Saldano vs. Rodriguez - Queens of the Ring

Carmen had been saving up her energy, holding it back, getting her groove back. She had a surplus, now, and it was high time she put it all to good use. One way or the other, she was taking this round.

Her first jab was blocked, but the second landed right on target, hitting her stomach like it was meant to by divine right. Reflexes got the better of Lorenza, and she lowered her guard, opening her face up for a second, just one second, but one second far too long. Carmen's cross lashed out with a serpent's speed, hammering her face and sending her wobbling away, covering up.

"Don't let up!" Army called out, bouncing on his toes, up and down. "Downstairs, downstairs!"

Carmen was following his advice before he even gave it, closing the distance and putting her infighting skills to the test. It was time for Lorenza's operation.

Carmen came in low and threw a feint with her left hand, then jerked to the side with a right hook, hoping to get in Lorenza's blindspot and surprise her. A split second later, she popped back up and shot a left uppercut as she rose, looking to squeeze in through Lorenza's guard and pop her square on the chin.

Lorenza had the air forced out of her as that jab from Carmen buried itself in her stomach. The follow-up, the cross, was no more pleasant to endure, and sent the Mexican boxer staggering to the side, only managing to steady herself after she had taken several shaky steps.

“Fuck,” Lorenza muttered, as she held her gloves tightly in front of her face, watching Carmen wearily as the Puerto Rican boxer advanced upon her. Now she was the hunted, and Carmen was the hunter waiting to catch her and put her down. As Carmenâ€s left glove came forward, Lorenza would lower her guard to her midsection to block it. She was surprised when Carmen shifted her weight and threw a hard right hook into her side instead. Lorenza grunted and took half a step back. Carmen shot upwards, aiming an uppercut for Lorenzaâ€s chin. The former champion was a second too slow, and the black glove caught her chin with a terrible smack of leather and flesh. Lorenza stumbled backwards, and, had she had more room, she would have fallen. But the ropes caught her, and she bounced back the way she came. Looking for any way to slow down Carmenâ€s momentum, Lorenza would throw a quick right jab at her opponent as she bounced back towards her, and then would attempt to encircle the Puerto Rican with her left arm, pulling her in for a clinch that would give Lorenza a few seconds to catch her breath.

Beautiful. Magic. Golden. Perfect.

Those were just a few of the words that came into Carmen's mind when that uppercut found Lorenza's chin and exploded all over it. The hook before it had been satisfying, too. A solid body blow, no question, one for the textbooks. But when it came to crisp, clean punches, the kind you can hear land all the way in the back row, the sort of punches that hit hard enough to get airtime - with those, you simply could not beat an uppercut to the chin. She'd have to watch it on Youtube when this was all over.

Something to do while she was in the hospital, at any rate. And, win or lose, she was pretty sure a hospital visit was in the near future. Hopefully, Lorenza hadn't been joking about the nurses...

Back in reality, things weren't looking too good for Lorenza. It was like they were replaying the hell from the fifth round from different perspectives, and Carmen planned on being no more merciful then Lorenza had been.

Lorenza bounced off the ropes and used them for an extra boost, a little trick that threw off Carmen's timing just enough for the jab to snap past her guard and throw her head back. Nothing serious, but it made Carmen give up a large enough window for Lorenza to clinch, wrapping her up tight, forcing her hands out.

"Let go of me." She did her best Lorenza impression, raising her own borderline-mannish voice up to normal levels for it, and started to push back, trying to force Lorenza into the corner while ref came over to break them up. If she wanted to hang on, fine - Carmen could work that to her advantage, too.

"All right, enough of that shit." The referee broke the clinch, and Carmen tried to make sure it ended with Lorenza near the corner. She had plans. Oh, did she have plans.

Lorenzaâ€s desperate jab managed to surprise the now-confident Carmen, and the smack to the face slowed down the Puerto Rican for long enough for Lorenza to wrap an arm around her and pull the two of them into a clinch. Lorenza pressed her body up against that of her rival, her forehead sliding up against Carmenâ€s ear. She took a deep breath, then another. The referee came over to separate them. All too soon, her respite was over, and the fight was set to resume.

“Puta,” Lorenza spat through her mouthguard as the referee separated the two of them, putting Lorenzaâ€s back to the corner. Carmen was quite the prolific trash talker, and, though it might have been a tad hypocritical, she was reall starting to get on Lorenzaâ€s nerves. This round could not be going any worse for her. It was as if someone had taken the fifth round and switched the places of the fighters. Carmenâ€s dominance right now was all but identical to the dominance Lorenza had had during the fifth round.

