Chapter 16

Philip McGary stood at the corner of a boxing ring watching two members of his team spar. “Sandman” Valdez danced around the ring in a small circle around “Gunz” Gomez. Both of them were wearing sixteen ounce gloves and throwing combinations of jabs, uppercuts, and hooks.

            “Gomez,” shouted Phil, “move your feet. Don’t keep letting him get an angle on you. Move!”

            Gomez grunted and began to dance around on his feet a bit, but soon he’d become flat-footed and slow again. Phil watched him and groaned inside. His middleweight was being owned by his lightweight. Gomez was a powerful striker, no one doubted that, but he moved like a blob. Phil wanted to harness Gomez’s power into a mobile, flexible package before the fall, when Elite’s new team MMA competition was scheduled to begin.

            Phil had no doubt his team, Vengeance, would win. He heard that his opponent was the legendary Ricardo Gracia’s team, and though he had the utmost respect for the first-gen fighters, he knew the Gracia’s to be inflexible, outdated Jiu-jitsu specialists. All he needed in order to beat them was a team of well-rounded, well conditioned athletes. And that meant getting Gomez to improve his footwork.

            Phil glanced over his shoulder, looking around his gym to just to see what was happening. Most of the guys there were socializing or watching the two teammates spar. Some of them, including his other team members, were busy lifting weights or running on treadmills or using some of the other piece of the myriad of equipment Phil’s gym had lying around in seemingly random order.

            There was one person in the gym who was paying special attention to the sparring match. He was leaning against a punching bag with his gloves tied together and hanging around his neck like a garland. He was a Hispanic kid, well built, and Phil was sure he’d noticed this kid’s interest in his team members before. He had a look in his eye Phil recognized. It seemed to say “I could do better”.

Phil snorted disdainfully and turned his attention back to the ring. If he saw the kid making angry eyes at his fighters again, he might have to ask him to leave or chill out. This, Phil knew, would be for the kid’s benefit. Some of his fighters, especially Gomez, didn’t react well to people who disrespected them. The last thing Phil needed was for the whole team to suffer because Gomez had assaulted some kid who’d given him a stinky eye.

 

George had been training for the MMA team competition for nearly three weeks. He lay in his bed with his arms limp and heavy by his sides with his palms slightly turned up towards the ceiling. He was tired and worried. He’d just got back to his apartment from his job, and he’d simply collapsed onto his bed half dressed into his training clothes. His body felt beat up and bruised in a dozen places, but his mind felt strangely alert.

He was thinking of everything that had led up to this point in his life. His first encounter with backyard fighting at Marco’s house over a year ago. His introduction to the family’s Jiu-jitsu. His friendship and adventures with Hector, and his eventual departure from the academy. Had it already been nearly a month since he’d left?

George missed his friend, but he somehow knew things were better for him now that he was gone. The thought made him feel guilty for some reason. He was now on better terms with Ricardo since he no longer had anything to hide from him. His father seemed more proud of him now that he was giving more serious thought to his future, even though he didn’t have a clue of what he should do. He felt more grown up and honest, a feeling he’d never known was really missing from his life. But still, he missed his friend. He wondered what Hector was doing at that moment. Probably training for his next big professional fight, George imagined.

There was a knock on the door. He could hear Pablo’s voice on the other side of it asking if he was ready to train.

“Yeah. I’ll be down in a minute,” he answered. George hauled himself up to a sitting position and tried to shake the blood back into his limbs. Every part of him felt about as unresponsive to his commands as rocks. He hoped the few short months he had left were enough to get him in shape for the competition. If it wasn’t enough time he would be slaughtered in that cage.

Practice that day was brutal. Ricardo seemed to be a big believer in conditioning, George realized as he gasped with every attempt he made at jumping with both legs and tucking his feet as high as possible to clear the box in front of him. Most of their conditioning was done outside while the academy was holding normal classes in the training room. Ricardo had arranged for his brown belts to run training for the normal students while he focused on his team. And that meant making the team run, jump, crawl and scoot for mile after mile after mile. Today, however, it was raining, and so Ricardo had them training inside.

“Conserve energy!” lectured Ricardo as George tried again to clear both of his feet above the box. “This is one of the greatest principals of Jiu-jitsu. You conserve your energy by positioning yourself better than your opponent. If you mount him, you will be stronger than him, and so he will use more energy. You want him to run out of energy before you do. But you still must have enough energy to start with. You’ll burn a lot of it trying to get the takedown and scrambling for a good position. You’ll burn a lot striking, moving and blocking. So you must build up your stamina so there’s enough of it left when you do get to the better position.”

