08-05-2008, 02:19 PM
Tanya's Challenge - The Contest Written by Jeri
The next day, Friday, The Fight Club was not holding any fights. They were preparing for the coming Saturday, when they would hold their monthly elimination fight contest. Tanya called them just after they opened to sign up for the Saturday fight. She also hit the Internet again to tell all of her friends and fans about her decision to participate.
The elimination fights were always no-holds-barred catfights to submission or knockout. This tended to scare away the weaker fighters. And the $2,500 prize guaranteed a good representation of the stronger fighters. Tanya was set on winning that fight, even though that would be only the second time she had fought. The $2,500 would completely pay for her vacation in Rio and all the clothes she had bought, and would leave enough for her to have a really good time when she got back to Los Angeles.
That afternoon, she went to the beach late. She spent most of the morning and the early afternoon training for her fight in a gym recommended by one of the waiters at The Fight Club. There, she touched up on her punching and kicking skills in preparation for the fight the next day. Curiously enough, her "manager" showed up at the gym in the early afternoon. He told her a lot about the elimination fights, and about the other fighters she would be facing.
The elimination fights were limited to 32 fighters. They were paired up generally by skill for the early rounds. This made for more interesting fights than if a seasoned fighter were put up against an amateur. Tanya had already been ranked in the upper part of the lower half. If she won her fights, she would have to fight the strongest fighter from the upper half. That would mean she would have to participate in five separate fights that night.
Her manager, Tony, told her the girl who had won almost all the monthly elimination fights was Maria, the other kickboxer Tanya had seen that first night. If she survived her other opponents, she would almost certainly have to defeat Maria in the final bout. He told her everything he could think of about Maria, including her fighting style and her weak points, though there were not many of those. He told her how she should defend herself against Maria and what to watch out for in her attacks. Finally, he watched her practice a little and coached her on her techniques. She realized she was not as skilled as she had thought she was after hearing his analysis of her fighting techniques. She left the gym a little disheartened at how much she still had to learn. She went to the beach to think a lot about what he had said. She was still convinced she could win the contest, but would have to be a little more cautious than she had planned. She decided to make an early night of it to be refreshed for the next night's activity.
Tanya got up early Saturday morning after a long, much needed rest. After the strenuous workout the previous day, she knew she would have to let her muscles rest to rebuild their strength. So she planned an early morning run on the beach to improve her stamina, but only a light workout followed by prolonged stretching to prepare her muscles for the exertion they would be going through that evening.
She hit the Internet again before her workout, to see if she had E-mail and to tell her fans of her latest plans. Curiously, she had not heard from Lily in the last couple days. She may have been busy preparing for the trip to Rio for the upcoming location shoot in the nearby jungle.
Tanya arrived at the club early to check out the ring and the other facilities. Because of the number of contestants, the surrounding nightclubs let The Fight Club use their dressing rooms and showers. Tanya was going to be in the club two doors down, actually a stripper nightclub, between fights. There, she could relax and recover between her fights. But it meant that she may not be able to see the fights themselves, so would not be able to judge her opponents. But before she went to her dressing room, she made sure Tony was assigned as her manager. Her first fight of the evening went well. Her opponent was skilled, but not as skilled or strong as she was. She won in five rounds, when her opponent didn't answer the bell for the sixth round. Her second bout was similar, and she won in 8 rounds. She was not as lucky on her third bout.
Tanya was up against a strong opponent that knew how to wrestle, a style she had never practiced. Marta grabbed her every chance she could, and applied painful joint locks on her extremities. Tanya's fitness training helped her a lot, as she had built up a lot of muscle around the joints, supporting and strengthening them. Her muscles also helped her to break out of some of the less powerful locks, even if only with one arm. With one arm free, she could proceed to punch Marta in the most vulnerable spot available, causing her to release her hold.
Tanya had just gotten free from one of Marta's holds leaving Marta in pain from her punches. But before Tanya could recover fully, Marta reached around behind Tanya's back and grabbed her arms, pinioning them behind her. With her free fist, she pummeled Tanya's stomach with hard punches aimed just above her navel. Tanya was getting back the punishment she had been giving out.