Nevertheless, Lorenza would soldier on. She pounded her gloves together and took a step towards Carmen, throwing a jab at her face, trying to save herself from being pushed all the way back into the corner.

Lorenza was just where Carmen wanted her, with her back against the corner. She wanted out and she wanted out bad, throwing a jab at Carmen's face, trying to get her to back off, let her out.

No, no. Not this time.

Carmen took the jab on her face, right on the bruised eyes - stung like a bee's nest, but she was past caring. Like she had said before, this was Chess, and in Chess you could take a few hits if it meant getting into a superior position. There'd be no retreat, only advancement.

With Lorenza's options limited, Carmen decided it was time to try something a little fancier than normal - a Dempsey Roll.

She started moving left and right, weaving in a perfect figure eight pattern. Down and up to the right. Down and up to the left. Weave, bob, weave, bob, weave, faster, faster, faster. She went through two quick rotations before she lashed out, sending a right hook for Lorenza's face, then ducking down and come at her with a left hook, straight for the other side. Each blow aimed at her blind spot, each blow coming out a blinding speed, each blow carrying her weight and momentum for added power.

A risky move, taking up a lot of the energy she'd saved up. A move meant for larger opponents. But with Lorenza so close to the corner, it would be a good way to pile on some pressure and do some quick damage. Carmen had mostly learned the technique to take wrestlers by surprise - with Saldano, it wouldn't work twice. But that was fine. Once would be enough.

Lorenzaâ€s breakout attempt started off on the right foot, as it were. Her punch slipped past Carmenâ€s guard and smacked the Puerto Rican boxerâ€s face, hitting her right in the big lump of bruised, discolored flesh that used to be the upper part of her cheek. That had to hurt. But Carmen shrugged it off. She didnâ€t back up, not even half a step. Lorenza would try to draw her gloved fist back as quickly as she could, to protect herself against the devastating blow she knew was forthcoming.

As she put her gloves up, she saw Carmen begin weaving in and out, back and forth, up and down. Lorenza had only faced an opponent who favored the Dempsey Roll once before—besides her first encounter with Carmen, of course—and that girl had not been nearly as experienced as the Puerto Rican. Lorenza had floored her shortly thereafter. This would be different. She did not try to throw a punch at Carmen. She merely tried to predict where the blow would ultimately fall.

She managed to see the right hook coming, but it came with such blinding speed that it still knocked her back a step even when she got her gloves up to protect her face. The left hook came equally fast, and Lorenza did not have a chance to block that one. It crashed right into her face. The Mexican champion groaned and staggered back, feeling utterly impotent as she fell back into the ropes.

Carmen had to give it to Lorenza - most fighters would have at least taken the first punch. That Lorenza didn't just seem to know what was coming, but she was able to do a decent job of defending against it. That was impressive, no way around it.

But then, you could see a tsunami coming over the horizon, too. Knowing something was coming and actually weathering it? Two wholly different things.

The right hook was blocked, but the Roll's power made the blow useful all the same, her momentum giving her enough force to knock her back on the ropes. The left hook made up for it all, though, doing all the damage its little brother would have done and ensuring that Lorenza was going to stay on the ropes for the foreseeable future.

Carmen picked up speed. She weaved faster. More hectic. Rapider. Her hooks came harder, slammed with insane momentum, her entire body pouring as much as she could into each deadly blow, her heart thumping with a tremulous beat that seemed to pick up with each hit. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.

Her body ached, screamed in protest as she put everything into it - all her energy, all her emotion, all her power. Breathing was starting to become hard. Her muscles creaked. Her left hand was starting to hurt - maybe a hairline fracture, maybe something worse. But she kept rolling. Kept swinging. Kept throwing hooks, each one more devastating than the last. And she would keep going with all she could muster, hammering Lorenza over and over, until one of three things happened:

1. Lorenza escaped.
2. Lorenza went down.
3. Carmen simply fell from exhaustion.

Whichever one came first.

Lorenza had been alert, and she had managed to block that first punch. A fat lot of good it did her, but she had managed to do it. She had blocked it.

She would not block many more of them in this round.

