Casting the Mark Hominick Movie at BetLM

If Hol­ly­wood made a movie about Team Tomp­kins, the Lon­don, Ontario fight team con­sist­ing of Mark Hominick, Sam Stout, and Chris Horodecki, pro­duc­ers would have some of the rich­est char­ac­ters in all of mixed mar­tial arts to cast in their film.

The hand­some and brood­ing Stout, with his pierc­ing blue eyes and chis­eled fea­tures, would be played by Star Trek’s Chris Pine. Horodecki, the for­mer IFL and WEC star with a puck­ish sense of humor and a stand-and-bang fight style, would go to The Social Network’s Justin Timberlake.

And while the plat­inum blonde coach Shawn Tomp­kins (he’d play him­self in the film, nat­u­rally) is the de facto team leader, num­ber one feath­er­weight con­tender Mark Hominick’s char­ac­ter would need a spe­cial kind of actor to por­tray the range and depth the real life man has in his personality.  

A Uni­ver­sity of Wind­sor grad­u­ate with a degree in Com­merce who started train­ing in mar­tial arts in ninth grade, Hominick would need to be por­trayed by an actor who not only kicks ass – after all, he hasn’t lost in three years – but some­one who is con­vinc­ing as a think­ing man who never buck­les under the pres­sure of the moment.

Matt Damon of the Jason Bourne series would likely get the nod.

“Matt Damon is def­i­nitely cool. The Bourne Ulti­ma­tum and all of those films def­i­nitely made him a lot tougher. I can live with that,” he says, agree­ing that Tomp­kins would play himself.

“Nobody but Shawn could play Shawn.”

And while a typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood movie would pro­duce some kind of fan­tas­tic end­ing pit­ting the pro­tag­o­nist against his tough­est chal­lenge in a cham­pion like Jose Aldo, in front of a record set­ting home­town crowd of 55,000 scream­ing Cana­di­ans – the real­ity is just as amazing.

Not only will he have the fight of his life against the best feath­er­weight in the world in front of a record audi­ence in his home coun­try of Canada, but his wife Ash­ley is due to give birth to the couple’s first child, a daugh­ter they will name Raeya, just five days after the fight.

In the cham­pion Aldo (18–1), the ten-year MMA vet­eran faces a Brazil­ian who not only hails from the oppo­site side of the world, but who also comes from the oppo­site side of the tracks.

“Jose has had to over­come many dif­fi­cul­ties in his life. Sleep­ing in the gym, he’s had to fight a lot harder for things in life than I have for sure. I’m for­tu­nate that I am from Canada, where we enjoy cer­tain priv­i­leges, but that doesn’t mean I’m not as men­tally tough as he is,” says Hominick, who grew up amidst the bru­tally cold Ontario win­ters, a stark con­trast to the sun and heat of Man­aus, Brazil — from where his oppo­nent hails.

A Brazil­ian jiu-jitsu world cham­pion with excel­lent strik­ing and dev­as­tat­ing Muay Thai leg kicks, Aldo is num­ber three in most pound-for-pound rank­ings, behind team­mate Ander­son Silva and Cana­dian Georges St-Pierre.

Hominick agrees with that distinction.

“What makes him so dan­ger­ous and pound-for-pound one of the best is that he can fin­ish guys from any­where,” says Hominick. “On the feet, in the clinch and on the ground, he’s so well rounded that prepar­ing for him in this fight camp has been a lot of fun. Because he’s so dan­ger­ous every­where, we brought in a lot of guys who are great in dif­fer­ent areas.”

Hominick, for his part, how­ever, is no slouch.

A for­mer ISKA super wel­ter­weight kick­box­ing cham­pion, “The Machine” has fin­ished 16 oppo­nents by knock­out or sub­mis­sion, includ­ing the likes of George Roop, Yves Edwards and Yves Jabouin, and he’s cur­rently enjoy­ing a five fight win streak.

“I don’t think he’s seen any­body with my hand speed and foot­work,” says Mark. “I think I’m the one ques­tion mark for who he’s been able to take out so far. It’s going to be inter­est­ing to see how he meets the chal­lenges I will pose to him on fight night.”

For Team Tomp­kins, fight camp is usu­ally in Las Vegas at the TapouT Train­ing Cen­ter. How­ever with a preg­nant wife and a fight just one hour away from the Adren­a­line Train­ing Cen­ter, a gym he co-owns with Stout and Horodecki, Mark stayed north of the bor­der and brought fight­ers and train­ers to him this time.

“There’s no jet­lag and no travel time so that’s an added bonus come fight day,” he said. “Shawn and BJJ coach Keebo Robin­son came up to Lon­don and Sam and Chris are here. 155-pounder Jorge Brito is a BJJ black belt and he’s been work­ing with me. I have a lot of great national team wrestlers who’ve been in and I’ve been box­ing with some Olympic box­ers, work­ing on my foot­work and my clinch game.”
 
