Suckerpunch: (2011) (7 page)

“The scar,” Marcela said.

Jairo smiled. “That.” He looked at Edson’s head and became very concerned. “We did not see sign of brains.”

Gil checked his watch. “You ready for the goat rodeo?”

The weigh-ins. Everyone fighting tomorrow had to make weight today. Most guys fighting light, welter, middle, and light-heavyweight walked around ten to twenty pounds over their fighting weight and got down to four or five over by the day of the weigh-in. They cut those last few pounds of water in the sauna, stepped on the scale looking ripped from the dehydration, and couldn’t wait to get something down their necks.

The heavyweights had a much larger bracket to work in, from two hundred six to two sixty-five, so we didn’t spend a lot of time consulting the scale. I didn’t trust the weigh-in numbers anyway. A heavyweight skipping around at two fifty today could easily be stomping at two seventy tomorrow.

I asked, “Eddie said four o’clock?”

Gil nodded. “It’s just past three now.”

Marcela perked up. “You’re going to the arena?”

“One of the convention rooms attached to the casino,” Gil said. “We can check out the arena, though.”

“Let me shower,” she said and ran out of the gym faster than I’d seen her do anything else.

Roth leaned around Jairo to watch her go.

“Hey, come on,” Jairo said.

“Sorry, mate. Why’s she so mean to me?”

“Have you seen your face?” Gil asked.

“That’ll do from you, thanks.”

Jairo folded his arms and spread his feet, ready to discuss. “She don’t like the culture in Brazil, you know, the macho kind of guy, and I try to tell her it’s a fighter thing. She’s around fighters all the time, and we have to be a man in the ring and cage, and outside, we still have to be a man. So, you’re like that.”

Roth nodded. “What if I sing to her?”

Gil looked appalled.

“Listen,” Jairo said, “I think if you do that, she punches you in the face. No joke.”

“Well, that’s my whole arsenal. Does she like flowers?”

“Yes, she does, but she doesn’t like you.”

Roth looked at me. “Christ, the whole family’s mean.”

“You can sing to me if you want.”

“Nah, mate, you’re fighting tomorrow. I can’t have you distracted with confusing feelings for me. And I believe it’s my turn to wash the towels, yes, Master Gil?”

“Whatever keeps you from singing.”

Roth waltzed toward the back hall, massacring Sinatra the whole way.

Jairo winced. “Punches to the face. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, let’s get packed up.” Gil took a look at me. “You’ve done this before. It’s the same stage, just a bigger crowd. You won’t notice them anyway once you’re in the fight.”

“I know.” I wasn’t scared of the fight—that had passed a long time ago—but I hadn’t had any time to get used to the Warrior situation. Every time the reality of it popped in, that I was in my first big-time show tomorrow, the fight that could get me facing the right way and not half turned all the time to see what was catching up, my stomach came into my throat to get a look around. I’d be glad when Burbank landed his first punch just so I’d know the waiting was over.

“Hey,” Gil said, “this crap is for the fans. The goddamn hype. This is Eddie’s day, so let him worry about it. Enjoy it and don’t take any of it too seriously. You already made it through the hardest part right here on these mats. The fight is cake. A surprise cake, but aren’t those the best kind?” He grabbed the back of my neck and pushed and pulled me around. “Today is like Christmas Eve, boy. Tomorrow you get to open your presents, right?”

“Right,” I said.

He let go. “I don’t want to ruin the next surprise, but I think Santa is bringing you Junior Burbank’s head.”

“Good. I don’t have one of those yet.”

Walking through the Golden Pantheon Casino, attached to the arena where Warrior holds its events, we had to keep stopping to let Marcela get a closer look at the flashing slot machines and seizure-inducing games that had people either tugging at each other in celebration or giving the thousand-yard stare at what could have been.

Those same people might have called me stupid for willingly stepping into a cage to face assault, but I’d tell them if money and pride are on the line, at least let me fight for them. Football teams don’t win or lose on the coin toss.

Marcela cleaned up well. Her hair was still wet, and it reflected the colors in the room and made them much softer on the eyes. She was wearing jeans and a black baby tee with a rounded Arcoverde Jiu Jitsu logo across her chest, and I wanted to thank that old sweatshirt for hiding her figure back at the gym; it’s easier to get knocked out with your mouth hanging open.

There were some fight fans bouncing around the casino. A pair of fratty guys wearing frayed jeans and five shirts between them, drinking something with a lot of straws, took a long look at our group—Marcela, me, Gil, and the brothers. The boys fell in next to Jairo and asked if he was a fighter.

“I do jiu jitsu, but you’ll see me soon in MMA,” he said, then nodded at me. “This is the guy.”

They studied me. One of them said, “You’re fighting tomorrow?”

“That’s right.”

“Against who?”

“Junior Burbank.”

The talker smacked his bro in the shoulder. “Oh, shit, this is Woodshed!” Then, in a voice he must have thought was much quieter, “I bet a grand against him.”

The friend laughed and shushed him.

“Seriously. Dude, no offense, but I thought you’d be bigger.”

“It’s because I’m standing next to this house.” I indicated Jairo.

