Suckerpunch: (2011) (6 page)

Gil said, “Can I say something about Eddie wanting Burbank to win?”

It was my turn with the elbow.

Kevin looked up from his binder. “Well. Uh . . .”

“Don’t listen to him,” I said.

“No, no, it’s good. We can use that energy. But how about instead of saying you think Eddie wants Junior Burbank to win, you say you
know
the
world
wants him to.”

“Never mind,” Gil said. “But don’t get me wrong; we’ll take Junior any day of the week. We just get the feeling Woody isn’t supposed to win this fight.”

“I don’t really know about that,” Kevin said.

Roth whispered something to Angie, who shook her head and frowned at Gil. He shrugged.

I started to panic. I suspected that pissing off a producer would be like swearing at the kid in the drive-through. I didn’t want to get pulled into the hype machine, but I also didn’t want any loogies in my burger. “Sorry. We’re a bit on edge around here. Like you said: short notice.”

“It’s all good,” said Kevin. “If we could just get through these questions, I’ll get out of your way.”

“Hey,” Gil said, “Woody’s right. We’re just fired up for the fight. Please, my full apologies. Fire away.”

Kevin was good at his job and jumped into the window. “How is Woody’s jiu jitsu?”

Gil said, “Well, it’s like watching a bear trying to change a diaper. It’s very confusing.”

“I’m not very confident,” I added.

Kevin looked at us. “Do you want me to use that?”

“No, let’s do it again,” Gil said. “Serious now. Ready? Okay. Woody’s jiu jitsu is improving. He’s not gonna win any tournaments yet, but his takedown defense is very good, and if he does get taken down, he knows how to avoid submissions and damage and get back on his feet. And when he does, he’s usually pretty upset.”

“Nice,” Kevin said. “For the show, I’ll probably have a drop from somebody, maybe Benton, spliced in saying that ‘improving’ coming from you is the same as saying it’s excellent. Because of how good you are.”

“Hell, I can say that,” Gil said.

“It will probably work better coming from someone else.” Kevin turned to me. “What do you think about Burbank saying your fight three years ago was a fluke?”

“I think he’s improved a lot since then, and this is going to be a completely different fight. But I’ve improved too, so he’s not getting the same fighter, either. It’s going to come down to who makes the first mistake. And the last one.” I nodded. That was some good shit right there.

But Banzai Eddie wanted more, and Kevin wanted to get it for him. He said, “You couldn’t knock him out in your first fight. Does that worry you?”

I smiled. “I wouldn’t say I
couldn’t
knock him out; I just didn’t get the chance. He gave me the opportunity to submit him, and I took it. The first and only time I won by an ankle lock.”

“I’ll take credit for that,” Gil said.

Kevin smiled. “So you’re going to knock him out this time?”

“I’m not picky. I’ll take the win however it shows up. I’d like to keep it out of the judges’ hands, though.”

“You’re a finisher,” Kevin said. “That’s why Eddie loves you.”

Gil swore. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Kevin said. “Woody, Junior Burbank said he’d never trained to defend ankle locks before that fight, so it doesn’t really count that you beat him that way.”

“His record has a No Fair category? Can I get one of those?”

“Good point.” Kevin laughed. “If he decides to take it to the ground, what are you going to do?”

I smiled too, but it was getting harder. I leaned forward a little and in my peripheral vision saw the cameraman adjust to keep me in focus. “It’s not a dictatorship in there. Not until about two seconds before somebody gets knocked out, so it doesn’t matter what he decides. He’s a big boy and a great wrestler, so he probably will take me down. I’ll get back up. Maybe I’ll take him down.”

Kevin made a note. “Burbank’s coach said they’ve been watching tapes of you since they got the call that you were the replacement, and in your last four or five fights you’ve been cut pretty badly, and you open up pretty easily in general. Are you worried that might be a strategy for Burbank, to try to cut you and win by referee stoppage?”

“Are you serious?” I looked at Gil.

He sipped his coffee and stared straight ahead.

I said, “That’s pathetic if it’s what they want to do. If that happens, I’ll go to the hospital, get stitched up, and come back for a rematch
that
night.” I took a breath. “But it won’t happen, anyway. I have a great corner and we use the best cutman in the business, and if I get cut they’ll keep me from leaking too much.”

Kevin kept his eyes on mine. He was circling me in the water. “Burbank said no matter where the fight goes—on the feet, on the ground, in the clinch—he’ll dominate with his strength and break your spirit. He said he’ll see it in your eyes when you break. And when he sees it, he’ll punish you for as long as he can before the ref stops the fight or you go unconscious.”

“Did he really say that?”

“I’ve got it on my laptop if you want to watch it.”

“No. I’m sure I’ll see it enough tomorrow.” I stared past him and let what Burbank said work its way in to see how it felt. I could see the cameraman twisting in closer on my face.

“Woody,” Kevin said, “do you have a reply to that?”

“Yeah. I don’t care what he does. I don’t care how much he’s improved. I’m going to knock him the fuck out. And if anybody in his corner so much as cocks an eyebrow at me, I’ll put them down too.”

Gil let the front door close behind Kevin and his crew. He spent a moment squinting through the window while they loaded up their van.