George listened and sucked breath after breath into his aching lungs. He jumped again. This time his feet didn’t quite clear the top of the box, and the tips of his cross-trainers bumped into it, causing him to tumble forwards and sideways off the box and onto the ground. George collapsed there into a tangled mess, unable to get up.

He could open his eyes, but only just. Still, he could see Pablo rush forward to pick him up again. Ricardo stopped his son, and knelt down on the mat beside George.

“George. I chose you for this team because I knew you were capable of representing our family art against an opponent. I still think I’m right. I think you’re also capable of getting up and continuing this exercise.”

“I can’t get up,” George barely got out. His chest heaved and felt like it could inhale the all of the air in the room and he would still suffocate.

“No, you can. You just don’t want to because it hurts, and because you’re tired. So change your mind. Want to get up. People do amazing things when they want to. So will you.” Ricardo stood up and looked down on the floor at George, who was still gasping. He didn’t offer his hand to help him up.

George thought about what he wanted. He wanted to be great at Jiu-jitsu. He wanted his team to win. He didn’t want to lay there like a lump while Ricardo and the others watched him. he wanted to get up. He made up his mind.

Slowly, his limbs began to move.

 

Phil was in the same place as before. He stood at the corner of the boxing ring, watching as Strange and the striking coach, an old ex-champion from Thailand, ran through combinations. As the trainer called out numbers, Strange reacted with the appropriate techniques. The pads in the trainers hands and wrapped around his waist smacked as Strange threw hook punches, jabs, and roundhouse kicks.

Phil watched and winced every time Strange made an error, but he reminded himself the big man was tired and would be doing better if he weren’t just at the end of a hard three-hour long training session.

Then the gym owner saw a familiar face out of the corner of his eye. It was the same kid from several days before. This time the Hispanic kid was leaning against a treadmill, his eyes on Gomez again. Seeing the kid again irritated him. He didn’t want trouble in his gym, so Phil had a strict policy of throwing troublemakers out. So he decided to say something.

“Hey,” he called out to the young guy leaning against the treadmill. “Do you have a problem or something? ‘Cause you’re looking at my fighters over there like you got a problem.”

The young man smiled, which surprised Phil, who wasn’t used to anyone taking his warnings lightly.

“Not all your fighters. Just him,” the young man said.

Phil snorted. “Who? Gomez? You got a problem with him?”

“No,” he said. “I just want to fight him.”

Gomez, who’d been sitting on a weight-lifting bench on the other side of the room, must have heard his name because he stood up and started walking towards Phil and the kid. In fact, a lot of people in the room were quickly taking up an interest in Phil’s conversation with the young man.

Phil was disappointed to see everyone was listening in. He was even more disappointed to see Gomez was coming over. He didn’t want a scene. He just wanted the kid to leave. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave the young man a hard stare that he hoped would communicate the message.

“Look, kid,” he started.

“Hector,” the young man interrupted. “My name is Hector.”

“Kid,” Phil continued, “I don’t want anyone in my gym starting any crap. I have a business to run. These men have work to do. You should leave.”

“Wait,” Gomez interjected, putting his hand on Phil’s shoulder. “I heard my name. What did he say?”

Before Phil could send him away, Hector said, “I was telling your coach I could beat you. I want to fight you.”

People had stopped pretending to work out while they eavesdropped on the conversation. They were now gathering around Phil, Gomez, and the kid named Hector. They were eager to see how this little drama would play out.

Phil wanted nothing less than for this whole thing to go any further. “Get out,” he ordered, pointing his finger to the door. “I don’t want to see you in here again.”

“Hold up, Phil,” said Gomez. “I want to hear this.”

But Phil could tell Gomez wanted to do more to this kid than just listen to what he had to say. Already Gomez had adopted his macho posture, trying to push past Phil so he could come face to face with his challenger. Phil groaned inside as he tried to keep himself between the two men.

Hector, it appeared, wasn’t the least bit worried about Gomez’s aggressive behavior. In fact, Phil could see there was the smug sort of look on his face guys wore when something was going exactly the way they planned. Phil knew lots of guys like that, especially fighters. Cocky. Calculating. Frequently right.

“You’re the weakest member of this team, Gomez,” said Hector. “And I can prove it. I want to fight you.”

“Let him, Phil,” Gomez hissed. “Let him fight me. I’m not tired. Let me fight him.”

Phil tried again to keep his fighter back. He was severely tired of Gomez’s posturing and lack of real work ethic. He was tempted for a moment to let the kid fight Gomez in the hopes he could do what he said and beat him. Then maybe Phil could let him take Gomez’s place on the team. But that would be unprofessional. And Phil was nothing if not professional.