Marta had the hard, thick arm muscles of a wrestler. She used these strong muscles to throw short, strong jabs into Tanya's stomach, pushing her fist deep into the muscles. Tanya's stomach muscles could take a strong, fast punch without collapsing. But these punches were different. It was if someone were hitting her with a sledge hammer, then standing on it to push it further into her stomach. She could feel her stomach muscles collapsing with each punch, being crushed by the pressure of Marta's fist being pushed hard into her stomach. She was rapidly losing all her stomach muscle strength, as each punch penetrated deep into her stomach causing her intense pain. She tried getting her arms free, but was held tight. She knew she had to do something or she would be forced to admit defeat before too much longer.
Each punch was now a blast of pain that radiated outward from the point of impact to the rest of her stomach. And it was rapidly spreading to the rest of her body. There was only one way she could think of to escape. She bent backward, exposing her arched and vulnerable stomach to the pounding it was taking, which intensified the pain of each punch ten fold. But, it freed her leg. She kicked up high with her leg and brought it back down fast into Marta's leg, knocking it out from under her. This broke her hold on Tanya, who rapidly escaped.
Marta got up fast. Trying to ignore the inferno still raging in her stomach, Tanya backed away from Marta. For the rest of the round, Tanya tried to stay away from Marta to let herself recover. She was grateful when the bell rang ending that round.
Back in her corner, she told her manager Tony to massage her stomach hard. He was reluctant at first, as he was a little embarrassed. He had only given his wards advice and seen to their needs. He had never even thought of this type of physical contact with one of them. Tanya, understanding his reluctance, told him it was all right, and that it was the only way to ease the pain from her recent pounding. With that assurance, he got to work deeply massaging her stomach where she had been punched. He could see this was hurting her a lot, as she was biting her lip to stifle a whimper. But, he continued. He knew she would stop him if he went too far.
By the warning whistle, Tanya was in better shape. While the pain wasn't gone, it now was only a dull ache spread over the whole of her stomach. There were no longer any sharp stabs of pain whenever she flexed her stomach a little. She was actually able to stand up and flex her body backward, stretching her stomach muscles, as the bell went off for the next round.
This round, Tanya used her strong kicks to keep Marta at a distance, retracting her leg rapidly to prevent her from grabbing it. She never let Marta close within grappling distance the whole round. And her kicks more often than not found their target. Marta was starting to tire as she was forced to keep trying to close on Tanya. Finally, four rounds later, Marta quit, giving Tanya a victory in her hardest fight so far. She went back toward her dressing room, but went straight into the shower, bikini and all. She stayed there under the hot, stinging water until just before her next bout.
Her fourth bout was uneventful compared with the previous one. She won after eight rounds. Her only problem was that her opponent would not stay down. Tanya would knock her down, but she would get back up and continue the fight. The referee finally had to stop the fight and declare a Technical Knockout when she was so tired and dazed she could not even respond to the referee asking her if she wanted to submit. Tanya had a lot of respect for her, as she never quit. With some more training and a lot more muscle and conditioning, she would have been the winner of this contest. Tanya thought she may be supplanting Maria as the queen of the club in a couple years. Tanya was back in her dressing room waiting for her last bout, the fight for the title, when one of the other girls burst into her room. She yelled, "Maria's been defeated! And by a new girl!"
Tanya had seen how fierce a fighter Maria was and knew how highly her fighting skills were regarded by those who had seen her fight regularly, so she was a little worried at hearing this news. However, she had gone this far and was not about to quit now.
Tanya walked into the club to the cheers of the crowd. Tony, her manager, met her at the door and followed her, directing her to her corner. There, he held the ropes for her and she slipped into the ring. The announcer came into the ring and announced her, to the applause of the crowd.. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her opponent just getting into the ring, as Tony had turned her around to put her gloves on and get them adjusted tightly around her fists.
The announcer announced, "And in this corner, Lilly from California!" Tanya thought, "So, another American. I wonder why I keep running into Lilly's?" and she turned around to survey her opponent.
Not Lilly, but Lily! HER Lily!
