Six Rounds

by Bobby Mathews

  Six Rounds

  by Bobby Mathews

  Smashwords Edition | Copyright 2015 Bobby Mathews

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  You wanna blame somebody, blame my corner. They coulda thrown in the towel anytime. But they didn’t, so there I was, swinging away with Johnny the Jet. Johnny was supposed to fight for the title next, right? And now he’s not fighting anyone ever again. That poor sonofabitch. I fucked up his life and mine, all at the same time. What I said before, about blaming my corner? Don’t do that. There’s enough blame to go around.

  Start with me. I ain’t much anymore. I fought my way up from a no-name prospect all the way to a fight for the cruiserweight title. When the champ laid me out clean with a left hook in round three, I shoulda learned my lesson right there. But I didn’t. Instead I went down to light heavy, and won a couple of fights. Even though I’d been KO’ed once, I still had some name value. They put me in with Harley MacGregor for the light heavyweight title, and I did a little better. I lasted seven rounds before MacGregor turned my lights out. That’s how I came to fight Johnny the Jet—Johnny McDaniel, if you don’t follow the fights. I’m still a name, right? “Black” Jack Harrison, but everybody calls me Blackjack. Two-time world title contender. But now that I’m past thirty and on my way down the ladder, I’m just a name. That’s what they call me behind the scenes—a name opponent.

  In other words, I’m a guy the up-and-comers get to face before they go on to fight for the title, a guy who won’t ever fight for the title again—a guy they expect to lose. I still got a little pride, though, and that’s why you can blame me for what happened. The Jet pissed me off—and that’s why he ought to take some of the blame, too. We came out in the first round throwing stiff jabs. The lights were hot overhead, and I’d already worked up a sweat on the way to the ring. The Jet had the edge on me in speed, but I had him in power, and I let him know that early on. He threw a lazy right cross that I picked off with my left forearm, and I sunk a hook right into his gut. Muscle memory, pure and simple—it was a move I’ve done a million times in sparring, and a million more on the heavy bag.

  I never saw a black guy turn green before, but Johnny backed off quick before I could follow up. I wasn’t gonna follow up, but he didn’t know that. When we engaged again, we went through the same sequence. His muscles gleamed with sweat, and his movement was like a fine Swiss timepiece—compact, with nothing wasted. He was something to see, that kid. This time I pulled my body blow a little, but Johnny flinched back and away again. He shook his head like he was confused. That’s when he got on his horse and started picking me apart with those quick, annoying jabs. I let my hands drift down a little, and pretty soon he got a trickle of blood from underneath my right eye.

  Sweat began immediately to sting the miniscule cut, and I knew my corner was going to have some work to do at the break. Every jab he landed tore that cut open just a little bit farther, and soon I had some nice color streaking down my cheek and glistening on my chest. Right before the end of the round, the Jet pressured me against the ropes, and I tied him up. Johnny McDaniel was a dangerous fighter, and I was supposed to give him six good rounds of work. Getting knocked out in the first was a definite no-no.

  But the sonofabitch wasn’t having it. He tripped me and threw me over his side in some kind of rolling hiplock. I hit the canvas hard and popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

  “The fuck?” I yelled at him. “This ain’t WrestleMania.”

  The bell rang before I could get to him, and the ref stepped between us.

  “Motherfucker better come out to fuckin’ fight next round,” the Jet screamed at me. “I’mma fuckin’ kill you if you don’t.”

  I said something back to him, but by that time, my corner was in the ring and trying to lead me back to my stool. Eventually I let them. They looked at my face enough to know the cut wasn’t bad, and then went to work with a Q-tip and some Vaseline to try to stop the bleeding. Sally Ray, my trainer, put an icepack on my neck.

  The lights were hot and I was sweating. I could smell the crowd, that kind of good Vegas crowd that still gets dressed up to see the fights. They sounded like the ocean, a constant low-level roar in my ears. The ring in front of me was blue and stained with blood from an earlier fight. Everything was coming in focus. I felt good. I remember thinking If he wants a goddamn fight, I’m gonna give him one.

