Blood In The Ring

The Rigged Canvas

MARON (D_Champ) POV

The bass from the arena speakers rattled the concrete walls of the Barclays Center locker room. Outside these doors, about fifteen thousand people were waiting, screaming for blood.

I stood by the metal lockers, watching Alessia.

She sat on the bench, completely silent, staring at the floor tiles. Her hands were wrapped tight. She wore the black and green Monster Energy trunks, her long hair braided tightly against her scalp. But I can tell that her head wasn't in the room. She had this hollow, haunted look in her eyes, the exact same look she had when she got out of the Escalade yesterday holding her phone.

I walked over and crouched down in front of her.

"Alessia, are you ready for this?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "You look like you're a million miles away."

Alessia blinked, her focus snapping back to the present.

"I'm fine," she said flatly, grabbing her mouthpiece. "Just point me to the ring."

I didn't push it. I stood up, grabbed the water bottle and the spit bucket, and nodded toward the door.

We walked down the tunnel. And the noise of the crowd hit us like a physical wall, a deafening roar echoing under the bright stadium lights. The New York State Athletic Commission officials checked her gloves, and we stepped out into the arena.

The ring announcer stood dead center under the massive jumbotron, wearing a silver tuxedo, holding the microphone.

"Ladiiiies and gentlemen!" his voice boomed over the speakers, bouncing off the rafters. "Fighting out of the blue corner! “Is the undefeated underground queen making her highly anticipated professional debut! Weighing in at one hundred and thirty-five pounds... Alessia Venille!"

The crowd went loud. A whole section of the lower bowl was packed with women holding up neon green cardboard signs with her name painted on them.

Alessia stepped through the ropes, her face blank and focused.

The announcer pointed to the red corner. "And fighting out of the red corner! Stepping in as a late replacement for tonight's exhibition bout! Weighing in at one hundred and ninety pounds... Shesko 'The Anvil' Thorne!"

I froze. A massive, heavily tattooed man stepped through the ropes. He wasn't a female featherweight. He was a male cruiserweight. He had fifty pounds of pure muscle, a thick jaw, and hands the size of cinder blocks.

The crowd buzzed, a mix of confusion and aggressive cheering. Inter gender fights were illegal in New York.

The commission would never sanction this unless someone bought them off.

"Ref!" I yelled, dropping the water bottle and marching up the steel steps to the apron. "What the hell is this? She isn't fighting a heavyweight!"

The referee wouldn't look at me. He just checked Thorne's gloves and stared at the mat. "Take it up with the promoter, coach. The bout is sanctioned."

I looked at Alessia. She was staring across the canvas at the giant standing in the red corner, her jaw locked tight.

"Don't move," I told her. "I'm stopping this."

I jumped off the apron and sprinted back down the tunnel, shoving past the security guards. The second the concrete walls muffled the crowd noise, I pulled out my phone and dialed my father's number.

He picked up on the fourth ring.

"Spectacular turnout, isn't it?" Tom Monroe said, his voice slick and satisfied over the line.

"You put her in the ring with Shesko Thorne," I snarled, gripping the phone so hard the plastic creaked.

"A man and a cruiserweight for goodness sake. The commission is entirely bought off right? Pull him out right now."

"Calm down, Maron," Tom chuckled. "This is business. Our top VIP investors got bored with a standard debut. They wanted a real show. A bloodbath. It drives the betting lines through the roof."

"She could die in there," I yelled, my voice echoing down the empty tunnel. "He has fifty pounds on her!"

"She won't," Tom dismissed casually. "And if she does, well... fighters know the risks when they sign the contract."

I stopped walking. The cold reality hit me like a shovel to the jaw. He cares about the money. Not about the fighter.

"Wait," I said, narrowing my eyes. "You told me you needed a sure win. You said the investors banked on her winning. If Shesko slaughters her in the first round, the investors lose their money. The agency loses face."

Dead silence on the line.

"I—well, Maron, the... the payout structures are complicated," Tom stammered, his smooth composure instantly cracking. He sounded like someone caught in a lie, scrambling to string a sentence together. "The money is insulated through offshore books, so the loss doesn't actually hit the primary accounts—"

"You lying piece of s**t," I spat.

I didn't wait for his excuse. I hung up the phone and ran back toward the lights.

When I broke through the tunnel, the opening bell was already ringing. I rushed to the blue corner, gripping the ropes.

Alessia was in the center of the ring. Shesko lunged forward, throwing a massive right hook. Alessia ducked it, but the sheer wind of the punch ruffled her hair. She fired a jab to his ribs, but it barely moved him.

For the next six rounds, I watched a total m******e.

Shesko didn't fight clean. He fights dirty which is totally against the rule. He threw heavy, brutal combinations, crowding her space and using his massive weight to lean on her in the clinches, draining her legs. Alessia used her speed to stay alive, slipping and weaving, but she couldn't avoid everything.

In round three, a glancing uppercut caught her jaw and split her lip wide open. In round five, Shesko trapped her against the ropes and buried a body shot into her ribs that echoed through the arena. She dropped to one knee, coughing up blood.

I grabbed the white towel from the bucket. I was going to throw it.

Alessia looked through the ropes, saw the towel in my hand, and shook her head violently. Her left eye was swollen shut. Blood poured down her chin. But the look in her eye was pure rage.

She stood back up.

"Breathe!" I screamed over the crowd, slamming my hands on the canvas. "Stay on the outside! Stop trying to trade power with him! Move your feet!"

Round seven started.

Shesko was getting cocky. He dropped his hands, walking forward flat-footed, looking for the knockout blow. He threw a wild, looping overhand right.

Alessia didn't back up. She completely abandoned the standard defense I taught her.

Instead, she dropped into a deep, unorthodox crouch. An obvious pure street-fighting move. She slipped directly inside the arc of his massive punch. While Shesko's momentum carried his weight forward, Alessia pivoted hard on her back foot.

She drove her left fist squarely into his liver, twisting her hip into the shot.

Shesko gasped, his entire right side dropping as his body paralyzed. Before he could fall, Alessia uncoiled like a spring, using every ounce of momentum to throw a devastating right hook directly onto the point of his exposed chin.

Thorne’s eyes went blank. All two hundred pounds of him crashed into the canvas like a felled tree.

The arena went completely, terrifyingly silent afterwards.

The referee dropped to his knees, yelling the count into Thorne's ear.

"Seven... eight... nine... ten!"

The referee crossed his arms. The bell started ringing frantically.

The crowd exploded. It was a deafening, vibrating roar. The women in the lower bowl were screaming, waving their cardboard signs wildly in the air. Paramedics rushed the ring from the opposite corner, swarming Shesko's unconscious body.

The referee grabbed Alessia's taped glove and raised her arm high into the stadium lights.

She stood there, breathing raggedly, blood covering the front of her shirt. She looked out at the flashing cameras, her face completely void of emotion.

Then, she ducked through the ropes and stepped down the steel stairs.

I moved and met her at the bottom of the steps, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her into a crushing hug. I didn't care about the blood soaking into my suit jacket. I just held her, feeling the erratic, pounding of her heart against my chest.

She was alive.

We pulled apart. Alessia looked up at me, her swollen eyes blinking slowly. Her mouth opened. She tried to say something, her voice catching dryly in her throat.

"I..."

Her eyes rolled straight back into her head.

Her knees buckled. I caught her before she hit the concrete, her dead weight collapsing completely into my arms as the stadium roared around us.