Oh, she would try, but, once the first two or three slipped in, her rhythm became irreparably disrupted, and she would find herself bouncing back and forth from blow to blow, being knocked around along the ropes by the force of Carmenâ€s punches. She had no avenue of escape. Her equally-sized opponent had her cornered, and she could not slip away to the side or bully her way out of the situation. Lorenza would grunt and groan as each punch landed.

Her legs began to wobble. She began to feel dizzy. She increasingly relied upon the ropes for support as Carmen kept rolling and kept throwing harder and harder hooks into Lorenzaâ€s face. The Mexican boxers held her gloves up together in front of her, trying to block all that she could. But she knew she could not escape her fate, and, with one more punch, Lorenza found herself losing her footing and spilling over onto the canvas. This time, she would not recover so quickly.

Good Lord Almighty, what was keeping this woman up? Did gravity have no effect on her? A brick wall would have fallen by now!

The roll was a strong move, sure. Lorenza could surely see the punches coming, probably even anticipate the blows, but Carmen was throwing them with such rapid and relentless efficiency that the only way to put a stop to it would be to come out of her shell and risk taking a hook straight on in the face. Some of the hooks were blocked. But more and more were finding their way through. Even the ones that were stopped still hammered away at her guard, tore away at her body in chunks.

But Carmen wasn't doing so well, either. Every breath was more hoarse and ragged than the last. Her legs pulsed with pain, forced to support her shifting weight with every movement. It wasn't a matter of condition. She was in fine shape, the best of her life. It was a matter of physics - the human body was simply not designed to work this way for extended amounts of time. Something had to give.

The crowds roar was like a dulled din in the back of her head, like waves crashing on the shore in the distance. Army's screams were muffled. There was no referee, no ring, no arena. Just her and Saldano.

Focus. Perfect focus.

"Sal-" Right hook! Her heart skipped a beat.

"-da-" Left hook! Her calves begged for release.

"-no!" A final thunderous right crashed into Saldano's face, and down she went. Finally. Finally. Carmen would have loved to appreciate it, waiting two long years to finally put Saldano face down on the mat. But she had her own problems.

She was leaning against the ropes, catching her breath in large gulps, but that was no big deal. She would be fine in a few seconds, after a bottle of water, maybe. No, the real problem was her wrist. That last punch, all the force behind it, the accumulation from all the hooks...her right wrist had given out. Not broken, but seriously. She managed to grit her teeth, praying that Lorenza's corner wouldn't notice the pain. If Lorenza knew about it, the next two rounds would be pure hell.

Of course, it wouldn't matter if Lorenza was knocked the hell out and the fight ended here. "Stay down, you fucking bitch." She gasped, growling under her breath as the ref started a count. "Stay the fuck down."

Lorenza fell with a solid thud, her body crumpling as she hit the canvas following that final, powerful right hook. She saw stars as she collapsed at Carmenâ€s feet. The Puerto Rican boxer was just as vicious as she had been the first time the two of them had swapped leather. If anything, Carmen hit harder. Lorenza was completely out of it.

Visions flashed before her eyes. She remembered her very first fight, when, as a nine-year-old, she got into a scuffle with a twelve-year-old bully down the block from her childhood home in Tijuana. The older girl had knocked her down, given her a black eye and broken her nose…but Lorenza had given as good as she got, and both girls came away from their battle much worse for wear…

From that point on, every fight she had been in had been hers for the taking. Whether it was on the streets of Tijuana or between the ropes of a boxing ring, Lorenza always won. Sometimes it was a first-round knockout. Sometimes it took longer. Sometimes she was even knocked down.

Her career was on a seemingly interminable upward trajectory from the time she was nine years old until the title match with Carmen in the summer of 2012. She remembered that match now, vividly. Carmen had knocked her down again and again…and now, the Puerto Rican seemed to be ready to finish the job she had started back then…

Lorenza stirred. The referee was counting her out. “Six…seven…”

Lorenza growled, a growl which slowly built to a low roar. She turned over onto her knees, pushing herself upward with her gloves. “Eight!” Lorenza would summon all her strength and push herself back up to her feet just before the refereeâ€s count hit nine.

She stared daggers at Carmen as the referee came up to her, checking her out to ensure that Lorenza truly could continue the fight. The Mexican paid the woman in stripes no attention as she focused on her opponent. “You knocked me down then, you knocked me down now. You lost then, and you will lose now, bitch.”