  At some point the ref came over and told my corner that he was deducting a point from the Jet for the illegal throw. When the bell rang, I was off my stool and charging for the center of the ring. I hurt the Jet bad within the first thirty seconds. It was that right to the body again, followed up with a pair of left hooks—one upstairs and one to the liver.

  Johnny sagged, but I didn’t let him fall. I clinched and bulled him backwards into the turnbuckles. As soon as I was sure he wasn’t gonna fall down, I threw a flurry to the body. None of the shots would have even broken an egg, but they came so fast that they looked good to the crowd. The people were on their feet—they thought they were about to see an upset, and the roar that had been just a low-level drone crashed over me like a tidal wave.

  The Jet recovered quickly, taking the last few shots on his elbows and upper arms, so I circled away. He came after me then, and for the first time I understood why the kid was so good. He was mad, but he was in control. He put a mouse under my left eye, to match the one on the right. Then he got a trickle of blood from my nose, and my vision started to blur.

  Ever been hit in the nose? The tears are hot and immediate, and there’s nothing you can do to hold them back. The Jet backed me into a corner and kept the shots coming. I had my guard up, but he was relentless. One of his hooks missed my face, but the elbow that followed it was right on the money. It laid my cheek open in a shower of blood. The whole time he was hitting me, the Jet was talking to me.

  “You think you gonna throw this fight, motherfucker? I’m gonna fucking kill you in this goddamn ring. I don’t need you to throw no fucking fight. I kill you all night long, you honky piece of shit.”

  I didn’t say anything back to him. I didn’t have anything to say, and I didn’t want to waste my breath. The longer I stayed in the corner, the better his odds of knocking me out. I did the only thing I could think of to get him off me. I hit him in the groin as hard as I could. Johnny screamed and clutched at his crotch, jumping up and down in frustration and pain.

  The ref stepped between us—just like he should have—and started to admonish me. He directed me to a neutral corner, and I stood there to catch my breath for a minute while the Jet made sure the family jewels were still in the safe. They were, and eventually the ref restarted us, this time deducting a point from me. He warned us both about dirty tactics and told us to fight. We did, each of us working to our strengths. He stung me with jabs, but I bulled in and worked the body with half-speed hooks and straight rights. They weren’t doing any damage, but they were exposing the flaws in the Jet’s defense.

  In other words, I was pissing him off even more than I was earlier. When the bell rang, neither of us wanted to go back to our corners. Johnny the Jet was set on murdering me right there in front of eight thousand spectators.

  All I wanted to do was make sure I earned the thirty grand his manager had offered me to throw the
fight, and look good in the process. I sat down on my stool and watched the slow drip of blood from my face to the canvas. All I was supposed to do was give Johnny McDaniel six good rounds. Then I could drop my hands a little more and let him find my jaw with a nice overhand right or maybe a left hook. I’d fall, take the ten count, and move on to the next payday. The Jet would get a shot at the title. Maybe even win it. He was good.

  The ten-second buzzer sounded to tell the cornermen to get out of the ring. I pushed to my feet and met the Jet head on. Tried to think about what my corner had said, but couldn’t remember a word. Flashbulbs were popping behind my eyes, and I knew Johnny was landing some good combos. I was so deep into the fight that I couldn’t even feel it when he hit me. I kept seeing openings, but I hesitated to let my hands go. The world weaved around me, and the only thing that I understood were Johnny McDaniel’s fists.

  I was having trouble breathing, but in a little while it wouldn’t matter. Eventually I had to punch back. If I didn’t, Johnny was gonna make good on his promise to end me right there. He swung a wild hook that he was sure would land. Why wouldn’t it? Everything else he threw was landing.

  But this time I ducked and drove to the body again. A four-punch combination scored, and I knew I had him hurt. I went to the head with a right cross and a left uppercut that didn’t have a lot on it. His head snapped back anyway. He was dazed. I clinched again, and this time it was my turn for some trash talk.

