The doorman personally escorted me through the throng. He was a bigger guy himself – not quite bodybuilder level, but tall and broad, capable of forcing himself through the mob. He held me by the arm as we pushed through, gently guiding me and keeping me close.
I could hear that the opponents hadn’t started fighting yet. In fact, they seemed to be having a conversation. But this wasn’t the usual, theatrical mockery that seemed to go on before these fights…it was something deeper.
I just couldn’t understand a word of it over the crowd.
As we poked through the very front, the referee looked exasperated, calling out in a startlingly loud voice. “Now that sharing time is over, maybe we can get this shit-show back on the fucking road!” He waved over to Sawyer. “I’m proud to announce the return of the legend, a man who has shed blood in this very cage time and time again…Boooonesaaaaw!”
The crowd roared, but the doorman immediate grabbed the attention of two guys nearby. One was clearly a stacked bodybuilder, and the other was this thin, spindly Rasta dude.
“Hey! This girl’s the last one in! She’s never going to get a seat! Can she hang out up here?”
“Jeremy, for the last freaking time,” the bodybuilder grumbled loudly. “You’re always soft on the chicks! She should have showed up earlier! Send her to the back! We’re not running–”
“Wait, Darren!” The doorman cut him off. “She says that she’s his sister!”
The two of them turned to stare at me, and I heard the referee shout out: “A vicious cage fighter, hailing from the seediest depths of Phoenix, Arizona…I give you the lightning, the wise-cracker, the Jaabbeeerjaaaw!”
Darren the bodybuilder was at my side in an instant, his ear next to my face. “Look! Nobody knows Bonesaw’s real name! If you’re really his sister, whisper it in my ear!”
“Sawyer. Sawyer Samuels,” I told him.
He paused, staring at me with wide eyes, and then a wider grin.
“She’s good, Jeremy! Leave her here!”
“Sure thing!”
The crowd was thrashing, and he pulled me aside to shield me as the referee continued.
“As a special treat tonight, all restrictions are lifted. No tap-outs, no guild rules. This is an unregulated bout with anything-goes rules until knockout!”
I looked over at the two of them – the bodybuilder and the other guy. I pieced together that he was probably the owner of the joint, as Darren turned and shouted at him, barely audibly over the crowd: “What the fuck did you do?”
“Look, man!” Luke sheepishly responded, holding up his hands. “It was just business, man! It’s a business transaction! Bonesaw told me to keep the money and keep this place going, and I got offered a–”
Darren grabbed him by the collar, just as the doorman pushed me towards the two of them. The crowd roared, and I swept myself over to Darren’s side, suddenly fearful of what was going on in the cage. I didn’t quite understand what this meant…but it didn’t sound good.
I could hear the referee continuing, but my attention was completely centered on the two of them. What they were saying sounded way more important…and it terrified me. They both paused as the referee ducked out of the cage and hesitated – before locking it and turning regretfully towards Sawyer.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Darren continued, his rage only building higher. “If this guy is anywhere near Bonesaw’s level…” he pointed towards the ring, glowering down at Luke, “then you just signed Bonesaw’s fucking death certificate.”
The buzzer rang out, and the referee boomed: “FIGHT!”
(Return to Table of Contents)
Chapter 18 – Sawyer
Pensacola, Present Day
The buzzer kicked us into gear, and we began to circle one another. Instead of launching into an immediate brawl, we watched for any weaknesses – any openings to exploit or missteps to use to our advantage.
This wasn’t going to be a good, clean fight.
It was a duel, and it was going to get ugly.
“Gotta admit,” Jabberjaw chuckled aloud, “Bonesaw’s a real clever name. Wish I’d thought of it, myself. Sure as shit know you didn’t come up with that. Who did?”
“The fans,” I answered as we continued to circle one another, hovering a few feet away from the fence walls. “First cage-fighting match I was in, someone in the crowd drunkenly called it out. It caught on. Then they started chanting my name.”
“Heh, what a story,” Jabberjaw grinned wickedly. “Wonder how high those beautiful fans of yours will carry you when you’re asleep on the mat? How much blood will I spill before you give up, Fucker?”
“HEY!” We both turned, staring into the dark throng of spectators all around. “You two bitches gonna fight, or are you gonna just dance around?”
Jabberjaw grinned like a madman. “Suck my cock, you piece of shit! You’re starin’ at history in the making, motherfucka! This fucker’s an old friend of mine, see? We go WAY back!”
“I don’t give a flying fuck!” Another voice rang out.
“This ain’t about you, you piece of shit! This is about HIM and ME!” true to his new name, Jabberjaw was basking in the moment.
I wondered how long he’d waited for this. Who knows how he found me. When he figured things out, he must have followed me for ages, and my stupid Twitter account had kept him up to date on how active I was staying, who I was fighting, and crucially where I was.
