Once the fight started, he immediately began showing off just how outclassed I was. Every single punch or kick I threw at this asshole, he just kept slipping and weaving under them like it was nothing.
But that was good. He needed to believe he was in full control over the fight for as long as I could keep up the act.
Then, mid-punch—
BOOM!
He caught me clean, making me taste a sweet knuckle sandwich right to my jaw. It hurt like a bitch, but at the same time, getting hit isn’t exactly something I’m not used to. If it wasn’t for those how-to-fight videos I’d watched on YouTube, my shit would have been completely rocked. Who knew that rolling with the punch—actually turning your head with the impact—could minimize the damage so much?
But it was all good. I played it up, making him think he’d actually rocked me with that shot. I stumbled and dropped to the ground, getting on my hands and knees for a second like I was struggling to regain my composure.
Sure enough, he bought it. He crouched down, getting real close on one knee.
“You’ve never been rocked before, have you?” Nathan sneered, leaning his face in. “The room spinning, your legs feeling like jelly... must be a new feeling, don’t it?”
Yeah, keep talking,
the voice in my head growled.
You won’t be talking shit for too long.
While he was running his mouth, I knew his guard was up for a desperate punch. He was expecting me to swing. So instead of throwing a fist, I just headbutted that boy clean in his mouth.
“Is that all you do is talk shit?” I spat, wiping some sweat from my forehead. “Because that’s getting pretty fucking annoying.”
The crowd started
oohing
like crazy the second my head connected with his face. Jasmine looked absolutely pissed that I’d just headbutted her boyfriend in the mouth.
“What is wrong with you?!” she screamed from the sidelines. “This is supposed to be an MMA fight!”
“Last time I checked, this is not an octagon,” I said, opening my arms wide. “This is a circle, so street rules apply, right? And besides, since when do you even care about violence? I knew you for years before I got locked up, and you hated fighting.”
She glared at me, her mouth pressed into a tight line, but she didn’t say another word. Nathan, on the other hand, just rubbed his bleeding lip and started laughing.
“Ahh, that was dirty, though,” he said, spitting some red onto the grass. “That was sneaky, sneaky Rico.”
Like I give a fuck,
the voice in my head growled.
“But you see,” Nathan said, bouncing back into his stance, “that dirty boxing shit is not going to cut it here. You’re going to have to mix it up a notch.”
The second the words left his mouth, he went in for a heavy-ass leg kick. Oh boy. Nobody had ever kicked my leg that hard in my life. It felt like someone had just slammed an axe straight into my calf muscle.
Fuck!
the voice went wild.
That shit hurt worse than a bitch! What are his shins made of? Iron?!
I forced myself back into my stance, but it was hard as hell to put any real pressure on that leg.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Nathan mocked, keeping his guard up. “Hard to put weight on it? I know it does.”
No shit, Sherlock,
I thought.
But I’m not stupid. I know exactly what you’re about to do now.
He threw a wild swing at my face, but I didn’t budge. I picked my hands up slightly to cover, and the second I did, I saw him transition the punch into a fake, dropping low for another calf kick.
But I was ready for it. I dropped my arm and caught his leg right out of the air.
Nathan’s eyes went wide with surprise.
“Stop spamming, pussy!” I roared.
I unloaded a mean right hand straight to his jaw. He stumbled backward, hitting the grass hard. I wanted to dive on top of him and ground-and-pound, but I knew that was exactly what a trained MMA fighter wanted.
“Get your ass up,” I said, backing off and gesturing for him to stand. “Ain’t nobody trying to get choked out today. Let’s keep throwing them bitches.”
But oh boy... he got back up a tad more serious this time. Every time I made a mistake trying to punch him, he just kept countering me. This is just a hunch, but I think he wasn’t trying to sleep me yet. He wanted to drag this out. But the punches he was landing were hurting like hell. I’d never been hit that hard in my life. The sheer volume of hands he was throwing was insane, and even though I was blocking them, the impact was still rattling my brain.
Then, out of nowhere, he threw a kick I didn’t even see coming. He kicked me dead in the liver.
The pain was so intense I had no choice but to drop to my knees, clutching my side in agony.
Yo, we are definitely not winning this fight,
the voice in my head warned, sounding desperate.
This dude outclasses us so badly. Just by getting a little serious, he’s already got us on the ropes.
I spat some blood onto the grass. Nathan crouched down next to me again, his face inches from mine.