“I’m going to tell you one more time, kid: Get out of my Gym.” He pointed to the door in case Hector didn’t know where it was. “Before I get my man Strange here to throw you out.”

Hector shrugged and pushed his way through the dispersing audience to pick up his bag. Without another word, he left.

Phil could not help but notice the smugness had not left the kid’s face. He would be back, because somehow the kid had planned all this.

 

“Begin!” shouted Ricardo.

George covered his face with his arms and bridged his hips into the air. Mo’s punches paused only momentarily as he adjusted his balance on top of George’s chest. He soon resumed his punching, which collided with George’s forearms and head with enough force to bounce his head against the floor with every blow.

George was getting a headache. Even with Mo’s hands padded with sixteen-ounce boxing gloves, the punches were brutal. He could already feel tender places around his cheekbones and the ridges around his eyes where bruises would form later.

“Remember to close the distance,” Ricardo reminded him. “Get closer to him. Then trap and roll.”

George took a deep breath and tried again at the escape. He extended both arms to wrap them around Mo’s chest, though by doing so he took a solid hit to the face. Though his nose screamed with pain and his eyes blurred with tears, he managed to close his grip behind the man’s back. He bridged again, and this time Mo came down with him, bracing both of his gloved hands against the floor to prevent crashing his own head into the mats.

A moment later George had wrapped one of his arms around one of Mo’s and bridged again, this time rolling on top of him. Finally away from the pressure of being on the bottom, George collapsed backwards to catch his breath and run his fingers over his tenderized face.

“Let’s do that again,” Ricardo ordered.

“Oh, no,” George whispered as he could feel Mo on top of him again. He could see the man’s fist cocked to strike him as soon as the drill began. He stopped probing his face and adjusted his position to defend himself from the barrage.

“Go!” shouted Ricardo.

 

Phil fell into his office chair and sighed. He’d just been in another shouting match with Gomez, whose selection for the team was proving to be Phil’s greatest regret. The guy just didn’t have a work ethic. Sure, he was a decent boxer and had incredible stamina, but Phil was tired of his lack of a work ethic and his tendency to question Phil’s every decision. Whether it was diet, training times, or drills, Gomez always had a complaint, and Phil sometimes had to practically perform a hostage negotiation just to get the cocky jerk to do a simple wall sit! Even his team mates were tired of him and wanted to see him go.

That’s when Phil made the decision to replace Gomez as soon as he could. It was too late to do it before the first competition; Phil had already spent countless hours and dollars prepping this guy for the fight. He was sure he didn’t have time to pick anyone else so short-notice. But when the opportunity came, Gomez would be out. Phil felt like he was just counting down the days.

He turned on his computer and checked his email. The list of unread emails were from the usual solicitors: fight promoters, equipment suppliers, and media. There was one, however, that stood out to him.

It was from an unfamiliar address: [email protected]. That meant nothing to Phil, who received dozens of emails every week from obscure martial arts businesses wanting one thing or another from him, but this one was particularly interesting because of its subject line. “Are you tired of Gomez yet?”

Phil opened the email and found its contents at once surprising, mysterious, and intriguing. He found a photo of a referee raising the arm of the winner of a MMA match. Phil recognized the logos decorating the cage posts and the floor to be Prodigy, a professional MMA circuit Phil had dealings with before. He also recognized the face of the winner. It was the Hispanic kid who’d caused trouble a few weeks ago when he’d challenged Gomez to a fight. Hector, Phil remembered. He had to hand it to the kid, he was as memorable as he was persistent.

Below the photo was a caption: “Hector Vargas celebrates 3^rd straight win with Prodigy.”

So the kid was a fighter. A real fighter. Phil couldn’t help but think this email was an answer to his prayers, or perhaps just very, very well timed. Considering what he already knew of Hector Vargas, Phil was pretty sure the kid had been watching the team practices somehow without Phil noticing, and had picked today to send this email because of the big fight he’d had with Gomez.

“What a manipulator,” he muttered as he scrolled down the screen.

At the bottom of the message was a single line of text. “When can I fight him?”

As he opened the window for a reply message, Phil thought very hard about what he was about to type. He didn’t want to regret his next decision. But then again, wasn’t that why he was considering this craziness in the first place? Because he regretted a decision he’d already made?

 

Phil wasn’t surprised to see Hector waiting for him in front of the gym that morning. He seemed way more alert than most other young men his age would be at six in the morning, leaning against the wall with his bag over his shoulder and his arms folded over his chest.  The kid was early, but Phil figured he would be. This guy just seemed to have a habit of pushing things until he got his way.