I tapped the Thai bag with slow hooks and tried to look sheepish. It was harder than I’d expected.

Without turning around, Gil said, “You’re going to knock out his entire corner?”

I put a soft dig into the bag’s liver. “I may have gotten carried away.”

“What about the ref? Should I tell him to wear a mouthguard?”

“You heard him. They want to cut me on purpose? Come on.”

Gil turned around. “What I heard was Eddie’s puppet strings yanking you all over the place. Cuts happen. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not.”

“Still,” I said, “you don’t call your shot like that.”

Gil walked over and stopped the bag from swinging. “Leave it right here. Don’t carry it with you into the cage; it’ll burn you out in the first minute.”

“Right.”

“I want to see you drop it.”

I took a deep breath and ran my hands up my face and over my head. Reached behind my neck and pulled my hands forward over my shoulders and held them cupped in front of my chest, let them come apart. “Happy?”

“Damn near giddy.”

“Woodrow! Look here, mate.” Roth tugged Edson toward us, Edson shaking his head and looking embarrassed. “You wanna talk about cuts? Show him.”

Edson leaned forward, exposing a puckered line behind his right ear about as long and wide as my index finger.

We all hissed and cringed.

“How’d that happen?” Roth asked.

Edson didn’t speak much English, but he understood the question. He started talking in Portuguese, his hands demonstrating something that looked like combat knitting. He paused to make sure we were getting it. Our faces made him frown.

“Did it hurt?” Roth asked.

Gil pointed to his own lip. “You got some stupid right here.”

“What?”

“Nope, missed it. Still there.”

Edson started again and we got more confused. He gave up and called for Jairo but didn’t get an answer. He hollered again, and after a few seconds the hooded couch lump shuffled on bare feet from the back hallway.

Edson said something crisp, and the feet might have moved a fraction faster. Edson rolled his eyes at us.

The feet came to a stop on Edson’s left, and the hooded head turned to him and waited.

Edson tugged the hood down and let a spill of black hair fall out. His cousin Marcela was in there somewhere. She was a few years older than him and, from what I’d heard from anyone who’d talked to her, terminally bored. The sleeves of her Arcoverde Jiu Jitsu sweatshirt swallowed her hands with a few inches to spare. She smacked one of the flaps into Edson’s face and kicked him in the shin.

Roth loved it. “Sweetheart, will you marry me?”

Marcela pulled her sleeves up and ran her hands through her hair. She produced an elastic band and made a loose ponytail with her dark bangs still wisping down to frame her face. She blew most of them out of her eyes and looked Roth up and down. She said something to Edson that made him cover his mouth.

Roth panicked. “What’d she say?”

“What are you asking him for?” Gil said. “He brought her out to translate.”

Roth was on the verge of tears. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Marcela gave me the once-over too in case I had any ideas. We’d nodded at each other in passing since the clan arrived last week, but I’d been wrapped up in training for Porter. She was small, maybe five three and a sandwich over a hundred pounds. When her hair was loose, it fell halfway down her back. She had very thin, arched eyebrows over eyes the color of wet beach sand, a shade lighter than her skin. I liked the little bump in her nose on the way down to her lips, which were shiny with light gloss and looked comfortable wearing a skeptical twist.

Her neck was thin, and everything below that was a mystery inside the sweatshirt that went almost to her knees. Her toes were unpainted and stubby. The tops of her feet looked calloused; she’d spent some time on the mat.

I wasn’t sure why Jairo brought Marcela to the States. Maybe she wanted to see Vegas, but the brothers wouldn’t let her out into the city by herself, and they’d pretty much just given her a tour of the streets from their hotel to the gym and back, the boys either training or caught up in other pursuits. Javier wouldn’t shut up about some redheaded stripper named Pandora.

Marcela held her arms out and asked Edson something.

He replied and pointed at the scar, then at us.

Marcela snorted. “Oh, you’re kidding, right? That stupid thing?”

Edson pointed at Roth, who pointed at me.

Marcela was disgusted with all of us. “You want to know about that scar?”

“No,” I lied.

“He was fighting Vale Tudo in Brazil, you know, this means ‘anything goes’? It was his first fight. His last too, I think.” She frowned at Edson. “He was fighting some skinny guy, all bones, and an elbow cut him in the head there, behind his ear. Edson had him in the guard, and the guy stuck his fingers into the cut and tried to pull it open to let more blood out.”

“Awful,” Roth said.

“The guy, he wanted to make the cut so bad the judges would stop the fight. It’s not easy in those fights. He pulled on Edson’s ear with one hand and pushed at his hair with the other. The crowd did not like it, but he didn’t care. You could see Edson’s bone in there, his skull.”

Roth whistled. “Christ.”

“Did the ref stop it?” Gil asked.

“No,” Marcela said, “the blood wasn’t in his eyes, so he could still fight. But the blood was everywhere else. Edson wouldn’t tap because he’s stupid, and Jairo had to throw the towel in from the corner. It was a big towel, and they pushed it against Edson’s head, and it was full of blood before they announced the winner.”

Edson saw she was done and smiled and nodded at us. He gestured like he was pulling curtains open and peeking inside; then he pointed to his scar. Gave everyone a thumbs-up.

Marcela shook her head.

Jairo walked up with another apple. “What are you talking about?”