It’s such a crazy stupid move, but I have to prevent Archer from fighting. My unexpected weight on the man’s back causes him to trip and land in the isle with a crash. Of course I make good and sure my knees dig into the man’s kidneys as we go down. Stupid me however, wasn’t expecting such a hard impact. My nose comes down with such a jarring impact on the back of the man’s head that I’m stunned. Someone leads me over to a bed and makes me lie down, holding pressure on my still bleeding nose.
I hope Archer doesn’t pound the guy for inadvertently hurting me. But at the same time, wouldn’t it be so romantic if he defends me, even though it means getting suspended? For a moment I revel in the fantasy of Archer being my knight in shining muscles picking me up off the floor and taking me away to tend to my wounds.
How easily I forget he has a fiancée. And how easily I forget that he and his best friend may be fixing fights, and I may have to blow the whistle on the whole thing. Funny how just a few short weeks ago, that was my fantasy—to bring this whole sport down to its bleeding knees. Now all I want to do is become Mrs. The Archer. As I lay there lost in my thoughts, I finally drift off and get some much needed sleep. I’ll need all my energy for the upcoming fights in Chicago.
Chapter Six
The Loss
I’m waiting outside the training room. Doctor Collins is in checking The Archer out and giving him first aid treatment. I’m almost afraid to go in there. He looked awful after the fight.
I am surprised he’s given me access, given the state he’s in, both physically and mentally. He is wrecked. It was bound to happen, I guess. I mean, he was bound to get handed a few losses somewhere along the way—otherwise, he’d be ranked number one instead of the Ramon brothers. The question is, how fast can he come back? It’s early enough in the tour that this wasn’t a very important bout. He can make up for it. I’m informed that nothing is broken—not even his nose, which is amazing. The door opens, and out steps the doctor.
“You can go in now, but try not to disturb him. I gave him a sedative. He needs to sleep so his body can begin to heal itself.”
“How bad is it? There aren’t any broken bones, are there?”
“No, physically he’s fine. How he’ll take the loss emotionally is the big question. All fighters are different. Everyone eventually loses. It’s just that some think they won’t, and when they do it can be devastating. I have seen it ruin careers, especially a first loss like this one.”
“Wow, I thought he’d lost before tonight.”
“No, this is his first, and no doubt not his last. See what you can do. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
“Sure doctor, I’ll do what I can.”
I don’t know what I expected to see. I wasn’t expecting anything pretty, but what I see nearly makes me cry. Laying there on the table in obvious pain is Archer. But he’s clearly not the same person he was two hours ago. I can see the change reflected in his eyes as he turns to see who's come into the room.
I don’t think he really ever expected to lose. He has spent so many hours training and fighting, doing everything humanly possible to protect against a day like today, and someone has just ripped him apart. It was almost like they knew exactly what he was about to do before he even knew it himself.
I’m filming when I walk in, only because I feel like I need that lens in front of my face to protect me from what I’m about to see. I need to be shielded from the dark realities of this sport. He’s staring up at the ceiling now and refuses to look towards the camera, even when I address him.
“Archer? I’m so s-sor—” My voice breaks and I cannot go on.
His head looks like a pumpkin, or some cruel caricature of what he used to be. He has numerous cuts on his cheeks and forehead. There’s some salve on them, and it’s doing a pretty good job sealing the cuts up. As he lies there, his breathing is ragged and irregular, like he’s fighting to hide the amount of pain he’s in. His once beautiful skin is reddened from the mat and the other fighter’s hand wraps.
I get a little closer. I want to touch him, to tell him that it's gonna be okay. Trouble is, I don’t know that. When I’m close enough to touch the table he is lying on, I turn off the camera and reach out tentatively with my hand. When my fingers do touch his arm, I yank them back involuntarily. I can’t help it, his skin is burning up. I look at his face to see if he noticed it; I don’t think he did. I touch his arm again, and this time I force myself not to react, and I keep it there. I allow my hand to trace his veins from the inside of his arm down to his wrist. His hands are still taped. I don’t know why I do it, but I just start unstrapping his hands.