“Yeah.” Skeptical with a touch of pity maybe. Like I was going to have a short dance in the cage and an extended stay in a hospital. The two of them started to drift away. “Hey, good luck.”

Gil said, “Sorry about your thousand dollars.”

We showed our passes to a guy in a maroon jacket guarding the backstage door to the conference room, Marcela wearing Roth’s pass around her neck. The guy didn’t bother to read the names, just waved us in.

The backstage area stretched across the width of the big room and took up a third of the length. It was separated from the public area by a heavy, dark purple curtain on our right that you could probably use as a mainsail on an aircraft carrier, but it would snag too many planes. There was a solid wall on the left, lined all the way to the far wall with folding chairs and tables piled with sponsor junk.

A few fighters stood around, avoiding the bottles of water and sports drinks lined up on some of the tables. If they’d spent the last few hours in a sauna dropping water weight, those bottles would look like the nectar of the gods.

Somebody bumped me from the right. “Keep me away from those tables.” It was Terry Crawford, a welterweight fighting on the undercard. A former wrestler, he’d been to The Fight House a few times to train submission defense with Gil. He was getting better, but we all saw him tapping to a choke at some point. I could see his jaw muscles ripping at the gum in his mouth, and he carried a cup for the saliva he managed to work up.

“Hey, Terry, how you feeling?” We clasped hands like arm wrestlers and half hugged, neither of us really leaning into it.

Terry said, “I’ll tell you what, man. You get me in the cage right now, just put a brownie sundae on the other side of Nakano. I’ll go through him in five seconds and have chocolate sauce on my face in six.”

“I feel bad for him already.”

“Should be a good one. How about you? Congrats on the fight, but holy shit. The co-main event against Burbank?”

“Yeah, no tune-ups for me, I guess.”

“Porter,” Gil offered.

Terry stiff-armed me. “That’s right. You just fought last night. You’re a madman.”

“Nah. It was easier than any day at the gym. I feel pretty good. But I didn’t have to cut any weight.”

He spit into the cup. “Asshole.”

“Come on up to heavyweight. You can eat all the sundaes you want. Carbs, even.”

Terry snorted. “Yeah, a five-eight heavyweight. They’d roll me into the cage and carry me out in a sack.”

It was hard to picture. If he lost any more water weight, museums would be fighting to get him into a sarcophagus. “Why do you do this to yourself? I thought you’d know better by now.”

“Bad knee. Can’t do much cardio, so I had to stop eating. But what can you do?”

I understood. You said no once, Eddie figured you didn’t have the warrior’s heart. Or did he capitalize it even then?

Gil piled our stuff onto some chairs and walked over. “You been drilling those defenses?”

“Even in my sleep,” Terry said.

“We won’t get a chance to see that, though, right?”

Terry glanced around and decided the coast was clear. “Hey, you guys know anybody speaks Japanese?”

Gil and I looked at each other.

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. How about Portuguese?”

“Nah. We were talking about getting someone who speaks Japanese in the corner who could understand what Nakano’s guys are telling him. So if they’re hollering for him to go for a choke, my corner can tell me, ‘Hey, watch out for the choke.’”

Gil nodded. “What’s the lag time on something like that?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Terry. “Plus, those guys don’t do a lot of hollering anyway. Just not in the culture. Kinda creepy.”

“Here you go,” Gil said. “You start to feel his arms or legs coming around your neck? Watch out for the choke.”

“You’re the best.”

“Good luck tomorrow.”

Turning away, Terry said, “You guys too. Hey, after party at Stinger.”

To me, Gil said, “It’s gonna be tough to dance with an ice pack on his throat.”

“Anything can happen,” I said.

“You seen Burbank yet?”

“I haven’t been looking.”

Gil, staring past me toward the door, said, “Shit, here comes Eddie.”

I turned and saw him coming in with four guys in nice suits with no ties and shirts open a few buttons to show tight T-shirts underneath. Benjamin and his smartphone were in the group, but I didn’t see Nick.

Eddie shook hands and half hugged his way through the room, moving fast so no one could hold him up. He looked like a piranha swimming through a pack of sharks with the sharks getting the hell out of the way. He spotted us and vectored in. “Woody, Gil, welcome. You get some sleep last night?”

“I did,” I said.

Good enough for Eddie. He said, “You’re lucky you already have a nickname, or we’d be calling you the Owl. Everyone I talk to, when I tell them who Junior’s fighting, they say, ‘Who?’” He’d probably been holding it in all day.

I feigned confusion.

He seemed disappointed for a beat, then got serious. “How we feeling?”

“We’re feeling good,” Gil said.

Eddie nodded at the Brazilians. “These guys in your corner?”

I said, “They’ll all be here tomorrow, but just Gil and Jairo, the big one, are going to corner me.”

“We’ll get them some passes. Benjamin, get them some passes.”

Benjamin went to work on his smartphone.

Eddie said, “Gil, I have some paperwork you and the other guy have to look at and sign, so catch up with me after the weigh-in, yeah?”

“Mm,” Gil said.

Eddie gestured at the purple drape. “The buzz out there is crazy. I put a few guys in the crowd with Woodshed Wallace shirts on, and they’re telling the Junior fans it might go down right here. That the two of you could flip the switch and start throwing in your skivvies.”