Chapter 7

After three hours of working with his trainees and another two hours of strength training with Truda, Mike was more than happy to retreat to his office and do some paperwork. After making some progress notations for each of his trainees, he called up his email. He had one new email. It was from Linda in the office.

‘You have been scheduled to fight Karla Anderson on the 28th at 4:00 in the main event ring. Event type – Boxing. Please click accept to respond.’

‘Great,’ he thought, ‘another chance to make some real money and to avenge my previous loss to her. I have ten days to get ready.’

He clicked accept and then called up the fight calendar. Sure enough, there was their fight scheduled on the 28th. He also noted that Karla was scheduled that afternoon at 4:00 to wrestle some guy named Bruno. Checking the time, he noted that he had just enough time to get his hour in on the treadmill and grab a quick shower before the match.

At five minutes to four, Mike ran out of the locker room and headed for the main event ring. It seemed like all the seats were taken, but then Truda stood up and waved him over by her and the one remaining empty seat. Debbie, the wrestling instructor, was already seated on his other side.

“Who’s the big guy? I’ve never seen him before.”

“That’s Bruno Morretti he’s not one of our regulars; he’s one of Karla’s specials.”

“Specials?”

“Oh, I forgot you’re relatively new around here. Our opponents basically come from three sources. One source is our employees/members; the guys you see training here on a regular basis. Then we have the challenge matches where different gyms and fight clubs challenge our fighters. The third type is what Karla calls ‘Specials’. Karla goes out to various ‘Tough Man’ competitions and offers the winners big money to come here to fight. We also get tips from the local cops about guys who get off on beating up their wives or girlfriends, and who seem to be able to evade prosecution. Karla offers them $50,000 to fight her. Of course that’s chump change to her, especially when you take into account the potential revenue from one of these videos.

“Bruno, it seems, likes to slap his wife around when he gets bored. The cops were alerted a number of times, but the wife refuses to press charges, probably because she’s scared to death of him. Karla and I met with her a couple of weeks ago. He doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to leave him right after the match and is coming here to live and train.”

“He looks pretty big; I hope Karla can take him.”

“No problem; the guy’s big and strong, but he’s got no formal training, he’s out of shape, and I’m sure he’s never fought anyone who can compare with Karla,” Debbie answered.

Mike wasn’t convinced. He watched as Bruno paced from one side of the ring to the other. The look on Bruno’s face was enough to scare the hell out of just about anyone.

“Where the hell is she? Is she too scared to come out of the locker room?” he thundered.

“I’m right here, Bruno, don’t have a stroke. Are you in that much of a hurry to get your ass whooped?” Karla replied as she stepped through the ropes.

Dressed in a white one-piece bathing suit which clung to her like a second layer of skin, she looked invincible. Her huge arms and shoulders shocked Mike. He hadn’t seen her dressed like this before. When she was in the office she always dressed in business casual clothes and when she worked out it was always in sweats.

‘She must be close to 200 pounds,’ he thought to himself,’ and I’ve got to fight her next week.’

Donna, the MC for the event moved to the center of the ring.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Amazon Combat Arena; this is our main event.

Introducing, in the blue corner, standing six feet three inches tall and weighing two hundred forty five pounds, from the city of San Diego, Bruno Morretti.”

The gym was filled with sound of boos.

“And in the red corner, our founder and CEO, standing six feet and one half inch and weighing two hundred and two pounds, the one, the only, Karla Anderson.”

The place went crazy. The sound of cheers, whistles and the stomping of feet seemed to shake the ground.

When the noise finally abated, Donna continued. “This is a no-holds-barred, submission only match, one fall, with a one-hour time limit. The prize is $50,000. Fighters, good luck and may the better fighter win.”

The bell sounded and Bruno came running out of his corner planning on ending this farce quickly. Karla easily side-stepped his bull rush and Bruno crashed into her corner. Furious he turned and launched himself once again in her direction. This time Karla pivoted on her left foot and hit him squarely in the chest with a spinning mule kick, stopping Bruno dead in his tracks. Before he could recover, she grabbed his arm and flung him across the ring into the ropes. As he bounced off the ropes, Karla, standing in his path, bent at the waist, allowed him to run in to her. At the moment of impact she stood up sending Bruno high into the air. He came crashing down onto his back shaking the entire ring expelling any air he had in his lungs.

Not allowing him to recover, Karla pulled him to his feet and with one arm between his legs and one arm over his shoulder picked him up as if he were a sack of flour and slammed him back onto the canvass. Twice more she slammed him and then dragged him onto his feet and whipped him into the ropes again. Bruno’s nearly comatose body careened off the ropes; Karla waited in the center of the ring. At precise the proper moment, she jumped high into the air and planted both feet into his chest, again stopping his forward momentum. Bruno crashed to the mat, only the twitch of his legs assured Mike that he wasn’t dead.

Karla regained her feet and slowly strutted over to Bruno’s prone body. Standing tall, she prodded him with her foot as she taunted him.

“Come on tough guy, get up; I’m not through with you yet. We were just starting to have some fun.”

Seeing that he wasn’t getting up any time soon, Karla retreated to her corner. Reached down and grabbed her water bottle. She took a sip, then walked back to his body and made a show of slowly pouring a little of her water onto his face. Bruno spurted and coughed and after several moments, slowly turned onto his side and, with the help of the ropes, struggled to his feet.