They went inside together, where the rest of the team, except for Gomez, was waiting for Phil. The team regularly met this early to start their training, and Gomez was regularly late. In fact, Gomez had been coming a little later every day to their practices, and Phil was looking forward to the possibility of replacing him with someone more punctual.

Phil explained things to the team while Hector got dressed and warmed up. No one objected to what he proposed, though some of them gave strange looks to Hector, who seemed unbothered as he quietly jumped rope in a corner.

They waited for over an hour until Gomez walked in through the door, apparently unhurried.

“What, are we having a light day today?” he asked when he noticed his teammates were either sitting around talking or engaged in very light exercises. He finally noticed the young man jump roping in the corner. “Whose that guy?” he asked.

Phil walked to Gomez with his arms crossed over his chest. The other four team members stopped what they were doing if they were doing anything at all and came closer to listen.

“Gomez, we gotta talk,” Phil started. “You’re not earning your place on this team.”

Gomez, who had looked comically confused before Phil started talking, now looked comically angry. His face screwed up into a look of irritation when he heard Phil’s claim, and escalated to rage when he noticed the nods of agreement coming from the other fighters.

“What’d you say?” he growled. “You don’t think I belong on this team?”

Phil shook his head. He knew this wouldn’t go over well. “You’re being left behind. When everybody’s training and working you’re late or injured or whatever. You’ve got a million excuses, and we’re tired of them. Everybody here is getting better. Everybody but you.”

Gomez looked again at Hector, who seemed to not even notice the team meeting going on. “So you brought him in to replace me?” said Gomez. “You think you can just find somebody to replace me? Look at my record! Look at my record! Six knockouts! Four unanimous decisions!” There was the slightest tinge of fear in his voice.

Phil waved his hand like he was shooing a fly away. “You’ve got five losses,” he added. “You’re good, sure, but you have the worst record on this team. And you don’t work hard enough to make me think you’ll ever improve.”

Gomez seemed on the brink of losing his temper, and he stepped towards Phil with his chest out. Strange reached an arm forward to keep him away from the coach, but Gomez shoved him away. Strange, neither intimidated nor surprised by Gomez, ignored the aggression.

“You’re going to replace me with him?” accused Gomez.

“You’re going to fight him,” Phil corrected him. “I need you to prove to me you belong on this team. I need to see you do something other than gripe that your knee hurts or you’re dizzy or whatever excuse you have. You beat this guy and you can stay. If you lose he takes your place.”

The room was quiet as the team waited for Gomez’s response. All anyone could hear was the tap, tap, tapping of Hector’s jump rope. Gomez watched Phil for a moment, and then Hector.

“Get my gloves,” said Gomez.

It wasn’t long before the two of them stood on opposite corners of the boxing ring that dominated the center of the gym. Phil stood in the middle, reminding the two men of rules and the arrangement for the winner to occupy the teams open middleweight spot. Neither fighter had bothered to weigh in. Phil figured Hector was close enough, and was absolutely positive Gomez was over his weight limit since he hadn’t seen him do any significant weight-loss exercises since he’d last weighed him during training. Phil spent most of this time reminding the two of them of the rules, particularly of those against eye gouging, biting, throwing knees on the ground, or kicking a downed opponent. With as much as there was at stake for this fight, Phil was sure both fighters would be tempted to fight dirty.

Valdez rang the bell, signaling the beginning of the three-round fight. Both fighters approached the center of the ring quickly without any hesitation or sign of respect. It wasn’t long before the two of them were exchanging blows, trading blows far harder and faster than any fighter planning on three full rounds should.

Gomez found the younger man surprisingly competent with his hands. His every blow was slipped, parried, blocked, or countered. He tried circling the kid to get a better angle on him, but found his footwork to be just as frustrating. Hector was light on his feet and extremely mobile, forcing Gomez to muscle his way out of bad positions against the ropes.

Soon Gomez understood he was dealing with a formidable boxer, maybe even a kickboxer, and got frustrated constantly having to shove and lunge away from corners and clinches. Fueled by the determination to not let a nobody take his place on the team, Gomez finally slipped a punch and threw himself forward to take the kids legs.

To his astonishment, he was thrown head over heels until he collided with the ground. Lights danced in his eyes like sparks from his impact, and immediately he curled into a defensive position as he could feel the kid transitioning to a mount. The next sixty seconds were a blur as Hector hit him, changed position, threw him again, mounted him again, and resumed hitting him. Gomez became increasingly unsure of where he was, what was going on, and how he was going to win. Finally, he saw a chance to escape. As he came to his knees and raised his head to come to his feet, he caught a glimpse of a fist careening towards his head with nothing in its way to stop it.