Tanya was shocked by this, but had no time to ponder it as the referee called both fighters to the center of the ring. Tanya had a million questions she wanted to ask Lily, the foremost being what she was doing here, but she knew she would not get the chance, probably until well after the fight.
The referee went over the rules, as minimal as they were, then told them to touch gloves and go back to their corners. They touched gloves, and Lily winked at her and smiled. They both nodded to each other, signifying to each other that they would be going full out with no punches pulled, then turned and walked back to their corners. Lily had been a top fighter in the kickboxing competitions she had entered. Tanya knew that. Her only advantage was that Lily had come from her previous bout directly into this one, while Tanya had had a period to relax. But she knew that this was not a real advantage, as she had already fought Lily before and had lost.
That last fight at the beach house, she had really been trying to win and had gone all out. She figured that if Lily started losing there, she could fake getting knocked out, letting Lily win as was written in the script. But Lily had won that fight, being a much stronger fighter than she was. Tanya had picked up a few tricks this last week herself that she fully intended to use to her advantage, so this fight would probably be a tough one, but the outcome was by no means certain.
At the bell, both fighters came out fast from their corners to the center of the ring. Tanya threw the first punch, but only by a fraction of a second. She had to dodge and get her other glove in the way to stop Lily's punch. Neither of the punches hit home. Each followed up with a second, then third punch, as fast as they could throw them. This flurry of punches continued.
Usually, fighters are cautious the first round, and throw only light punches and feints to feel out the other fighter and to gage their skill level. In this case, they each knew enough about the other's style to ignore the first round slowness. So, they got right to work trying to knock the other one out of the competition, with no preliminaries. Lily was still faster than Tanya. She made contact several times during that first round, once to Tanya's head and the rest to her body. But the blows did only minor damage. Maybe Lily was tired, as she had certainly punched harder before. Tanya only scored with a couple punches, but she saw each one did much more damage, based on Lily's reaction to them. At the end of the first round, they appeared to be even.
The second round, Tanya tried her trick of keeping her guard high and letting Lily punch her stomach. She knew Lily had a strong punch that had incapacitated her previously with a single blow, but she also knew she couldn't keep Lily's punches away from her stomach throughout the fight; that eventually, one would get through. She wanted to control the moment of that punch, so she would be ready for it. So, she kept her fists high.
The next day, Friday, The Fight Club was not holding any fights. They were preparing for the coming Saturday, when they would hold their monthly elimination fight contest. Tanya called them just after they opened to sign up for the Saturday fight. She also hit the Internet again to tell all of her friends and fans about her decision to participate.
The elimination fights were always no-holds-barred catfights to submission or knockout. This tended to scare away the weaker fighters. And the $2,500 prize guaranteed a good representation of the stronger fighters. Tanya was set on winning that fight, even though that would be only the second time she had fought. The $2,500 would completely pay for her vacation in Rio and all the clothes she had bought, and would leave enough for her to have a really good time when she got back to Los Angeles.
That afternoon, she went to the beach late. She spent most of the morning and the early afternoon training for her fight in a gym recommended by one of the waiters at The Fight Club. There, she touched up on her punching and kicking skills in preparation for the fight the next day. Curiously enough, her "manager" showed up at the gym in the early afternoon. He told her a lot about the elimination fights, and about the other fighters she would be facing.
The elimination fights were limited to 32 fighters. They were paired up generally by skill for the early rounds. This made for more interesting fights than if a seasoned fighter were put up against an amateur. Tanya had already been ranked in the upper part of the lower half. If she won her fights, she would have to fight the strongest fighter from the upper half. That would mean she would have to participate in five separate fights that night.
Her manager, Tony, told her the girl who had won almost all the monthly elimination fights was Maria, the other kickboxer Tanya had seen that first night. If she survived her other opponents, she would almost certainly have to defeat Maria in the final bout. He told her everything he could think of about Maria, including her fighting style and her weak points, though there were not many of those. He told her how she should defend herself against Maria and what to watch out for in her attacks. Finally, he watched her practice a little and coached her on her techniques. She realized she was not as skilled as she had thought she was after hearing his analysis of her fighting techniques. She left the gym a little disheartened at how much she still had to learn. She went to the beach to think a lot about what he had said. She was still convinced she could win the contest, but would have to be a little more cautious than she had planned. She decided to make an early night of it to be refreshed for the next night's activity.
