I vaguely register the slaps on my shoulder, and my name ringing out from the lips of several drunk undergrads with heavily padded wallets, as I make my way to the large ring in the center of the room. My mind is on other things. Like the take home midterm I've yet to finish for comparative psychology, and the reason I'm in a closed campus facility, after hours, with a hundred raving lunatics, instead of in my off-campus apartment working on said midterm. I need this money if I'm going to make my payment for the upcoming spring semester before registration. Definitely can't ask mom and dad for help there since, to their knowledge, I'm away at UCLA on scholarship for boxing.
The part they aren't aware of is that I was thrown off the team in the middle of my sophomore year for beating a teammate into a neck brace, with a nasty concussion and two taped up broken ribs to boot. We weren't at practice when this happened, and it was not my first after hours altercation, so needless to say my coach had finally had enough. I lost my scholarship, but was able to remain in school thanks to my amazing GPA and the backing of several of my professors.
I shake off the intruding thoughts trying to throw me off my game and climb up the three steps at the corner of the ring, ducking in between the top two ropes to face my opponent.
"Alright ladies and gentleman, get your bets in! You know the drill, no money changes hands after the bell rings," our resident MC and promoter, David, reminds the crowd.
He stands in the middle of the ring and glances from my opponent to me and back again as he shouts, "The rules are, there's only one rule! Once you're down, no contact! You hear a bell, you get your ass back to your corner! Winner by KO or TKO on my call."
I've been through this spiel at least fifty times since I started participating in the underground fighting ring at UCLA a year and a half ago, so I tune him out and concentrate on the girl standing across from me. I size her up as she hops from foot to foot, obviously eager to get things started. She's a few inches taller than me and likely has about fifteen or so pounds on me as well. She's got sharp eyes and I can tell she's sizing me up as well. It won't matter. I've seen my dad's fighting videos on YouTube so many times, the moves are burned into my brain. I could probably take the opponent in the guy's fight after this one too if it wasn't against David's personal "ethics" to set a girl and a guy up to pummel each other.
I fight on instinct. I don't have a choice. This girl, who so desperately wants to charge across the ring all punch-first-think-later, is definitely not a smart fighter. She'll burn herself out quickly and that's when I'll go in for the kill, figuratively speaking.
"In this corner," David points to me, "we have the reigning champ, Jessie Maddox!"
The cheers are deafening, but it means little to me. I tune them out to keep my head in the game.
David turns his attention to the girl across from me, "And the challenger, Missy Anderson!"
A smile breaks my intense stare. What kind of fighter willingly goes by Missy? Make something up for Christ's sake. I feel no malice towards this girl, really I feel nothing towards her at all. I've seen her around campus a time or two, but other than that she means absolutely nothing to me. That's exactly how I like it. If I can't fight in anger, I fight out of necessity. The anonymity of my opponent, besides my knowledge of her ditzy stripper name, helps me to infuse that necessity into every punch.
Out of the corner of my eye I see David back towards the corner to my left, his hand on the bell. Time to kick some ass.