Mark Coleman reveals new details on harrowing escape from house fire, recovery

Mark Coleman thought the devil was coming for him.

The former UFC heavyweight champ and UFC Hall of Famer suffers from nightly nightmares and insomnia. He’d just awoken in the early hours of March 12 when he saw clouds of black smoke wafting in the kitchen of his parents’ house in Fremont, Ohio.

Still half-asleep, Coleman had no idea what he was looking at. Just one hour earlier, at 3 a.m., he’d gone to the kitchen to grab a snack and felt something wasn’t right. But he’d went back to his childhood bedroom. When he woke up, the room was hot.

Then he heard a thud, and he went to investigate.

“I was going to see if there was somebody out there trying to get me in the house, and I turned the corner, and I see in the kitchen, clouds ... I didn’t put it together that it was smoke and fire,” Coleman said Friday on a special Las Vegas edition of The MMA Hour.

The Colemans’ house was rapidly being engulfed in flames, and time was running out. By the end of that March night, it burned to the ground. Meanwhile, the former UFC heavyweight champ would be in the hospital, fighting for his life on a ventilator.

His parents, Dan and Connie Foos Coleman, were alive and uninjured. Their son had woken them up and walked them to safety, returning once when Connie, an asthmatic, had stopped in a burning hallway, unable to breathe.

The source of that thud in the night, “Hammer,” was Mark Coleman’s dog jumping under the bed.

One month after the harrowing experience, Coleman said details of his escape from the house fire are crystal clear. But everything goes black after his trip to a local hospital. He was unconscious for three days.

He woke up to see his family, including daughters Mackenzie and Morgan, whom he famously brought into the ring after a brutal defeat to Fedor Emelianenko in a PRIDE fight in 2006.

“I remember holding back the tears, because I didn’t want them to see me cry,” an emotional Coleman said. “By far, it was the highest high of my life, and I’ve had some highs. But at the same time, the lowest of lows.”

Despite a mad dash to find Hammer after rescuing his parents, Coleman was unable to find his best friend. He believes the dog saved the family. But the circumstances that led him to repeatedly walk into a house on fire may also have saved him.

After a decade of battling alcoholism, Coleman got sober 14 months ago. He started working out again, becoming obsessive about fitness and nutrition to the point where he said he sometimes worked out 12 hours a day. Hammer attended every workout.

At his peak of boozing, “The Hammer” couldn’t walk up a couple flights of stairs without getting winded. The new Coleman had designs on a comeback in fighting. As it turned out, though, he needed that strength for something different.

“If it wasn’t for that training, I’d probably get myself out, but if I go back in to get my parents, they would have had to pick me up and carry me out, because that’s how bad of shape I was in,” he said. “I don’t know how I did it, because I took in a lot of smoke.”

Coleman’s eyes are still sensitive to light, and his throat is still sore from the smoke of the fire. He is on antibiotics to treat both his smoke injuries and his recovery from a hip surgery he underwent five months earlier. But he said he is otherwise in good health.

“I kind of like it,” he said. “It’s a good reminder. Every day gets a little better. I love going through difficult times. If you didn’t have difficult, challenging times, the good times wouldn’t feel as great.”

Doctors showed him the black tar that had been washed out of his lungs in the hospital. It filled up a jar. That’s why, immediately after the fire, it was unclear whether he would survive.

But after five days in the hospital, Coleman said he “bullied” his way out, determined to keep up with his workout schedule. When he was re-admitted for one day after being diagnosed with pneumonia, he talked his way to a discharge the next morning.

An outpouring of support followed news of Coleman’s brush with death. A GoFundMe raised $121,000 for his medical treatments. Fans around the world filled his inboxes with well wishes.

Recently, Coleman got some more good news when the UFC offered he and his family tickets to UFC 300. UFC CEO Dana White subsequently agreed to have Coleman put the “BMF” belt around the winner of the Saturday event’s feature fight between Justin Gaethje and Max Holloway.

“I knew I had some fans, but I had no idea how many,” Coleman said. “I couldn’t believe people cared and were making such a big deal of something I just had to do. I’m not comfortable being called a hero.”

It’s still not clear what started the fire that leveled the Colemans’ home; Connie told a responding police officer it may have been caused by leaving on the oven; earlier in the evening, she’d heated up some ribs her son had brought for dinner.

The important thing to Coleman is that his parents are OK.

“Everybody’s just happy to be alive,” he said. “Everything else will work out.”

Speaking of working out, Coleman made it three days in the gym before insisting on a new gym partner. His new puppy, “King Martello,” translates to “King Hammer” in Portuguese. They are different personalities, he said, but the same breed.

Coleman had a necklace filled with Hammer’s ashes. Even though he’s not there physically, they’ll always be together.