veins on the outside of my biceps stood out prominently as did the eight-pack of my abs, overdeveloped to be able to take a punch and not have my knees go weak if my opponent was trying for the
solar plexus
. I've never been heavy-chested and since I started training seriously I don't fill my A-cup bras. My nipples, a bit oversized on the small bumps of my breasts, were hard with my excitement, not arousal but excitement anticipating the fight. My body is perfectly smooth from the neck down. When you fight you don't want the added distraction of pain as hair is pulled out so I invested about eighty-five hundred dollars and six consecutive Wednesday afternoons in a dermatologist's office being treated with chemicals and lasers to ensure I would stay smooth.
And yes, that means smooth between my legs too. I frowned as my quick inventory, while I began moving my arms in slow circles to warm, up got to the fork of my legs. My labia dangled dramatically. You'd think I had a half dozen kids the way I hung but it wasn't the result of childbirth that left me looking like that. I got sucker punched a little over three years ago now. As I let my focus drop, celebrating the win, the woman I had just beaten did a knee drop onto my pussy, damn near cracking my pelvic bone when her kneecap hit with her 180 pounds behind it. Once I retire I'll have a labioplasty and get things tidied up down there but for now, it serves as a reminder to me to be fucking careful until I'm back in the locker room.
Arms loose, I began shadowboxing against the mirrors, my eyes open wide, watching my eyes in the mirror but my peripheral vision watching the little tells, the rocking onto the ball of my right or left foot, the subtle motion as I cocked my hand for a punch or my leg for a kick, and my navel, always remembering Joe, the first man who had agreed to train a half-feral girl to fight saying "Wherever her navel goes, she'll follow."
I was bouncing now, looking like Sly Stallone in Rocky Whatever, the one where he fights Mr. T and is being trained by Apollo Creed.
I felt my body start to demand oxygen and break sweat so I settled into slow movements, just keeping my arms and shoulders loose.
"Okay, Slugger," he said, draping the light robe over my shoulders. It was a light
faux
silk material in an old-fashioned military BDU camo pattern.
We moved to the door from the locker room, held open a crack by Frank, Tommy's cut man. Although I had no intention of getting cut he's a good guy to have in your corner.
The ring announcer had already started his spiel.
The music started and Jim Croce's
Roller Derby Queen
started playing over the speakers before the ring announcer, a guy named Fred if you care, started into his spiel that would end with his imitation of Michael Buffer's famous, "Let's get ready to rumble."
"She might be nasty, she might be fat," Fred was saying, quoting Croce's lines.
I didn't watch. No point. I knew what she looked like. I had watched her tapes until I was fucking sick of watching her tapes. I knew her moves and I knew exactly how I would take her.
He finished introducing Olga the Viking, hell, for all I know Olga might be the name on her birth certificate, and then my music started, the gentler, happy,
Lion Sleeps Tonight
.
"She might be small but she is quick and mean. Not the lion, the Cheetah," he started and with Tommy's hands on my shoulders I started moving to the ring.
No, it's not Madison Square Garden. Just a good-sized boxing gym set up to handle Golden Gloves, club fights, and, as I was about to participate, Girl Fight Club some nights.
It was a good crowd tonight. A couple of hundred people, some even looking like they were attending a more traditional event with couples there, men in suits and women in pretty classy dresses and stuff.
As I took the three steps and then vaulted over the top ring rope, my signature entrance, designed to show off my strength and flexibility and maybe strike a little bit of fear into my opponent. Well, in this game I wouldn't strike "fear," but maybe I could make her think a bit.
She was still in her robe and so we followed the proper protocols. She was higher ranked than me, so Tommy held my robe as I shrugged it off, raised my taped hands over my head, and did a slow turn to the whistles from the crowd. Okay, I think I look good and I AM a bit of an exhibitionist.
Olga did the same.
She actually looked pretty good, herself, I thought. She carried her 200 pounds well on a 5' 6" frame. Oh yeah, I knew her EVERY dimension. Her face was kind of cute really in that round-faced way of some big girls. She was a natural blonde, a fact confirmed by the thick, curly, pale brown pubic hair that showed under her big belly. Not a soft fat belly, a big belly like you'll see if you watch professional wrestling. That same thick curly hair showed in her armpits. It was obvious that we had taken opposite approaches to body hair.
The referee summoned us to the middle of the ring. She tried the stare-down thing. I smiled at her.
"You know the rules," the ref said, a ref I didn't know. "Three-minute rounds and you fucking RELEASE at a tap out." The implied "Or I'll MAKE you release," was left unsaid. At his 6'2" and 250 pounds, he didn't need to say it.
We don't do the touch gloves or shake hands or any of that bullshit. I just walked to Tommy and opened my mouth for the mouthpiece.
