blame nobody, but no one knows how long infection was in there.”
“(Response to the GoFundMe) definitely boosted my spirits. Maybe at one point I felt sorry for myself for a few days when this happened, but no, there’s people with a lot worse problems than I have right now.”
“I didn’t know what Wes was doing. I didn’t know what he did, it took off so fast, it was so humbling. I don’t know how else to describe it, I was just so overwhelmed.”
“Mark Hunt, man, I love the guy. I met him probably 4-5 times in Japan, just always happy, smiley, back then he had a nice big belly, that’s why he was happy and smiley. He’d still knock you out.”
“I don’t know what minimum was, some people put $3 in there or maybe $5, maybe some $8 ones. You just gotta think, ‘geez, you know that guy might have needed that more than I do.’ For some reason, hopefully it’s because I’ve been good to the fans, I like to call them friends because I’m a fan as well, when I meet somebody I try to treat them good and that’s maybe why I did get that response.”
“I love watching UFC, but I won’t deny that sometimes it eats at your heart. You’re always going to miss it. I do. I think 95 percent of us wish we were 10 years younger and could be doing it again, but yes, I watch it and these guys are amazing.”
“I don’t like to be in this position. But I put myself in this position and that’s a fact. I made some good money, but made some mistakes and put myself in this position. I didn’t know it was going to be set up, but at that point, I’m in no position to say I don’t want it. Proud man? I don’t care. I’m grateful, thank you, maybe somehow I can return the favor to all these people, every one of them.”