If he’d been jumping for the chance to strike me in an unsanctioned bout, then I’d been a complete fool. I had handed him the perfect opportunity on a silver platter. Announcing my presence would have tipped him, and he would have understood that was the first time in years that I was fighting in a back-end cage. Somewhere that might have malleable rules.
Everything my opponent had needed would have fallen into place with admirable precision.
It wouldn’t have taken him much to track down Luke and sweeten the deal for him. Everything from volunteering as the opponent and throwing out the rulebook would have been on the table, given Luke’s equal penchant for capitalizing on opportunities. And if Jabberjaw had been winning fights for years and played it smart…it would have been within his means to hop a same-week flight straight here.
He had already been training in the shadows for years, hoping for a crack at me in the cage. My enemy came prepared.
Yep. Definitely fucked.
The crowd was starting to boo harder as we watched each other, constantly moving but never taking the first step. Whoever broke first was going to lose – but I had a reputation to uphold. This guy came out of nowhere, as far as the spectators were concerned. If I didn’t make a move soon, it was going to look like I was just scared of the stranger.
And the smirk on his face told me that he knew it.
Fuck it.
I closed the distance with a powerful swing.
As expected, he easily dodged the blow, weaving away instead of trying to counterattack. I held my forearms up, and he bounced lightly back and forth in his stance, fists at the ready but unwilling to launch a jab.
I threw another punch, holding back in strength. He ducked to the side, pulling backwards with the step. Again, he refused to throw an attack.
Gonna be like, huh? I thought to myself. He’s going to tire me out first…draw out my humiliation.
I needed to get him to the ground. It was the only way I’d be able to keep him from darting away like a skittish, impish scamp with every moment. But the cage wouldn’t let me pin him into a corner, and he wasn’t about to lose the advantage of space anytime soon.
Jabberjaw was completely focused, eyes locked onto mine. He’d read my movements and expertly flow around my thrusts. When fatigue finally forced me to make subtle, tired mistakes, the viper would rise with its fangs at the ready.
I launched another blow, effortlessly dodged.
One good strike, I thought to myself. I need to surprise him. But how?
It dawned
on me – matched in its simplicity only by its stupidity. I’d been busy analyzing him, studying his motions and looking for an opening…and it was true that I might spot something. There might be a desperate, subtle flaw in his fighting style, something to give me the higher ground. More likely, though, was that I was right – he was going to tire me out while I paced around, struggling to spot a crucial weakness, and then he was going to destroy me. I’d been going about it all wrong, trying to figure him out. All I needed had been obvious to me before the match even started – I’d assessed him and figured out every detail I required to come out on top and win the match.
Because that’s not how I lived my life.
I acted on instinct.
It was the way I’d always been, and the only reason I’d made it this far. Everything from motorcycling to escaping the police raid had been by watching and simply reacting. It was my strength – never overthinking, only letting my body do the work.
That’s all that I had to do.
I lost myself in the flow, letting go of all my biting frustration and desperate analysis. A wave of calm overcame me, tempered by anger. I was an efficient, oiled fighting machine once more, stripped of any brain processes beyond understanding my current limitations and focusing on the slippery jackass who faced me.
“That’s right,” he smiled with wide eyes, relishing in whatever he saw in my emotionless gaze. “That’s what I wanted to see. I know exactly what fighting you looks like – I’ve seen you flatten motherfuckers like nothing. I want you fighting me at your fucking peak, man…and when I annihilate you, Sawyer, I want you to understand that I didn’t need any tricks to do it.”
“Stop talking,” I commanded. “Fight me.”
“You betcha, shit-stain,” Jabberjaw grinned, bouncing forward with a strong jab.
I moved out of the way – but it was a clumsy move, weakening my position. It wasn’t as natural as it should have been, and it left me wide open. Still…
Jabberjaw landed a fierce fist to my gut, but I was ready to take the blow. While he came in close, I tried to bop him in the ear with the side of my fist. He wove out of the way just in time, slipping around to thrust another jab.
I took that blow too, using my shifting body weight to half step backwards. Planting my foot with the momentum, I shifted gears forward, feinting a thrust but bear-hugging his neck instead.
Jabberjaw was caught off-guard. Expecting a blow, he’d been surprised by my grapple, and began to pummel his fists into my ribs. I braced myself against the blows and forced him backwards against the cage wall, when he suddenly sank his teeth into my shoulder, jerking them from side-to-side.
“FUCK!” I snarled, halfway expecting Vinnie to jump to attention. That’s when I remembered: no rules.
I slammed him against the cage wall, dislodging his bite. That was going to sting with every punch, but he’d attacked my lesser shoulder – leaving my dominant punching hand unhindered during the rest of the bout. I managed a weak punch to his stomach before he could escape, which was strong enough to slightly wind him.
Still, the sly little bastard slipped out of my striking range, wiping the stray blood from his mouth.
