The crowd fell dead silent. The jukebox in the corner seemed to suddenly blare louder, a tinny country song mocking the tension. Trent scrambled to his feet, his face flushing crimson. The smirk was gone, replaced by a tight, furious grimace.
He felt humiliated. A dirt-poor farmer had just dumped him on his back. Clayton stood exactly where he had been. He wiped a streak of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his greasy thumb.
He looked at the red smear on his skin. He felt the heavy, rhythmic thumping of his heart in his chest. He didn’t want to be here. He hated the adrenaline flooding his veins.
It felt like poison. “You’re dead!” Trent hissed, shifting his stance. He dropped his hand slightly preparing for a takedown. He was going to take the farmer to the ground, mount him, and cave his face in.
Clayton sighed, a short, ragged breath that smelled of stale beer and copper. He rolled his shoulders feeling the joints pop. He stopped trying to look small. He squared his hips.
His stance shifted from the awkward slouch of a tired farmer to a grounded, perfectly balanced base. He didn’t raise his fists like a boxer, he kept his hands low, open, relaxed. Trent charged fanning a left hook and shooting for Clayton’s waist. He expected the farmer to sprawl or panic or stumble backward.
Instead, Clayton stepped slightly to the diagonal. It was a micro adjustment, barely an inch of movement, but it changed the angle of the entire fight. Trent was suddenly diving into empty air. As Trent’s head dropped past Clayton’s waist, Clayton didn’t strike.
He didn’t need to. He simply placed his heavy calloused hand on the back of Trent’s neck, gripped the thick fabric of his board shorts with the other, and used Trent’s own desperate momentum against him. With a sickening crash, Trent face-planted into the unyielding floor beneath the thin foam mat. Splinters of pain radiated up Clayton’s arms from the sheer force of the redirection.
Clayton stepped back, his chest heaving, his left leg throbbing violently from the earlier kick. He looked down at the martial artist who was currently gasping for air, nose pressed into the duct tape. “two minutes left.” Clayton said quietly. Foam squeaked under Trent’s palms as he pushed himself up from the mat.
A thin, bright line of crimson leaked from his left nostril, tracking down his lip, and dropping onto his bare chest. He wiped it away with the back of his taped hand, leaving a smeared red streak across his knuckles. He didn’t look at the crowd anymore. The performance aspect of the fight had evaporated, replaced by a hot, ugly panic that he desperately tried to mask with rage.
He had never been handled like that. He was used to guys who swung wild, guys who telegraphed their haymakers from the next zip code, guys who gassed out in 60 seconds. Clayton wasn’t swinging. Clayton wasn’t even breathing hard.