At first he just lets his hand stay limp, but after a few minutes he’s holding it up so I can unwrap it. His hands are surprisingly soft yet strong. He has long tanned, perfectly manicured fingers.
For a second I forget what I’m doing and lace my fingers in his. For a moment, we are holding hands. It feels so dreamy. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I can feel the heat rising in my face. I have to be beet red by now. Fortunately, he’s so out of it he won’t remember this. I relish the moment, forgetting he has a fiancée, and that I am just an employee, and that I’ll probably be gone come Christmas.
Even in defeat he looks powerful. He smells of sweat and natural, musky manhood. I breathe in his scent. Next to the table is a bowl of hot water. I take a sponge, and even though this isn’t my job, I can’t help myself. I have to touch his body. I want to heal him. I know I can’t have him, so I want to take whatever I can get, even if it just means giving the man a bath. As I stand there bathing him, my mind wanders back to the fight.
His opponent’s name was Calvin The Great. While Calvin does have a little reach on The Archer, they both probably weigh pretty much the same and are pretty close in height. For all intents and purposes, it should not have even been a close fight. This guy isn’t even ranked in the top ten, and is not expected to go anywhere, even after beating The Archer.
The fight began with The Archer dancing around lazily while sizing up his opponent. Calvin the Great attacks first, and a barrage of strikes land that should never have made it through The Archer’s defenses. The guy isn’t particularly fast. What gives? The whole bout goes like that. The guy strikes, and Archer uses his head to block the blows. The fight lasts too long. It would have been better for Archer to lose in the first couple rounds than to go the distance. The fight is finally called when, after a particularly nasty barrage, The Archer is too delirious to understand the referee.
The crowd is booing Calvin. He ends up having to hurry off the stage before the crowd can rush the stage and attack him. While half the crowd is booing Calvin, the women of the crowd are behind their man Archer. High pitched female voices shout encouragement as Archer is helped out of the ring and taken back to the dressing room. When both fighters have vacated the arena, everything begins to quiet down and people slowly file out. It’s Sunday night at one in the morning. We’ve got a 7am flight out to Springfield, then we leave Illinois and head for Des Moines. Some are calling this the Bible Belt Tour and I can see why, given where we are. I’ll be glad to be back on the west coast soon.
Archer finally relaxes under my touch and falls asleep. I am nearly asleep on my feet as well. I file out of the room as the doctor returns.
“He’s asleep,” I say as we pass each other.
The next couple weeks are exhausting for me, and I’m not even fighting. It’s gotta be torture for Archer.
His fights in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Omaha are flawless. He looks to be at the top of his game, and has easily shrugged off the devastating loss in Chicago. The man bounces back. You have to have a certain resilience to last in this brutal world.
The fighters are constantly fighting and flying and are forever jet-lagged. The reward at the end is that the top four fighters are given compounds in Vegas where they get to base their operations. They fight the entire year in Vegas, forcing their competitors to come to them. The tour still goes on, j
ust not for the four top fighters of the previous year’s tour.
The top four fighters in the new tour will battle the top four from last year for the right to stay in Vegas. The money will be huge, and the chances for sponsors will also be high. If Archer wins, his life will change dramatically.
In Lincoln, The Archer is handed his second loss on the heels of his first in Chicago. I feel like I am now documenting the fall from grace rather than a fighter’s rise to the top. I try to stay upbeat. Everyone around him walks around like they’ve just been to a funeral: his.
Strangely, the only other person who is upbeat tonight is his friend Koenig who came by to wish him well. Koenig fought and won his fights earlier in the night, so he had a reason to be a little happy. But he is too upbeat about The Archer and his plight - especially for a "best friend". It quickly becomes annoying, and I wish there was some way I could get the guy to shut up and go to his camp and celebrate his own success. He finally leaves.