“You’re going to resort to biting?” I felt the shoulder with my fingers – it was a little messy, but I could withstand it.
“I fight practical-like, Fucker.”
“No, you fight dirty.”
“Call it what you want.”
The game has changed, I reminded myself coolly. With that acknowledgement, I immediately slipped back into my emotionless persona of the mindless street-fighting machine.
Launching forward with a powerful blow, I watched him sidestep before landing another strong jab. I took the blow and used the momentum to hurl a spinning backfist, a move easily dodged as well.
“If I’d known that’s all it took to rile you up,” Jabberjaw laughed, “I’d have bitten you from the start!”
He skated behind me, and instead of turning, I launched backwards, tackling him with my back. He dodged out of the way, but not before I grabbed his shin.
“The fuck you don’t,” he snarled, trying to slip the sweaty limb free, but I dug my fingertips in and yanked, drawing him down onto me. As he toppled down on top of me, I let go of his shin, bracing myself and taking his weight as he landed across my chest.
The window was brief. For the first time in the match, he was off his game. I grabbed him around the neck, rolling and dragging his scrambling body with me. Within seconds, I had him beneath me, my knee in his back, and I delivered a solid blow straight down to the side of his head.
Unfortunately, it was my weaker arm – the one with a chomp mark in the shoulder. Not enough to knock him out, but enough to briefly daze him.
He managed to dislodge me, shakily jumping to his feet, and I dove across the padding for the shin again. Jabberjaw was focused enough to weave a step backwards, but I had anticipated that. Instead of falling flat on my face, I shoved my palm downward and propelled myself forward, thrusting my other hand out and – barely – clasping around his leg again. With a fierce tug, I yanked him backwards, his head and shoulders slamming into forgiving fence of the cage wall – but I wasn’t done yet.
I pulled myself up as he kicked his feet along the padding. He was desperate to catch his sweaty heel against something and force himself back up. I took the opportunity from him, grasping his sole with another flailing kick and yanking him towards me.
My opponent landed on the floor at my feet, striking upward between my legs. But I’d already slipped out of the way, avoiding the game-ending low blow that would have left me at his mercy. Instead, I swiped my heel into his ribs with a quick thrust, and he rolled with the momentum. It was enough to cause him a little pain – just enough to keep him from whipping back up and dominating.
His eyes were off of me for a moment, and I struck my heel down into his abdomen as his roll finished. The blow caught him completely off-guard and winded him, and I dropped onto his head with a powerful elbow bash. He barely slipped out of the way, but that was fine – I was on the floor with him now, and he expected me to be thrown off by the miss.
Instead, I instinctively knew how he’d move, and I whipped up my arm to clothesline him as he attempted to struggle up from the floor. My arm shot down, carrying him straight down onto his back again, and I pushed up from above him and kneed him in the abs again. I stayed there, holding him pinned beneath me, and swung a powerful blow that struck the side of his head. He spat blood across the mat, reacting just quickly enough with a well-timed fist to capitalize on the moment.
With a precision strike, he punched me straight in the dick, missing my balls but still temporarily crippling me. The opening was just enough for my knee to weaken, and he pulled back, scrambling up to his feet. I shakily reached my own, and we faced each other down with our fresh injuries.
“Been waiting for this for years,” he laughed, spitting a fresh burst of blood onto the mat. “Win or lose, I get to say I punched Bonesaw in the dick!” He gave me a sideways glance, his cheek puffy from my earlier blow. “I’m the first motherfucker to do it, right?”
“Yeah,” I groaned, straightening myself up. “Of course you’ve got to go below the belt to knock me free. Anyone could have done that.”
“Maybe,” he chuckled. “Maybe. That’s the difference between those little bitches and me, eh? I get the badass in the ring and I punch his fuckin’ dick. Almost worked, too! If that had been a straighter shot, you’d lick my balls just to get me to stop beating your shit-stain face!”
“Shall we end this?” I asked, steeling myself for the coming fracas.
“We’re in your town, jackass. You call it, we finish it.”
I lunged into another flung fist, but I knew I wasn’t ready. My footing was wobbly after the dick-punch. That’s not what I was counting on, though.
He dove clear out of the way but shakily, as if his depth perception was just a little off.
Exactly
what I needed to know.
I’d only gotten one good punch in, but I had made it count. With the puffy cheek clouding the vision to his eye, he’d been just barely off his game – enough for me to change the flow of our match. I could dictate things now. As long as I kept reasonable expectations for his unpredictability, I could force him wherever I needed him.
I could scare him.
He realized this as I dove another fist at him, then another, using my momentum to carry me around the ring. He dodged and wove beneath or around my thrusts, crosses, and jabs, but each step confessed his greatest fear now: from his left side, he could barely see. He knew where I was coming from, but he couldn’t trust his eyes anymore.
Cage Page 14