  “Think you’re gonna be the champ? MacGregor’s gonna eat you alive, kid. Your defense is awful. You’re soft in the gut—” I backed off and went to the body two more times, and then clinched again. “—and the head.” I cuffed him hard on the ear and watched his knees buckle.

  The bell sounded and I went back to my stool. He staggered to the wrong corner. His seconds had to lead him back to his seat.

  “Blackjack, you sure you know what you’re doing?” Sally Ray asked me while the cut man worked on the laceration on my cheek. Sally Ray knew about the thirty K. Hell, he’s the one who set it up. “You don’t wanna piss this kid off. He’s hitting you a lot.”

  He gave me some water to rinse. I spit it out into a big plastic bucket. “Fuck him,” I said around my mouthpiece. My face was swollen, and I knew it would hurt the next day. It always did. “You hear him in there? He wants a goddamn war.”

  Sally Ray wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Don’t do it. You want to fight smart with this one.”

  Translation: We’ve got a lot of money riding on this. Don’t blow it.

  “He don’t want it,” I said. I wished I could spit my mouthpiece out. But that’s usually a bad idea in the middle of a fight. Sally Ray shook his head, showing me he understood that the Jet didn’t want me to throw the fight.

  “I don’t care what this motherfucker wants,” he said. “You fight smart. You do not go to war. You understand me? Fight smart.”

  Translation: Stick with the game plan. Drop in the sixth round, just like we talked about. Goddamn it.

  “I can take him,” I said. “He can’t defend for shit.”

  “Watch the overhand right.” Translation: Let him hit you with his big punch.

  The buzzer sounded and my cornermen scrambled outta the ring. I went back out into the middle of the canvas and let Johnny the Jet McDaniel beat the hell out of me some more. Fixing a fight is easy. There’s a million ways to do it. But the easiest is this: A fight promoter approaches your manager and says “My fighter is looking for someone who can give him a good workout.” Your manager, if he’s smart, might answer “I got a guy could give your boy five or six rounds.” The promoter will say “Six sounds good.”

  And from there on out, all they have to negotiate is price. The other fighter might not ever know the fight was fixed. Happens all the time. In fact, I can tell you that the Jet didn’t know until I took it easy on his gut after that first hard shot. After that, he was pissed off. The way the Jet was going at me, I had to defend myself. He was landing some hard shots, but I’m a hard-headed Irishman who doesn’t have the sense to know when he’s been hurt. So he kept pouring it on, and I kept doing just enough to keep the scorecards close.

  I wanted it to be respectable before I took the dive. There were other fights out there to lose. He threw another hook and followed it with his elbow again, the dirty bastard, and this time he caught my nose with it. The bone crunched easily, just as it had done the other four times it got broken. But now I was the one that was pissed off. He was already beating me. He didn’t have to play dirty. Ah well, as Sally Ray used to tell me when I was on the way up, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  I took the Jet’s lead left on the shoulder and bulled in close. I managed to step down hard on his instep. Instead of moving my foot away, though, I kept it planted on top of his boot. There was nowhere to go. A tall, rangy kid like the Johnny the Jet liked to keep his opponents on the outside. Trouble was, the higher you get up the card, the harder it is to dictate where the fight stays. And the kid wasn’t good enough to keep me off of him. Somebody once called the art of infighting “like fighting in a phone booth.” They don’t have many phone booths anymore, but the principle is this sound. Every movement takes place within an eighteen-inch radius.

  My punches were short, sharp, and vicious. He hated being hit in the body, so I unloaded there. When his hands came down, I went left hook and right cross to his head. The cross split his eyebrow, and the sight of the Jet’s blood cascading down his face made me kick things into overdrive. I didn’t plan it. It was just instinct.

  Back to the body, back to the head. I could see the kid’s hands drop, so I teed off. I didn’t hear the bell. Didn’t know the round was over until the ref and my cornermen dragged me away from the Jet. Sally Ray was in my ear the whole time I sat on the stool.