“You impressed me, Rico. I have to give you that,” Nathan sneered. “You decided to cop out of murking me yesterday just to end up looking like a complete bitch in front of the whole school today. And all for some lying, little, retarded—”
I reached out, grabbed his ankle in an iron grip, and started laughing.
Nathan frowned, trying to pull his leg away. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, really,” I gasped, looking up at him through my sweat-soaked hair. “The only thing that’s funny is how easily people forget about natural weaknesses.”
Before he could even process what I was saying, I brought my elbow down dead on the top of his lead foot.
He screamed in pure agony, stumbling backward. I’m pretty sure I broke a few of his toes right then and there.
“What the fuck did you do to my foot?!” he howled, clutching his leg.
All I could think about was what Harvey had explained to me back in the library.
It doesn’t matter how strong or trained a person is, Rico. We are all human at the end of the day. If you’re going to fight him, you need to do three things. The first thing is to let him think he’s going to win the fight. Statistically, you having zero training gives you a zero-percent chance of winning in a fair match. But you can use his own confidence to catch him off guard with the other two steps.
The first step is attacking the top of his lead foot. If you do damage to his base, it drains the power from his entire body. It ruins his biomechanics, making it impossible for him to generate any real power for a punch.
The second I damaged his foot, I rushed him. He was having a much harder time slipping and dodging my punches. Guess what Harvey said was right. To keep him from running around so much, I stepped right on his injured foot, which let me catch him with a nasty left hand. He tried to dive in for a tackle, but he couldn’t generate any power from his base because his foot was completely fucked up. I just shoved him off me like it was nothing.
If you try to fight a professional fighter the traditional way, damn right you’re going to lose. But they’re only trained to fight in a formal way. They aren’t taught to handle people fighting dirty or taking advantage of their raw weaknesses.
I ran in to tackle him this time. He grabbed me, trying to use my momentum to flip me, but I managed to keep my footing and just locked up with him in a tight clinch.
“Stop hugging me like a bitch!” Nathan gasped, struggling to break my grip. “Get off me!”
“First of all, I’m not gay,” I muttered. “Second—”
I quickly yanked myself back. But right before I let go—
CLAP!
I cupped both of my hands and slammed them directly over his ears.
Step two is actually pretty hard,
Harvey’s voice echoed in my head.
You have to cup your hands and slap his ears hard enough to pop them. If you bust his eardrum, you completely destroy his equilibrium. Not only will he have a hard time hearing, but it will completely fuck up his balance, making it almost impossible for him to stand.
And he was right. Using natural weaknesses is the best way to put yourself at a massive advantage. Right now, Nathan was basically my personal punching bag. He could barely stay on his feet, and even if he tried to swing, he couldn’t put any power behind his punches.
The moment his knees buckled and he started to drop, I ran up and grabbed him by the back of the head. I was about to go in for a nasty, running knee straight to his face to put his lights out for good.
But just as I launched my leg—
“STOP!”
A desperate scream tore through the crowd. I looked over and saw Jasmine running straight toward us. She threw herself between us, pushing me back and separating us before I could finish him with that sleeper knee.
Jasmine was completely beside herself, crying as she threw herself between us. Her voice cracked with pure, desperate frustration.
“Why?!” she sobbed, looking at me like I was a psychopath. “Why do you hate him so much, Rico? You barely even know him!”
I looked down at her. I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t expose Juliet’s trauma to this crowd, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to drag her name through the mud in front of fifty people just to justify myself.
So, I kept it vague.
“I’m mad at him because a person like him, who can clearly get women, decided to
take
a woman instead.”
Jasmine stared at me, completely confused. I didn’t give her time to process it. I turned my eyes toward Nathan, who was struggling to stay on his feet, his equilibrium totally shot as he leaned on his boys for support.
“There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent,” I mocked, quoting Lao Tzu. “Because it creates blind spots that lead to defeat.”
I shook my head, staring down at him with pure contempt. “Look at you. You call yourself a popular, trained MMA fighter, but you had to get saved by your girl. You just got completely dismantled by a dude who doesn’t even know how to fight for real. And yeah, I might have looked like a bitch on the ground for a minute there. But the bigger bitch in this yard is definitely you.”
I spat on the grass, turned my back on him, and started walking toward the gate.
And then... everything went black.
The last thing I felt was a sudden, blinding flash of pain exploding against the side of my chin.
As my consciousness faded, my brain put the pieces together. Nathan felt so played, so utterly humiliated in front of his entire school, that his pride couldn’t take it. The second my back was turned, he’d run up and sucker-punched me from behind.
Guess you can’t win for losing, huh?