Eloise “El” Cain was getting a bit long in the tooth for what she was about to do, though she did it only when she really needed the money. Her opponent tonight was four inches shorter, but a real stud; at 190 pounds she outweighed the taller Cain by ten pounds. And, like Cain, almost all of it was bone, gristle, and muscle displayed across her broad shoulders, sinewy core, abs like rows of stacked bricks, barrel-thick thighs, muscled glutes, and diamond-hard calves. She could destroy 99 percent of the guys out there and give the other 1 percent a run for their money. Her technique was rock-solid: She could fight all day, could absorb terrific punishment, and had crushing power in all four limbs. She was over a dozen years younger than Cain, and many thought she had a shot at the big time. The only question marks were her fighting smarts and mental toughness. And the fact that the women’s UFC world topped out at featherweight, or a 145-pound limit.
Cain had always thought that was sexist bullshit. There were some women out there who could fight with the best of them. The men had heavier weight divisions in the UFC, so why were the bigger women ruled out? Maybe they would just have to start their own league, or the larger women would have to make the jump to boxing, with its far heavier weight divisions. But ultimately it wasn’t fair, and, like always, the women got the short end of the athletic stick, Cain believed.
Her opponent had more tats than unmarked skin, Cain observed. The general theme of the skin art seemed to be violent death, with sadomasochistic torture running a close second.
Cain knew she was here just for the woman to notch a win on her career belt as she moved up in the land of mixed martial arts.
Well, maybe I have different plans.
This was decidedly not the big time. No cage match televised on pay-per-view happening here. No Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm, or Cris Cyborg within a thousand miles of this dive. No million-dollar payoffs or eye-popping commercial endorsements. This was small-time, local stuff. But the rowdy, hard-drinking crowd numbered well over two hundred, and the excitement of what they were about to witness was palpable. The site was an old factory where stuff used to be made by the locals until the world changed and the country stopped making any stuff at all. Now it was a tinpot relic that was used for myriad purposes, none of them authorized and some of them patently illegal. But who was going to deny folks a little fun and a way to make some money on the side?
And I can earn my little pot of gold tonight.
The official purse was five grand. If she won, Cain would get only a thousand of it. The loser got three hundred bucks flat for getting her brains scrambled. Just how it was at this level. What Cain called it was kicking the shit out of someone while they kicked the shit out of you, while the crowd guzzled beer and sucked in weed, cheering and jeering. The rest of the cash would go to assorted males on the food chain who added no value and took no risks and raised not one finger. But they had power and influence behind them, so they got their pound of flesh.
Yet the possibility of a thousand bucks for one night’s work was more than enough incentive for Cain to be standing where she was, mouthpiece in, fists gloved, strategy mapped out, adrenaline spiking.
The women met in the middle of an improvised ring, where fence posts had been cemented into huge tractor trailer rims to hold them upright. The chain-link fence around the ladies was eight feet high with a padlocked gate. Unlike a UFC octagon ring, the chain link was not coated with soft vinyl and the metal posts had no safety coverings. You got rammed into that, it was not going to feel good. The floor was not springy canvas, just concrete, so ditto for sudden collisions there. But Cain didn’t mind. This was a piece of cake compared to other things she’d endured in life, although the locked cage door always bothered her. But if need be, she could climb the fence.
She glanced at her opponent, who was giving Cain her version of the intimidating dead-eye stare, which differed from the way that men did it. While testosterone-spiked guys always overplayed their hand and abilities in mental confrontations like this, women usually understated how badly they were going to mess you up.
“In your dreams, buttercup,” Cain said. She tacked on a broad smile at the dead-eye, which really seemed to piss the gal off.
If I get in your head, all the better.
The setup was three five-minute rounds, unless one fighter was knocked out or otherwise was no longer able to defend herself. Cain had never been knocked out, but there was always the chance. The lower number of rounds meant that the fight would be high intensity pretty much from the get-go. There was no cruising in this ring of human mayhem. The crowd wanted punishment and blood and lots of it. Like watching the NFL, it was far more American than baseball and apple pie ever would be. The tough and vicious won, and everybody else was a loser.
The only people inside this temporary prison where the max sentence was fifteen minutes were the fighters and the ref. This one was a stout, arrogant piece of work who had the deserved rep of being a misogynistic creep who was not below feeling up a gal who had been knocked off her feet and/or robbed of consciousness. He had tried that on a momentarily dazed Cain in one fight, and she had communicated her displeasure by nearly biting off one of his fingers. He had never tried it with her again, but she didn’t hold out hope for the jerk to call anything fair her way tonight.
But Cain also wasn’t overly confident. She had assorted injuries that had never healed properly, including a rotator cuff that had the tendency to seize up on her when she needed it the most. And her opponent wouldn’t need much of an advantage to knock Cain right on her ass, lights out.
The ref gave his brief instructions, shot a glare in Cain’s direction, wiggled his permanently damaged index finger, and the ladies stepped back, awaiting the commencement of the match. It came a few seconds later via air horn, and the fight was on.
CHAPTER
7
THE WOMEN CHARGED FORWARD AND met once more in the middle of the ring, with flared nostrils, cocked and locked limbs, and lethally intent eyes, while the crowd noise revved higher as the old, rusted guts of the factory rose up behind them. The whole scene was bolstered by ear-piercing music. “Eye of the Tiger” was running on a loop, and someone had set up seventies-era strobe lights and even a smoke machine that was already starting to peter out. It was tackiness taken to a whole new level, and everyone in attendance apparently loved it, except the two women about to do serious battle. They had other things on their minds, like survival. And money.
While the volume of the crowd spiked, Cain and her opponent took just a few seconds to feel each other out. Cain threw a jab and a snap kick to gauge the other woman’s tendencies, power, skill level, and reaction time. Her opponent did the same. The woman landed a crisp shot to Cain’s left oblique. Cain made her retreat by looping a kick in the woman’s direction. But she did not stretch her long leg to its maximum range of motion.