As he walks out, I notice one of his entourage has a large map like piece of paper in his hands. It takes me a second before I realize I’ve seen that paper before. It was on the desk in the office back in his compound. It’s the one that had mapped out all the fights. Suddenly I’m very curious about something. Who did Koenig pick for tonight? I’d really like to get somewhere private so I can take a look at Koenig’s chart.
I decide to make myself scarce after the fight. They’ll be busy doctoring up Archer, so they probably won’t even notice my absence. I go back to my room and start searching through video. I am looking for the stills I took of Koenig’s chart where he had predicted the winners and losers all the way to the final tourney in Vegas. I want to know if he was right, and if it was more than just an amazing coincidence.
The really big question in my mind is, does The Archer know about this, and is he a part of it? I hope to God that’s not true. I don’t really believe it is. Archer is an honest man. He’s a true warrior whose interest isn’t in money, but in winning fights. Money and success are just extra trappings that come with being good at his profession. I can't say the same about his friend Koenig.
“Got it,” I say out loud to myself.
There are the stills of the chart that Koenig had drawn up. I scan the tiny boxes until I come up with Archer’s match-ups in Chicago where he had his first loss. Sure enough, Koenig has him down as losing his second fight. I feel my stomach sinking. This cannot be. It has to be a coincidence.
I play back footage from the Chicago fights. Archer was in peak form and his opponent in the first fight could not touch him. Archer was his usual cat-like self as he moved around the ring looking for a time to pounce. The other guy would make runs at him, but Archer easily batted away the other’s strikes. Archer seemed confident in what he was doing. Then he pounced. It was so fast I couldn’t even track his strikes. I just saw his opponent react and then crumble to the ground. The fight was over. The crowd went ape shit as usual and you can hear my voice mixed in with the other women chanting his name. The guy was on a roll, and there was no stopping him.
His next opponent was rated somewhere around 12th, so he should've been no match for Archer. But something seems weird during this fight. Archer was back in the ring, but he looked different. Not only was he clearly angry, but he was just not acting like he normally does. I doubt anyone else can see it. I think the only reason I can is because for the last three weeks I have been watching his every move on and off the mat. I know when he’s acting different.
He’s normally on the balls of his feet ready to strike, but for this fight he has settled back on his heels—a bad move, because you have to take the time to shift your weight before you strike or block. Normally he prowls around the ring like a cat, but now he’s just standing there like he’s waiting for something to happen.
His opponent however, whose name I already forgot, looks unwaveringly confident. More confident than he should look for someone in the same ring as The Archer. The guy attacks and almost immediately, without much effort, he’s got Archer on the ground and in a submission hold. I have never seen that happen to Archer. He is way too fast to be caught like that.
I fast forward the tape a little farther and Archer is on the ground again, and the guy has his leg wrapped around Archer’s neck. His face is turning purple and it’s just a matter of time before he taps out. Now all I can see is the ref’s back as he gets down there to watch. Suddenly he stands up and it’s over. Archer has tapped out for the first time in his career because he let himself get caught in some lame submission hold.
I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach again. Something changed between the two fights. Archer came into the ring for the second fight like he had already been defeated. It was like he let it happen. But that can’t be. It’s not Archer. I search back to Koenig’s chart. Sure enough, he has Archer losing his third and final fight in Lincoln Nebraska, which has just happened.
I’m feeling faint and nauseated. I cannot believe what this looks like. Not my Archer. He cannot be involved in fixing fights with Koenig, but what else could it be? I look back at some of the other fights that Koenig has predicted and I see that Koenig has been dead on about all of them so far.
It’s cold in my room, but I'm sitting here sweating like a pig. My heart feels like it's being crushed in my chest and the pain is becoming unbearable.
