Unleashed (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (30 page)

Southpaws will always throw off an orthodox fighter.

My opponent leads with his right hand, and his right foot. He’s going to jab with his right, feint with his right, before he hooks or crosses with his left.

He’s a southpaw, a lefty. They have something of a genetic advantage, having their left side as their dominant. Because there are relatively few, it’s hard to get training against them.

Therefore, it’s hard to properly counter them.

He’s a mirror to me. My leading left is in line with his leading right. His pivot is right foot, he’ll swing a kick with his left. My pivot is my left foot, and I’ll swing a kick with my right.

He’s a reverse to what I’m used to fighting, to what most fighters are used to fighting.

The challenge is welcome.

Southpaws do well by virtue of their left-handedness, but sometimes it leads to overconfidence. Only one thing is worse than being too confident, and that’s having no confidence.

Mickey is a few years older than me, but his body is no more developed than mine. He’s got a heavier base, and I can tell he’s a kicker. His weight rests on the balls of his feet, which means he’ll kick quickly, throw his body into a pivot to get more force behind it.

Some fighters, lower, stockier, are more even in their weight distribution; they don’t always stand on their balls or toes. A man who puts more weight on his heels is harder to dislodge, a grappler, someone who’ll corral you up into his arms, spin you around, slam you to the mat, and lock you.

Mickey’s going to look to land a few low and heavy kicks into my side, or against my thigh. He’s going to try and numb me, weaken my muscles, before taking me down to the mat.

How do I know this? It’s just instinct. I’ve fought him before, but it’s not that. You just can tell, by the shift in weight, the minute twinges of muscle that betray direction of movement.

Fighting is not just a question of how hard can you get hit, but whether or not you know the hit is coming.

But Mickey knows that once I’m on the mat with him, I’ll win. He’s going to do everything he can to gas me out before that, because when it comes to grappling, I’ve never fought anybody my equal, anybody who understands leverage, angles, body positioning like I do.

“Chance!” Coach barks. He sounds like he’s been crunching on gravel all day, washed down with a whole pack of unfiltered Benson & Hedges. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I’m circling Mickey, but on his face he’s wearing confusion. The beefcake was never the brightest bulb.

“Yeah, the fuck you doing?” he asks, spreading his arms and shaking his head at me.

I step with my right, jab with my right. Mickey dodges it easily, so I step and jab again, this time to the other side of his head. He sidesteps toward my left, and I throw a thunderous left hook right into his padded helmet.

Mickey goes down, scrambles on all fours, before finally getting to his feet. “Fuck, Coach, he ain’t no lefty!”

I don’t even look at Coach. I close the distance to Mickey, jab him again with my right, cross him with my left.

I feint a kick with my right, turn it into my pivot, and whirl a low kick with my left, catching Mickey on the thigh. He stumbles backward.

He has no idea how to fight what he is.

“Fight, Mickey,” Coach yells. “You think you’ll always fight orthodox opponents?”

Mickey growls, spits out a sticky stream of blood and then hops toward me. I skip over his sweeping first kick, anticipate the rapid follow-up second kick, and I grab his leg mid-flight and twist him, throwing him to the mat.

I’m on top of him in an instant, wrap my legs around his hips, get my arm beneath his chin, and it’s game over. We’re evenly matched for strength, so there’s no way he’s getting out of this rear naked choke hold.

“Okay, okay,” Coach says coming into the practice cage. He slaps the top of my head, and I let go of Mickey, barely having broken a sweat.

Coach is a big man. He’s got a bit of a gut now, but he’s freakish strong. He never made it to the pros – he was too old by the time MMA became fashionable – but he’s an accomplished wrestler, boxer, and now MMA trainer.

“What the fuck was that, Chance?”

“I thought I’d give it a try,” I say. I switched my stance, became a left-handed fighter.

“You think you can just switch up?” he barks at me as I get up. He gets in my face, forehead against the padding of my helmet. “You think it’s that easy? There’s no place for gimmicks in the cage, Chance! That shit’ll get you locked up against a pro.”

“It worked.”

“It worked because Mickey didn’t anticipate it.”

“Exactly.”

“Can’t play the same trick twice.”

“I only need to beat each opponent once.”

“Again!” he cries, spraying spittle into my face before leaving the cage.

I walk to the center of the octagon, and extend a hand to Mickey to help him up. He slaps it away, and I grin at him.

“Sore loser?”

“Use your right,” he tells me. “And I’ll beat you with
my
right.”

I shrug. Mickey’s not half as ambidextrous as he thinks he is. “Your funeral.”

