“Because she’s smart.”
“Because she’s stubborn. That’s the difference.” He looked over at me. “How you feeling about tonight.”
“Good.”
“For real though. You still sore from Champ?”
“Ribs a little. Nothing that’s gonna matter once that bell rings.”
He nodded and looked back at the road.
“Tino ain’t Champ. Not even close. This nigga got more losses than wins on his record and the wins he do have are against people nobody has heard of. Only reason this fight is paying twenty five is because the promoter knows your name after what you did to Champ and he’s trying to build a card around you.”
“I know, and I’m gone take it cause that money sounds lovely.”
“So go in there and end it fast. Don’t play with him, don’t let him hang around thinking he got a chance. First round you feel him out, second round you put him down and we go home.”
“That’s the plan.”
He dapped me up and we pulled into the spot.
—
The venue was a warehouse on the south side, different from the basement where I fought Champ but the same energy. Underground, packed, money moving everywhere, the kind of crowd that showed up specifically because what was happening and that my name was on the card for tonight. Knowing that this shit was supposed to be discreet, that made it more exciting to them. I had been in enough of these to move through them without getting caught up in the atmosphere.
Gutta had me in the corner going through the warmup and I could already see Tino across the space. Shorter than me, stocky, moving around with a confidence that his record didn’t back up. I had seen his type before. Men who had lost enough times that they started fighting desperate instead of smart. One thing that I knew was that desperate men were dangerous but they were also beatable because desperation made you predictable.
The fight went exactly the way Gutta said it would.
First round I let him come forward and figured out his rhythm. He was a pressure fighter, liked to get inside and work the body. He thought his stocky build gave him an advantage in close range. It didn’t. I ate two of his shots to confirm what his power felt like and then I started timing him. Every time he rushed in I made him pay. I was giving him hard body shots that damn near folded him.
Second round I stopped being patient.
I caught him with a right hand forty seconds in that sat him down and when he tried to get up I was already there. After that, the follow up put him back down and this time he stayed down. Referee waved it off and the room went up. The crowd going crazy for me felt good as hell. I walked to my corner and let Gutta slap my back and say what he needed to say. This shit was easy money. The way my cousin spoke to me and let me know he wasproud, that shit was worth every hit I’d taken. We had our lil minute, then we moved.
Twenty five thousand dollars for less than two full rounds of work.
We got our money from the promoter on the way out and I felt good walking to my car. Not the same satisfaction like I had after the Champ fight but the clean feeling of a job handled. Tino was a paycheck and I had cashed him.
I got to my car, pulled my keys out and that’s when the lights hit. We had just sat down in my car not even a minute ago.
Blue and red strobing off the buildings around us. The reaction from the crowd still outside was immediate, people started scattering in every direction. They were running for cars, cutting through the lot, getting ghost because when you are from the hood, that’s what everyone does when law enforcement showed up.
Gutta was already on the passenger side and I saw his whole body tighten up.
“Just be cool,” I said low.
“I’m cool.” His jaw was tight in a way that said the opposite.
Two officers walked up to my car. One on the driver side, one on the passenger. I kept my hands visible on the wheel.
“Evening,” the driver side officer said.
“What were you guys doing out here tonight.”
“Just chilling,” I said. “Came to see some people.”
He looked at me for a second and then looked past me at Gutta and back at me. He didn’t say what he already knew and I didn’tconfirm it either. We both understood exactly what had been happening in that warehouse tonight.
