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He’s the best part of three stone heavier than me, and he knows exactly one thing to do with that, which is put it on me. So that’s what he does. He gets an arm up under mine, buries his shoulder into my ribs, and walks me backwards, and now I’m not fighting him so much as holding him up. That’s his whole game—make me carry him until my legs go.

My back foot skids on the mat, and for a second and a half he’s winning. Then I turn my hips, dip out from under his arm, and suddenly he’s leaning on nothing but air, his own momentum carrying him forwards.

“Round the side of him, Sloan!” Davie’s voice comes through the cage fence, flat and hard, the same way it’s come at me for half my life. The man has been coaching me since before I could grow a beard.

I’m already circling to Imran’s left, and I put a low kick into the meat of his front leg as I go. He grunts, then has to reset his feet to find me.

I don’t give him another inch. I keep him turning, punish the leg every time he plants it, and take him apart by angles instead of strength. He throws one hook that would put me on my arse, but it doesn’t land. I catch his arm, step through, and put him on the fence with my forearm across his chest. Then I lean into him. Now he’s the one carrying weight, and a man carrying weight isn’t hitting anybody.

Salt stings my eye. Somewhere outside the cage, somebody’s hammering pads—four shots, reset, four shots. The extractor fans grind away up in the roof, and the whole place smells the way it’s smelled since I was fourteen. Sweat and disinfectant and old leather.

Some folk need a quiet room to get their head straight. Mine only ever goes quiet in here, where there’s a man in front of me and nothing to think about but what his body is telling me he’s about to do, and what I’m going to do to him first. I’ve never found anything I like better.

“Don’t just lean on him, son!” Davie barks. “Do something wi’ him or let him go.”

I dig a knee up into Imran’s ribs, and I’m setting my hips to put him on the mat when the buzzer goes.

I release him, and he bends over with his hands on his knees, blowing hard. When he straightens up again, I tap his glove with mine.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he says, and I get the full gumshield grin.

He gets to rest now, but not me. I’ve still got two rounds to go.

The problem with being the best fighter in your gym by far is there’s no one to challenge you. That’s why Davie puts me through five rounds with a fresh fighter each round—different builds, different speeds, different problems to solve. It’s sparring, not fighting. We work at a fraction of what we’d do on fight night—enough to test each other, not enough to do real damage.

The two I’ve already been through are outside the cage, leaning against the fence, watching. So are the two still to come. I plant one foot high against the frame and fold into the stretch while I wait.

Davie unlatches the door. “Devlin. In.”

Imran ducks out and Liam Devlin bounces in past him. Twenty-five, middleweight, fast as a cat and about as manageable. Oh, and a cocky wee gobshite, but a decent lad all the same.

“Tired yet, Sloan?” he says.

“Just getting started.”

Imran made me work with weight. With Liam, it’s all about timing. He’s quick: in and out at the end of his range, throwing from awkward angles, his feet never where they were a second ago, and if I put any real weight behind a punch, he’s away before it lands. So I stop trying to land anything big and start trying to trap him. Everything short. Cut off the cage, take the space off him instead of chasing him through it. About ninety seconds in, he’s running out of room to manoeuvre.

He tags me clean on the shoulder. Fair enough.

“Ooh,” he sings out. Then he ducks out to my left, which he’s now done three times. This time I’m there to meet him with a short hook to the body.

“Better,” Davie says, which from him is a standing ovation.

Liam spends the rest of the round backing up. When the buzzer goes, Davie calls in Niamh, his daughter.

She comes through the door at a stroll, rolling her neck. Tall for her division, with dark hair cropped short and the flattest stare in the building. She is by some distance the most annoying five minutes of my week, and Davie saves her for last on purpose. It’s not that she’s the toughest. It’s that she’s the only person in here who isn’t the slightest bit bothered by me, and she’s been watching me train since we were fourteen. She knows what I do before I do it. Sometimes before I know I’m doing it.

Twice in the first thirty seconds I close on her, go for a grip, and come away with nothing. She’s fast and she’s awkward and she won’t stay still. By the time I adjust to one angle, she’s already found another, and I’m starting again from scratch.

She exhales through her gumshield. “Aren’t you supposed to be number three in the world?”

I feint left. “Number two.”

“Touchy.”

“Less talking, you two,” Davie says. “More grappling.”

I grin and shoot in for her legs.