It was April 1st; April Fool's Day, and of course, that meant every boxer had an excuse to act even more obnoxious to each other than they usually did.

"Bon matin, Bahadir," said Joe, patting Bald Bull on the back, "comment ca va?" (Good morning, Bahadir, how are you?)

Bald Bull looked at him funny. "İyi, neden sordun?" (Fine, why do you ask?)

"Oh, j'étais juste curieux." (Oh, I was just curious.) Joe then quickly escaped the lounge, snickering. Bald Bull shrugged and continued to make coffee.

That is, until he heard a few other boxers trying to contain their laughter. "Sırtıma bir şey yapıştırdı, değil mi?" (He taped something to my back, didn't he?) He reached behind him and peeled a piece of tape with a paper cutout of a fish stuck to it off of the back of his shirt.

"Glass Joe te acaba de engañar, hermano," chuckled Don. (Glass Joe just trolled you, bro.)

Bald Bull grumbled, and started off towards the door to go find Joe. "Эй, никакого насилия," said Soda Pop, stopping him. "Скоро у него матч." (Hey, no violence. He's got a match soon.)

Bald Bull simply tossed the fish aside and stomped off. King Hippo picked up the cutout off the floor, and cocked her head at it. She couldn't eat it though, because it was paper. Sad Hippo times.


Of course, Joe really did have a match that day; one of the most peculiar matches he had ever fought in his life!

"In this corner, we have the WVBA's trooper, our unrelenting jobber, Glass Joe! And in this corner, we have the goofiest contender to ever grace Milan, Mad Clown! Fight!"

This had to be a joke, right? Some kind of April Fools trick? Nope, they were completely serious; despite his goofy appearance, Mad Clown was a very competent fighter. Joe found himself ducking rubber balls and dodging side chops.

The crowd was just as amused as Joe was. They had never seen a clown box before. And they liked it! It was new, and refreshing, and above all, funny as all hell!

Joe, starting to run out of breath, hopped back to go in for the Vive la France. However, when he came forward, he instead got a huge double-fisted knock to his guts.

Yup, he was going to be feeling that tomorrow morning. Down he went. TKO.

When Joe finally pulled himself up, he saw Mad Clown staring at him. Mad Clown honked his nose at him, and left the ring. Joe put himself back down. This fight really was unbelievable.


When Joe emerged from the locker room, he found Piston Hondo sitting on the bench covered head to toe in silver glitter. "Qu'est-ce qui se passe a toi?" (What happened to you?)

Piston Hondo looked up at Joe with a scowl on his face. "ベスのエイプリルフールのトリックが何であったかを推測します." (Guess what Beth's April Fool's trick was.)

In spite of himself, Joe chuckled a bit. How did she manage to pull that off?

"İşte burada!" (There he is!) Before he knew what was going on, Bald Bull, Mr. Sandman, and Soda Popinski rushed Joe and beat him with pool noodles. Joe yelped, and made a run for it, breezing past Pierce on his great escape.

Pierce looked back at the rest of the boxers. "You guys really love April Fool's Day, don't you?"

"Geezers, what did Joey do to get the big guys on his tail?" Bear Hugger finally showed up to work…with black marker all over his face. The other boxers all burst out laughing at Cy's joke on his husband.

"Okay, can you all behave like adults for two seconds? I need to talk to you about something." Pierce checked over his notes. "We've got a new guy coming in sometime this week."

"Is that clown joining us?" Flying Feather asked.

"No, he's a transfer from the London league." Pierce looked up. "Mad Clown was a once-and-done thing. I don't even know where he disappeared to."

As soon as it passed his lips, Mad Clown snuck up on Pierce and honked his nose at him. Pierce yelped and jumped nearly a foot in the air. "...You son of a bitch."


By the next day, April Fool's was over, and the boxers had returned to their normal adult lives. "You should have seen it," laughed Katrina, "it was everywhere."

The boxers all laughed at the story of what happened at her school yesterday, while Don ignored them. He was instead googling that opera show Carmen had been excited to see that would be coming around in May.

He paused for a moment when he saw a picture of the star; Riccardo Accetta. For whatever reason, he looked oddly familiar…