We tap fists, and I settle into an orthodox stance, leading with my left, waiting with my right. Mickey is doing the same, but I can tell he’s not comfortable. He doesn’t have the coordination, the agility with his weak hand, and it shows.

I consider it for a moment. Maybe ambidexterity is
my
genetic boon.

He lunges clumsily, off-balance. I kick away his leading foot, and he’s not used to having his left as a pivot. He spins, nearly trips over, and with his back toward me I grab hold of his head, weave him down onto the mat, and get him into a Pace choke.

His neck is in the nook of my knee, and I’ve got his arm pinned, and his hips stapled to the mat. He’s got no leverage, can’t spin, move, twist out of it.

Like I said, it’s all about the angles. It’s all about leverage. It’s physics, when you get down to it.

People say fighting is an art, and I agree. There are different styles, different flows. Fighters have personalities to their technique.

But fighting is also a science.

More than that, it’s a marriage between the beautiful artistry of anticipation, improvisation, and the cold, unfeeling technicalities of physics and positioning.

Like the perfect play in a basketball or football game, when you meld the two successfully, you create a winning formula, a moment of magic that gives you goosebumps, that makes the hairs on the back of your arms stand up.

My art is my ability to anticipate a move; my science is understanding how to counter it, and lock my opponent down in a submission hold before they know what hit them.

Mickey, unable to breathe, taps, so I let him go.

Sweat pours from his body, and as we both get up I see a blaze of anger in his eyes.

“Alright,” Coach says. He gets into the cage, grips onto Mickey’s shoulder. “You’re done for today. I know that look in your eyes, and it’s only going to make you lose.”

“Good fight,” I say, extending my fist, but Mickey ignores it, leaves the cage.

“What now, Coach?”

The burly man descends upon me. He’s taller than me, wider than me, thicker than me. He doesn’t have a body like I do, but when he was my age, I have little doubt he would have had the perfect fighting body. Long reach, wide shoulders, a low center.

“You’re one arrogant son of a bitch, do you know that?” he snarls at me, words ejecting from his mouth rapid-fire. He’s got a hint of a southern drawl, a faded accent.

I blink. “Anything to win, Coach.”

“Take off your helmet. Now, God damn it!”

I unfasten it, hold it by my side. Coach is still in my face, but his proximity won’t jar me. I know he’s harder on me than any of his other students.

It’s because I’m the best.

“You think you can switch southpaw in the pros?”

“Plenty do. Jones Jr, Hagler.”

“You’ve got a long way to go to get your name in with them, boy! Come on, show me what you got with your left, then.”

Coach backs up, pulls a mouth guard from his shirt pocket and chews on it.

His
shirt
pocket. The guy is wearing slacks, for fuck’s sake!

He kicks off his leather shoes, peels off his socks. He’s got gross old-man toenails.

He drops into an orthodox stance.

Now my heart is racing. I’ve beaten Coach before, but he is one tricky fighter, and he’s got a ton of power, that special kind of old-man muscle.

I set my stance, leading with my right, waiting with my left. I don’t put my padded helmet back on. Coach is in here without taped wrists and in fucking slacks and a dress shirt… he doesn’t usually fight.

It would be unfair of me to wear the helmet.

Coach hops toward me, a little dance, swaying left, right. He stutters with his feet, deceptively light for somebody his weight, but I see the feint before he throws it, and know where the follow-up is coming.

I counter, hit him in his arm, grab hold onto it and spin around him until I’m on his back.

But Coach spins with me, and now he’s on
my
back. With his hands around my face, I worm out of his hold, throw a left cross. He dodges, and swivels a kick at me.

Damn it, the kick is a feint! I don’t notice it until too late. My arms are stretched downward, blocking his low leg, and I see his right fist hurtling straight toward my jaw.

He cracks me, and I stumble backward, head spinning, the taste of metal in my mouth.

It was a good fucking hit, that tricky motherfucker.

“Come on, boy,” he taunts me. “You think you’re ambidextrous? You think you got what it takes?”

I feel the heat inside me, the competitive fire, ignite. I don’t get angry – I never get angry in the cage. Get angry, and you lose discipline. Get angry, and you’re done for.

But you still got to have fire, competitiveness. It’s not about wanting to win. It’s about wanting not to
lose
.

I test a jab, he slaps it away, and so I keep testing it, testing it, watching the way he moves.

He puts too much weight on his back leg. It’s because he’s got a gut, he’s compensating. I jab quickly at his face, boxer-style, but deliberately hit wide. I know he’s going to counter with his right, but I duck it, grab onto his thigh, and tip him backward.