I drop my camera on the desk and launch myself towards the bathroom. I kneel there with my head hanging over the toilet remembering my college days. The first time I really got drunk was after my first semester finals were over. I went celebrating with the other girls in my dorm. I spent the next day running from my bed to the bathroom to puke, and swearing I would never drink like that again.
And I haven’t. I've always been one to learn from my past mistakes. So now what am I going to do? I blow my nose into a tissue and get up. Could I be making something out of nothing here? I just cannot believe Archer is involved in this in any way shape or form. It’s just not who he is. Or maybe I’m the absolute worst judge of character in the world.
I swear to God, I will find out the truth in all of this. And if the great Archer is a part of this scheme, God help him. I will see that he goes down with everybody else in this miserable fighting circuit. I’m beginning to think my original views on cage fighting were correct. It’s just a lot of bullshit and brutes in tight shorts.
Chapter Seven
No More Mrs. Nice Girl
After grabbing a bite to eat with Andy at an all night diner, I leave his company and head back for our hotel. I’m several blocks away when I get the surprise of my life. Suddenly, red and blue lights are whirling around me at a dizzying speed. A siren slams against my ear drums deep inside my skull, nearly rendering me senseless. The blacked-out car I was walking by suddenly turned its emergency lights on, as well as its siren. It speeds off down the road the way I came. By the time I walk the remaining four blocks to the hotel, I’m passed by three more police cars and two ambulances. What the hell is going on?
When I get to my room, I break out my laptop, connect my camera, and begin to download the last twelve hours of shooting while I think of my approach. I look at my cell phone. It’s two in the morning. Tomorrow, I’m going to march over to Archer’s room and demand that he talk to me. It's not as if he's experienced some past trauma so horrible that it keeps him locked up inside himself, unable to communicate with the outside world. He’s just an unbelievably handsome man who’s stubborn as a mule and as pigheaded, too. He’s going to talk to me like a normal human person and not pull the nodding and shrugging routine that he’s so famous for.
This time, it’s my gloves that are coming off.
I wait three hours to let him sleep and plan to catch him before he starts his morning workout.
I’m incredibly sleep deprived and standing outside Archer’s room, pounding on the door. Before I got here, I was ready to pick a fight. Now that I have been ignored for twenty minutes, I’m going ballistic. Finally,
a door opens across the hall. A guy in his boxers with sleep in his eyes sticks his head out.
“Jeez, lady. What are you doing, trying to wake the dead?”
“Not unless my employer is dead.”
“The fighter guy?”
“Yeah do you know him?”
“Just in passing. Nice guy. But he hasn’t been in there since he left around...around two, I guess.”
“And you couldn’t have told me that twenty minutes ago?”
“Whatever. Get fucked.” he says, slamming the door in my face.
I am too pissed to leave. Where the hell is he now? Mad Max has probably taken him out on an all-night training run. Wouldn’t be the first time. Only one way to find that out—see if Mad Max is in his room.
Ten minutes of knocking at Max’s door and I have my answer. They must be out somewhere training. Since they didn’t feel it was important enough to bring along their videographer, I’m going to get some sleep. If they want me, they can come and get me.
I go back to my room and go back to sleep. The next time I’m fully conscious, it’s nearly noon. I fly out of bed, throwing clothes on as I go. I grab my camera and head downstairs to the hotel’s huge gym. I can’t believe it. First they shun me for the midnight run, and now they don’t send for me for breakfast or the first training session of the day? I haven’t missed a moment of Archer’s daily routine since I started.
When I get to the gym, I find that half the fighters on the tour are in here working out but not Archer. The place is so hot from all the muscular bodies working for hours on end, I find it stifling. I gotta get out of here and get some fresh air and think.
I walk out to the hotel lobby and take a seat. Am I being fired? Is this the way it happens around here? They just all get on a plane and “forget” to send for you? That seems a little too dramatic. There’s got to be another explanation...I just don’t know what it is yet. I hang out for another forty minutes before deciding to go upstairs and do some editing.
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