by Jack Tunney
FIGHT CARD: CAN’T MISS CONTENDER
ANOTHER TWO-FISTED FIGHT CARD TALE
JACK TUNNEY
FIGHT CARD
CREATED BY PAUL BISHOP AND MEL ODOM
OTHER FIGHT CARD TITLES
FELONY FISTS / THE CUTMAN /SPLIT DECISION
COUNTERPUNCH / HARD ROAD
KING OF THE OUTBACK / A MOUTH FULL OF BLOOD
TOMATO CAN COMEBACK / BLUFF CITY BRAWLER
GOLDEN GATE GLOVES / IRISH DUKES
THE KNOCKOUT / RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE
AGAINST THE ROPES / SWAMP WALLOPER
THE LAST ROUND OF ARCHIE MANNIS
GET HIT, HIT BACK / BROOKLYN BEATDOWN
CAN’T MISS CONTENDER /UNION OF THE SNAKES
FIGHT RIVER /BAREFOOT BONES / MONSTER MAN
FIGHT CARD MMA
WELCOME TO THE OCTAGON / THE KALAMAZOO KID
FIGHT CARD ROMANCE
LADIES NIGHT
FIGHT CARD: CAN’T MISS CONTENDER
E-Book Edition – First Published August 2013
Copyright © 2013 Kevin Michaels
Cover by David Foster
This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher.
ROUND ONE
Missouri State Penitentiary
1958
Tommy Knuckles was the toughest con in A Hall.
He was tall and mean, with thick arms, wide shoulders, and a body chiseled from an oak tree. He had a crew cut, square jaw, and a nose broken too many times to count. There were gaps in his smile where he used to have teeth, and his eyes were cold and lifeless. His stare burned a hole through your chest before he threw the first punch. Prison could do that to a guy, although everybody said he was like that before he got locked up.
That stare was almost as scary as one of his fists coming at your jaw.
Tommy Knuckles had hands the size of Buicks. When he hammered a shot to your gut it sucked the life out of your fight.
He was the kind of prisoner other cons avoided. He ate alone in the mess hall, kept to himself, and nobody spoke to him unless it was necessary. Even then, they made sure to use please and thank you after every sentence. You didn’t want to be on his wrong side.
He was ten years into a thirty year stretch for killing two guys in a bar fight near Joplin because somebody said something he didn’t like. I heard it took four cops to bring him down and a couple more to wrestle him into the squad car, and at least three of them wound up in the hospital after he got done swinging and kicking. It wasn’t much different inside. A guy with an attitude and an agenda came at him his first week and Tommy put him in the infirmary for six months.
I heard the guy still ate meals through a straw.
Tommy Knuckles was an animal.
And he was standing across the ring, ready to mix it up with me.
“Just stay away from that right hand, kid,” Muldoon said as he dug his fingers into my shoulders. “That thing’s like a jackhammer. It’s lethal.”
“Won’t let him get that close,” I said.
Muldoon’s fingers tightened their grip. “Listen to me, Billy. He likes mixing it up inside, so keep your distance. Be smart about this,” he added. “That right is sneaky fast.”
I nodded and told him it was cool.
The ring wasn’t much – just a couple of ropes wrapped loosely around some wobbly stanchions that barely supported your weight when you leaned back. Nothing regulation about them. On two sides, the ropes were so loose you could topple backwards out of the ring. On the other side, they were wound so tight you got fired back into the action like a slingshot. The ring platform was made of plywood and covered with a dirty white canvas. There was so much bounce in the boards it was like fighting on a trampoline.
But it didn’t matter.
I’d fought in worse rings. After three years, this ring felt like home.
Most cons watched us squaring off. Guys from the halls slumped on bleachers across the yard and a few more sat ringside on overturned buckets. The rest stood with their arms folded across their chests and Lucky Strikes or Marlboros stuck in their mouths. It was a sea of prison blues. Not many diehard boxing fans in the crowd, but the chance to watch a couple of guys pounding each other senseless got prisoners out of their cells.
Guards armed with carbines watched from the towers, eyeing everyone with suspicious stares.
Missouri State Penitentiary, or The Walls as it was called by every con who spent time inside the fifteen foot brick barricades, was a one hundred year old prison in Jefferson City. At the top, razor sharp barbed wire ran the length of its walls. Home to the roughest and nastiest criminals in Missouri, the walls were a permanent gray, and the place had a dark, dreary feeling, even on sunny days. It was sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter.
It was the kind of place that drained away your will to live.
“Watch that right,” Muldoon said again. “One time this guy tried blocking a punch and Knuckles hit him so hard he broke the guy’s forearm. Drove the punch straight into his face and shattered his nose, too.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging me?” I asked.
“Just telling you the way it is, Billy,” Muldoon said.
Muldoon had been around the fight game for years. He looked older than he really was – tired eyes, a weary smile, and a head of hair that had gone white years earlier. He kept going, day after day, but he was worn out inside.
He started out in Mickey Walker’s gym in Elizabeth, New Jersey then worked Jersey Joe Walcott’s corner for a couple of years. Things fell apart and he bounced up and down the East Coast as a trainer before winding up in Missouri a few years later.