  “Whaddaya doing?” He said. “Ten-round fight. You’re gonna punch yourself out. It’s only the fourth round. You’re on the wrong side a thirty to be doing that shit.”

  Translation: You dumbass. You better come out tired in the next round. Dance around. Let the kid jab you a few times.

  “I can take him out,” I said. Or that’s what I think I said. My jaw was sore and my nose was laid flat against my cheekbone. It’s a miracle Sally Ray could understand me. I could see the fight doctor—the guy hired by the athletic commission to make sure the fighters could safely ply their trade—talking to the Jet and examining the gash I’d put in his eyebrow.

  His corner was working feverishly to stop the bleeding while the Jet was talking to the doc, trying to keep him from stopping the fight. Eventually I was the doctor nod to the jet and climb out of the ring. I blew out a deep breath. I didn’t realize I’d been holding it in. We were going to be allowed to continue.

  “I don’t care what you think,” Sally Ray was saying to me. “Remember your camp. Remember, goddamn it. We trained for ten rounds, and you’re gonna punch yourself out by six. What the fuck is wrong with you? You don’t chase a guy younger than you. Let him come to you.”

  Translation: Remember the deal. You’re going down in six, no matter whether you can beat the chump or not. Let the Jet dictate the action in the upcoming round.

  The only problem was now the Johnny the Jet McDaniel was scared. He knew what I knew. He knew what I’d showed him. He might be the better boxer, but I was the better fighter, and he didn’t want anything else to do with me.

  He wouldn’t come at me, and when I came to him, he circled away. With a minute gone in the fifth round, neither one of us had landed a blow, and the crowd was getting restless. I had no choice. If I was gonna let the kid win this round, I had to walk him down.

  Walking a guy down in the ring is sometimes difficult. It’s cutting off the ring gradually, backing an evasive fighter into a corner where you can unload on him. I didn’t plan to unload on the Jet. Just the opposite, really. I was gonna give him his confidence back, only he didn’t know it yet. Sally Ray didn’t know it either. He was shouting from my corner
, but I didn’t pay him any attention. I flicked lazy jabs designed to do no more than back the Jet into a corner.

  Like any good fighter, he had ring instincts. He could sense when he was getting near the ropes. He thought I was coming to finish him, and it was fight or get knocked out.

  To Johnny’s credit, he fought. He caught me solid in the ribs, and I bent forward just a little so that the uppercut that followed caught me in the chest rather than the chin. I wobbled backward, and he came with an overhand right that landed on my forehead. Good enough. There are places you’d rather take a hard shot, and the forehead is one of them. The arch of your skull is probably the strongest bone in your body, designed that way by God or whomever to keep precious brain matter from leaking out. But I could’ve won an Oscar. I went down to one knee, then slowly rolled onto my side.

  I had to beat the ten-count, but that was easy. Or it would’ve been if the Jet had kept his composure. The ref pointed him to a neutral corner and then turned back to me. I was on my hands and knees, ready to lunge to my feet at six or seven, ready to take the standing eight count. The Jet wasn’t having any of that. Quick as his namesake, he flashed around the referee and launched a boot right into my side.

  I felt the ribs give way and tumbled over onto my back, trying to get my breath. The Jet was on top of me before I could do that, though, hammering hard shots to my face. He straddled me and rained punches down on my unprotected head until someone—his corner, I think—pulled him off of me. Thank God someone did. They saved my life.

  My corner got me to my feet and somehow maneuvered me to my stool. I don’t know how they did it. I wasn’t any help. The ref followed us to the corner, which is never a good sign.

  “I’m stopping it,” he said. “Disqualifying McDaniel. You got a problem with that?”

  Sally Ray is a lot of things, mostly a sonofabitch, but he’s also a quick thinker.

  “Hell yes I got a problem with that,” he said. “My guy’s kicking his ass. The Jet wants the fight thrown out. He don’t want to get knocked the fuck out. We’re here to fight, goddamn it.”