And while most fight­ers train­ing for a cham­pi­onship fight are focused on get­ting the belt, Hominick says hav­ing a preg­nant wife dur­ing this camp has kept things in per­spec­tive for him.

“It’s been over­whelm­ing, everything’s hap­pen­ing all at once,” he said. “We are try­ing to enjoy the ride and take things one day at a time. There will never be another time like this in our lives. Fight­ing for the title and giv­ing birth to our first child, this is a once in a life­time oppor­tu­nity. It’s going to come and go but we’re try­ing to enjoy it all. There are days when Ash­ley is really stressed but we’re try­ing to make it all work. Yes­ter­day I did nine rounds of spar­ring, left the gym and went straight to Lamaze class. Those are the types of days we’ve been having.”

For Hominick, every­thing that has hap­pened dur­ing the course of his decade long career – train­ing, wins, losses, travel, coach­ing and run­ning his gym – has been prepa­ra­tion for April 30.

“I believe it’s my des­tiny,” he says. “It’s a huge oppor­tu­nity. This is my tenth year as a pro, and to fight in my home province on the biggest card of all time, a baby on the way, I’ve been train­ing for this for fif­teen years. My whole fight­ing life has been in prepa­ra­tion for this one moment. I really do believe every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, and you’re right, Hol­ly­wood couldn’t have scripted it any bet­ter for me.”

Hominick started com­pet­ing in mar­tial arts just two weeks after sign­ing up for his first class. It was a ninth grade gym class field trip to a Lon­don, Ontario mar­tial arts school that changed the course of his life for­ever, some­thing that his mother and late father weren’t too keen on.

“They were really never into me being a fighter,” he said. “They are not fight fans. My mom’s first ques­tion to me after every fight is ‘Are you retir­ing now?’ My father was a great ath­lete, but he and my mom wanted me to go the busi­ness route. That’s why I have a degree from busi­ness school. But now my mom’s pretty into it. She’s very sup­port­ive, espe­cially when she’s got co-workers who want auto­graphs (Laughs).”

Hominick’s father suc­cumbed to can­cer four years ago. He says that while many fight­ers fight through adver­sity to get to the top of the fight game, noth­ing really com­pares to see­ing some­one suf­fer through chemotherapy.

“We lost my dad and my wife’s mom within six months of each other, and they were going through can­cer treat­ment at the same time, so it was a really dif­fi­cult time, see­ing them go through all the treat­ment and fight so hard, but to see those peo­ple bat­tling can­cer it’s an awful thing to see any­one go through, let alone some­one you love,” he said. “He’d be proud, but fight­ing wasn’t some­thing we shared. He didn’t really under­stand the mind­set of fight­ing, but he’d sup­port me in his way. He’d come to my fights but he’d leave right after.”

These days Mark’s world is con­sumed with mixed mar­tial arts. He trains full time, he watches fights as much as pos­si­ble, reads the indus­try sites and mag­a­zines and tries to stay as healthy as he can. He believes that hav­ing a close team in Shawn, Sam and Chris is part of the rea­son he’s been in the fight game for so long and is in the posi­tion now to fight for the title.

“Shawn was the best man in my wed­ding,” he said of ‘The Coach.’ “Sam, Chris and I were all grooms­men in his wed­ding to Sam’s sis­ter Emi­lie. We are all very close, like broth­ers, and that’s really impor­tant. I think that’s what sep­a­rates us from a lot of other fight­ers, espe­cially recently, as you see peo­ple gym-jumping. We’ve been the same crew for twelve years and there’s a cer­tain bond we have with each other. There are things I can’t do with­out them. And it’s really because of Shawn. He’s always led the way and been the one that brought the pas­sion out of all of us. He leads by example.”

For Hominick, com­ing in to this fight as a huge under­dog doesn’t mean he’s not feel­ing the pres­sure of the moment. He says that as soon as the fight was announced to take place in his home province, not a day has gone by with­out reporters call­ing or drop­ping by the gym, but he says he’s rel­ish­ing the moment.

“You know guys can’t just show up in Georges St-Pierre or Jake Shields’ gyms,” he says. “But since I’m only an hour away from the venue a lot of the buzz that this card has brought to the area has led a lot of the sports reporters to me, which is great. My life changed overnight on Jan­u­ary 22 as far as me being kind of a face of MMA in the area. So a lot of the atten­tion of the show is com­ing my way. I’m fight­ing for the belt, co-main event on the first UFC card in Ontario, so I have an oblig­a­tion to do as much as I can to help pro­mote not only my fight, but the sport in gen­eral up here.”

As the UFC con­tin­ues to grow and mixed mar­tial arts becomes more and more accepted in the world of pro­fes­sional com­bat sports, it’s not such a stretch that Hol­ly­wood would do the Mark Hominick story. After all, most movies are shot in Toronto any­way. Like the fight on April 30, it would be an easy commute.

 

TOP SPORTS BETTING SPECIALS

 

MORE SPORTS BETTING NEWS