He hoped to find a new fighter he could hang his hat on, get back in the game before it passed him by. But he had a problem with booze and an even bigger problem with dice, and when he fell into a bad luck streak in Kansas City it all went south. Muldoon wound up owing a bookie money he couldn’t afford to pay. Out of desperation and drunk on cheap whiskey, he took a pawn shop thirty-eight into a bank and shoved it in a teller’s face, thinking he could make a big enough score to get the bookie off his back.
It didn’t work out the way he planned. The cops caught him an hour later and locked him away for ten years.
Inside The Walls, the bookie had a guy bust Muldoon’s knee, just to let him know he hadn’t forgotten that debt.
Muldoon dried out and sobered up. He hooked up with the prison boxing program and helped Sonny Liston develop his skills when Sonny was inside. Muldoon became a stand-up guy. Guys said he got up at Sonny’s parole hearing and gave a speech from deep in the gut – the kind that swayed the Board enough to let Sonny out early.
He told me stories about Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, and Mickey Walker, and helped me understand the in’s and out’s of boxing. He knew more about the sweet science than I could ever hope to know. He took me under his wing and acted like my trainer, the same way he did with Sonny. Most of what I learned about boxing came from Father Tim at St. Vincent’s Asylum for Boys in Chicago. The rest came when I turned pro at eighteen and started boxing for real. Each fight was a new experience and another lesson. I ran my record to twenty wins and no losses, and thought I knew everything.
Turned out I didn’t know how to stay out of trouble.
/> The three years I got for stealing a car put boxing on ice and gave me time to think about all the things I needed to learn.
Muldoon filled in some of those blanks.
The bell rang and I went right at Tommy Knuckles, using my jab to move him back and keep him off balance. Before I got sent away, I had been one of the quickest middleweights around, and speed was something I knew how to use. That and my own hard right hand. They didn’t call me Bam Bam Billy Flood for nothing. I figured speed and quickness gave me an advantage against Knuckles. It wasn’t much, but you took whatever edge you could find.
Nobody paid attention to weight classes in jail. If you could lace up a pair of gloves, you got in the ring and went at it against whoever they told you to fight. Lightweight, middleweight, or heavyweight didn’t matter; neither did a thirty pound weight difference.
All they expected was a good fight and no complaints, even if the guy across the ring was twice your size.
I came at Knuckles and popped my left into his face a couple of times, then tried shooting a right underneath his gloves. He kept his elbows wide enough for a target, but he was quicker than I thought. He swatted away my jabs and blocked my shots.
He turned a shoulder then came back with his own left. I slid to the side, letting the punch glide past my head as I moved. I kept popping my jab, trying to keep distance between us while looking for an opening. I knew it was just a matter of time before I got the opening I needed to work in my right.
Knuckles hooked off my jab and landed a straight right to my chest. It didn’t have much on it and neither did the left he pounded into my arm. I snapped a jab and followed with a straight right that connected on his chin. It was a sweet shot, right on the button, especially when I turned my shoulder and got my weight behind it.
The punch barely registered on him.
He put his head down and came forward with another left-right combination I blocked with my gloves.
Voices around the ring called out encouragement while I bobbed and weaved. The crowd was split – some wanted to see Knuckles beat me to a pulp while the rest wanted an upset.
I wasn’t built like most middleweights. I was tall like a heavyweight and lean like a welterweight. I had height and reach, and Muldoon taught me how to use both to create power in my punches. I had put a lot of guys down for the count, but Tommy Knuckles wasn’t like most fighters. One punch wasn’t going to do it. I had to wear him down.
I flicked another jab and found a soft spot on his chin. He slowed for a moment and I thought I saw something. I came back with another jab to that same spot then followed with a right-left combo to the body. I tried a left uppercut between his gloves, but he blocked it.
I took a step back and pounded him with a couple of jabs.
Knuckles sneered as he followed me step for step, bullying me towards the corner and cutting off the ring. I turned back against the ropes and dug my elbows into my gut to cover up. He banged three hard, heavy rights into my midsection then pounded a few more into my chest before I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him into a clinch.
It was like hugging a tree.
Knuckles took two steps backwards and dragged me along for the ride.
The ref wedged an arm and a shoulder between us. “Break it up.”
Knuckles growled and shrugged off the guy.
“You ain’t got nothing, kid,” he sneered.
Then he tossed me towards the center of the ring and charged forward like a bull.
I tried using my jab to slow him down , but he kept coming, firing enormous shots that built in size and weight as they landed. Something passed across his expression, and I felt a chill shoot up my spine as another right crashed between my gloves. I backed up, stopped looking for an opening, and covered up. I leaned against the ropes and tried a left-right-left combo that didn’t slow him then pushed another upper cut between his gloves. I tagged his jaw pretty good – it was the kind of shot where I got my weight behind the punch and pivoted on my toes like I had been taught.
The kind of punch that would have made Father Tim proud.
Knuckles shrugged it off like it was nothing, and I knew I was in trouble.
