It’s like a drug.
I know, cliché as fuck, right? But it’s the truth, and I’m not going to fuck around trying to find a better metaphor.
At first, it’s the adrenaline. My first fight, the crowd wasn’t wild when I stepped into that cage. My first fight, nobody knew who the fuck I was.
But my opponent, Crazy Carl, they knew him. They called him that for a reason…
Dude was built like a freight train, the kind that carries coal. His thighs were thicker than my waist. I knew then and there, even if I’d never seen him fight before, that he was a leg-lock man. He had a heavy base, low to the ground, and he was no doubt going to try and get me on the floor, try and lock me up, pull my shoulder from its socket, make me tap out.
Well, I knew then and there I wasn’t going to be the one tapping out. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel that adrenaline surge, born of a little bit of fear and a lot of concern. Concern not just that I was likely going to sustain an injury during this fight, but for how the hell I was going to even beat this guy.
I knew I wasn’t going to lose, I just didn’t quite know how to win.
My thing’s always been a combination of power, speed, and endurance. I hit hard, but not the hardest. I’m fast, but not the fastest. I can go for long, but not the longest. I’m a bit of everything, and that makes me a nightmare matchup. No strategy works against me. If some dick thinks he can out-dance me, then I can out-hit him. If some brick of a man can out-hit me, I can out-quick him.
It’s just a big battle of rock-paper-scissors. Except I have all three.
And the adrenaline… that adrenaline just feels so fucking good. Time slows down. I react faster, want to draw blood. Fight or flight, and in the cage, nobody runs.
For some people, that adrenal buzz, that heightened plane of senses, it never comes back. Sure, the first few fights you get it, but then it becomes routine. You know what you’re going to do, what your opponent is going to do to you.
You know it’s going to hurt, and it doesn’t worry you anymore. But not me. I always felt that adrenaline. I trained myself to, learned to psyche myself up, learned to trick my brain into releasing the necessary neurotransmitters, firing the necessary synapses, so that my adrenal glands would kick into overdrive, and I’d get that edge.
That glorious, sparkling, blood-thirsty, win-at-all-costs edge.
I fight like my fucking life depends on it. I fight like the devil.
I’ve hurt my opponents in bad, bad ways. I’ve heard blood-curdling screams of pain erupt from my opponent’s mouths, and I still didn’t stop. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed… until I won.
I beat Crazy Carl. I beat him in twenty-two minutes, sixteen seconds. To this day it is the longest fight I’ve ever fought.
He got tired, I didn’t. He got me onto the mat a couple of times, but I wormed out. He almost tore the ligaments in my knee at one stage, but I slipped it out with just a bit of bruising, just a bit of swelling.
He was heavy, stomped like an elephant. It’s not like I could knock him off his base. I tried to kick him out from behind but he just swung me around and threw me at the cage. The pattern of the steel wire was printed in blood on my back.
But I danced, skipped, hit him when I could. He lunged for me, tried to take me down to the mat again. I feinted with a right hook, hit him with a left cross right in the jaw. I thought he was lights out the way his body went limp and fell.
But he got back up. If there was one thing about Crazy Carl, it was that he was persistent.
So we did the dance. I got him again, and again. He was huffing, gassed. I’m not saying it was fucking poetry or anything. I’m not saying it was a pretty fight.
But in the end I fucking won, so who gives a shit how it looks? All I care about is winning. I ain’t out to humiliate a guy. I know my strengths and my weaknesses.
I got him with a spinning back fist, hit him right in the temple. This time he went down hard, a sack of bricks, and I clambered on top of him. I was going to make sure he stayed down.
I had to stay on top of him. No way was I letting myself get under that hulk of a man. I was a buck-ninety and five-percent body fat, and he made me look tiny.
I got him into a rear choke hold, and he tried to roll me, so I used a little trick I learned watching the old underground guys back when I was a kid.
I kicked his kneecap with my heel over, and over again. Finally I felt it dislocate. It just popped out. His whole body jolted with pain.
I knew he’d never walk without pain again.
Fuck it. Whatever it takes to win the fight.
He couldn’t roll me anymore. He had no leverage. I choked him out. He didn’t tap out, the tough fucker… He passed out.
Like I said, fucking persistent. A real dog. When I think back to him, I can’t help but smile. I… I admire him. Knee ruined, and I’m there choking the motherfucking life out of him, and he kept going. He just kept going.
That stocky fucker taught me something that day.
I got to my feet, blood streaming down my face, missing a tooth, and a lump the size of a tennis ball on the back of my head.
My left ankle was sprained; I had a torn ligament that would take weeks to mend. I would ache and hurt all over my fucking body for equally as long, if not longer.
But I fucking won.
The ref came and held my hand up, and I winced. The bruise on my rib cage was already a deep purple.
But I fucking won.
The crowd loved it. I was the underdog, and I’d taken down Crazy Carl.
The doc came into the cage. He was a wiry man, white-maned, beak-nosed. He knelt down and examined Crazy Carl, gave him a smelling salt. Carl came to, saw that he had lost. The expression on his ruddy face…
He knew he had lost to me. Just some nobody. Just some newbie. Just some fucking out-of-town punk.
The doc walked over to me. He said, “What’s your name, son?”
I spat out my mouth guard, along with a long stream of sticky blood. “Pierce Fletcher.”
He said, “Well, shit, son, that might just be the best debut I’ve ever seen.”
I glared at the doc. “Don’t fucking call me ‘son’.”