There was a flash, and a black curtain, and then nothing.

Phil watched as the remaining members of Team Vengeance tried to revive Gomez. Though the guys worked diligently and professionally to ensure their recently-disowned team mate was healthy and safe, they didn’t fret about it. Phil himself felt relieved that Gomez had lost so decisively. He turned from Gomez to look at Hector, who leaned against the corner of the ropes with his arms over his chest.

“Welcome to Team Vengeance,” Phil said to him.

 

George loaded a suitcase into the back of Summer’s car. The suitcase weighed more and contained more pairs of shoes than he would have ever thought possible.

There was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned to look into Summer’s face. She was normally very open and easy to read, something George admired about her, but now she seemed to be a mixed bag of emotions. Her face was a constant shift between excitement, fear, happiness, and regret, all exchanging places and masking each other like performers on a stage.

“I think that’s everything,” she said. George could see her parents walking into their house where they’d just spent the past two hours helping her pack and carry out her things to her car. They were nice people, George thought, though he didn’t know them well or see them very often. Now they were obviously giving the two of them privacy so Summer could say goodbye to him.

He wrapped his arms around him, which were still sore from a demanding morning training session. She pressed into him, and he wondered if he’d felt he shudder in an attempt not to cry. He stopped wondering when she looked up at him and he saw that her eyes were pink and watery.

For a while neither one of them seemed to want to say much of anything. He had no idea what to say. He’d had so little experience with relationships it never occurred to him what to say at the end of one. Thankfully, it was she who spoke first.

“You know, I’m really proud of you,” she said.

“Really? For what?” he asked.

“For what you’re doing for Ricardo now. Helping him with his school’s reputation and all that. It’s cool. And it suits you.” She stopped talking and buried her face in his shirt again.

“Thanks,” he replied, not knowing what to say. Was his participation with the team that good of a thing? He thought he’d just been doing it because he liked fighting and because he liked Ricardo.

“No, really,” she continued. “You turned out to be more mature than I thought you were. It impressed me, especially with how you handled that whole mess with Hector. I thought you might stick with him and snub your uncle. But you were better than I thought. You’re actually really nice.”

George was surprised. Not only did it catch him off guard to hear she’d admired him for things he thought were so normal, but it also shocked him to hear she’d almost expected him to do differently. He didn’t know quite whether he should be flattered or insulted until she nuzzled into the hollow of his shoulder again.

“Thanks,” he said again. “And thanks for being with me through all of that. I think you were a good influence on me or something. At least my family thinks so.”

She laughed at that. “I am, aren’t I? I think your family owes me for turning you into a good person.”

He laughed too. “Yeah. You should’ve charged for your services.”

They were quiet again for a while before he told her he would miss her. She told him to visit her at the school sometime, and then she kissed him. It was only a few minutes later that the two of them were finally saying goodbye and pulling away from each other. She went back into her house to spend her last day in Vacaville with her family, and he went back to the academy. He had another training session to go before the day was done.

“She was such a nice girl,” said Mrs. Gracia, who was at the academy when he returned. “She was so good for you. I think you two were a great couple. I think you should definitely visit her in Davis.”

Ricardo and the others had similar things to say, though they sounded suspiciously like teasing to George.

 

Training had become less of a daily battle of wills for George as he grew more accustomed to the running, weight lifting, and constant drilling. It had not become easy for him by any stretch of the imagination, however, since Ricardo seemed to pick drills and exercises that most challenged the team members individually. For George, this meant he spent a lot of time escaping from bottom positions while being struck and running through striking drills. And while George was pleased to see his escapes were showing marked improvements, his stand-up striking abilities were still as poor as ever. He just couldn’t seem to throw a punch without losing all form and flailing.

“George, keep your elbows in!” Ricardo reminded him for the umpteenth time. “You leave yourself open like that and you’ll get knocked out!”

George pulled his elbows in and raised his hands so they’d cover his face better. Besides having to fight the instinct to drop his hands as he punched, he also had a tendency to turn away from incoming strikes. George had been hit in the face before, but those had been during challenge matches against men who were not wearing gloves, so they tended to throw punches less often for fear of injuring their hands. But the MMA match would be different. The fighters would be wearing gloves and tape, making their hands far less vulnerable to injury. They would throw many, many more punches than he was used to, and their takedown defense would be better, meaning he couldn’t avoid getting hit by simply shooting in for a takedown. If he expected to do well in this contest, George was simply going to have to learn how to strike.

That night George made a call to his father.