I tried fighting my way out of the corner, but he leaned into me with his shoulder and stomped down a big foot to hold mine in place. I got my gloves in front of my face and covered up, thinking I could protect myself for a little while. Hoping to ride out the onslaught until the round ended.
I never saw the right hand.
It came over the top of my gloves, landed solidly on my forehead, and suddenly my legs turned to jelly. It happened that fast.
All of a sudden everything changed. I kept my gloves up , but Knuckles kept coming, firing a succession of rights and lefts that exploded each time they landed. He hit me with a right on the jaw and everything went hazy. If this had been a Looney Tunes cartoon there would have been a halo of stars circling my head. I knew I had to move, but I couldn’t get my legs to do anything. Nothing worked the way I wanted. I had instincts , but nothing else.
I stumbled and reached toward Tommy Knuckles, but all I did was grab air. Knuckles fired a left that glanced off my ear then slammed a right on my chin.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the canvas with the referee standing over me.
I heard the ref counting and grabbed the ropes, pulling myself back to my feet before he reached ten. I heard guys yelling and cheering , but it was just noise, nothing distinctive. Muldoon hollered instructions , but his words were garbled and hard to understand. The only voices that made sense were the ones in my head – the ones shouting at me to stay down.
I shook off Knuckles’ jab and inched forward, firing my own left at his head. He swatted away the punch and countered with a right to the body so hard and vicious it squeezed the air out of my chest. I tried moving , but my feet got tangled beneath me.
I stumbled backwards as Knuckles pounded that right hand squarely on my forehead.
I tasted the canvas again.
I looked up at Tommy Knuckles standing over me, banging his gloves together while I tried finding my feet. I heard the ref’s voice, found my legs beneath me, and pushed off the canvas. But before I could straighten Knuckles came back with an overhand right and I wound up on the canvas for a third time.
I took a deep breath, propped myself up on an elbow, and tried convincing my legs to move.
Nothing happened.
Knuckles looked down. “Think you better stay down.”
I swallowed hard and blinked the sweat out of my eyes. The buzzing in my ears was like a thousand bees swarming around a hive. Everything came in and out of focus , but nothing was clear. I struggled to my feet and lurched towards the side of the ring, looking for safety near the ropes.
It felt like hours in the ring instead of three minutes.
I banged my gloves together, dancing on my toes as I tried clearing away the cobwebs. Tommy Knuckles didn’t wait for the ref. He stormed across the ring like a junkyard dog on the hunt. There was a look in his eyes – something I recognized in other cons when rational thought disappeared and instincts took over. I had never been afraid of anybody, at least not in the ring. But the way Knuckles charged across the ring changed everything.
He looked like nothing was stopping him from doing what he had to do.
I saw that look and suddenly understood how those two guys in the bar fight must have felt when he started swinging.
I sucked up my courage and took a deep breath, moving forward with my left, and tried holding him off.
Like my punches would be enough to stop him.
His right hand started behind his ear, and although I saw it coming, there was nothing I could do to stop it. No time to duck. No time to turn away. No time to move. No time to get my hands in front of my face or protect myself. Nothing to keep the punch from crashing into my jaw.
That was the last thing I saw before it went dark.
ROUND TWO
I woke up to Muldoon
breaking open the smelling salts and jamming capsules in my face. I had been floating in and out of la-la-land when they helped me out of the ring then propped me up on a chair inside the infirmary. But when Muldoon shoved the ammonia under my nose, I came crashing back to the real world. It was like somebody opened a spigot and every ounce of snot poured out of both nostrils. My eyes teared. My stomach twisted and I felt nauseas and woozy. I could taste yesterday’s dinner working its way back up my throat, and I barely got my head between my legs before spilling my guts on the concrete.
Muldoon jumped back a foot. “Whoa!”
I leaned forward and angled my face towards the steel bucket at my feet.
“Didn’t know they served eggs yesterday,” he cracked.
I felt tremors and constrictions in my gut, the room was spinning, and my head felt like it had been hit with a hammer. The lights in the room hurt my eyes.
What hadn’t come up already came out the second time.
“You want to know what happened?” Muldoon asked after a few minutes.
I shook my head, even though it hurt. “Think I got that part figured out,” I said.
I looked up at him. “How long was I out?”
Muldoon returned my stare. “Better part of five or six minutes,” he said. “He nailed you with that right and you dropped faster than a dance hall floozy in high heels.”
I rubbed a hand across my jaw. It was starting to swell, and the pain spread across my face. I couldn’t remember anything – not since Knuckles slammed me on the kisser.
“Don’t think I ever got tagged like that,” I said.
“First time for everything,” Muldoon said.
I closed my eyes, letting the pain and nausea wash away. The infirmary wasn’t much better than the halls where prisoners were housed. It was a cold, drab room with dozens of beds separated by white linen curtains, giving each prisoner privacy in his own solitary unit. It was quiet, an occasional cough or the sound of someone groaning in pain. Hushed conversations between the doctor and orderlies. Not a lot of chatter. The only good thing about being there was that you got a real mattress – not like the ones in your cell that left your back aching every morning when you got up. But it wasn’t like being on vacation in Atlantic City or Miami Beach.