Tanya got up early Saturday morning after a long, much needed rest. After the strenuous workout the previous day, she knew she would have to let her muscles rest to rebuild their strength. So she planned an early morning run on the beach to improve her stamina, but only a light workout followed by prolonged stretching to prepare her muscles for the exertion they would be going through that evening.
She hit the Internet again before her workout, to see if she had E-mail and to tell her fans of her latest plans. Curiously, she had not heard from Lily in the last couple days. She may have been busy preparing for the trip to Rio for the upcoming location shoot in the nearby jungle.
Tanya arrived at the club early to check out the ring and the other facilities. Because of the number of contestants, the surrounding nightclubs let The Fight Club use their dressing rooms and showers. Tanya was going to be in the club two doors down, actually a stripper nightclub, between fights. There, she could relax and recover between her fights. But it meant that she may not be able to see the fights themselves, so would not be able to judge her opponents. But before she went to her dressing room, she made sure Tony was assigned as her manager. Her first fight of the evening went well. Her opponent was skilled, but not as skilled or strong as she was. She won in five rounds, when her opponent didn't answer the bell for the sixth round. Her second bout was similar, and she won in 8 rounds. She was not as lucky on her third bout.
Tanya was up against a strong opponent that knew how to wrestle, a style she had never practiced. Marta grabbed her every chance she could, and applied painful joint locks on her extremities. Tanya's fitness training helped her a lot, as she had built up a lot of muscle around the joints, supporting and strengthening them. Her muscles also helped her to break out of some of the less powerful locks, even if only with one arm. With one arm free, she could proceed to punch Marta in the most vulnerable spot available, causing her to release her hold.
Tanya had just gotten free from one of Marta's holds leaving Marta in pain from her punches. But before Tanya could recover fully, Marta reached around behind Tanya's back and grabbed her arms, pinioning them behind her. With her free fist, she pummeled Tanya's stomach with hard punches aimed just above her navel. Tanya was getting back the punishment she had been giving out.
Marta had the hard, thick arm muscles of a wrestler. She used these strong muscles to throw short, strong jabs into Tanya's stomach, pushing her fist deep into the muscles. Tanya's stomach muscles could take a strong, fast punch without collapsing. But these punches were different. It was if someone were hitting her with a sledge hammer, then standing on it to push it further into her stomach. She could feel her stomach muscles collapsing with each punch, being crushed by the pressure of Marta's fist being pushed hard into her stomach. She was rapidly losing all her stomach muscle strength, as each punch penetrated deep into her stomach causing her intense pain. She tried getting her arms free, but was held tight. She knew she had to do something or she would be forced to admit defeat before too much longer.
Each punch was now a blast of pain that radiated outward from the point of impact to the rest of her stomach. And it was rapidly spreading to the rest of her body. There was only one way she could think of to escape. She bent backward, exposing her arched and vulnerable stomach to the pounding it was taking, which intensified the pain of each punch ten fold. But, it freed her leg. She kicked up high with her leg and brought it back down fast into Marta's leg, knocking it out from under her. This broke her hold on Tanya, who rapidly escaped.
Marta got up fast. Trying to ignore the inferno still raging in her stomach, Tanya backed away from Marta. For the rest of the round, Tanya tried to stay away from Marta to let herself recover. She was grateful when the bell rang ending that round.
Back in her corner, she told her manager Tony to massage her stomach hard. He was reluctant at first, as he was a little embarrassed. He had only given his wards advice and seen to their needs. He had never even thought of this type of physical contact with one of them. Tanya, understanding his reluctance, told him it was all right, and that it was the only way to ease the pain from her recent pounding. With that assurance, he got to work deeply massaging her stomach where she had been punched. He could see this was hurting her a lot, as she was biting her lip to stifle a whimper. But, he continued. He knew she would stop him if he went too far.
By the warning whistle, Tanya was in better shape. While the pain wasn't gone, it now was only a dull ache spread over the whole of her stomach. There were no longer any sharp stabs of pain whenever she flexed her stomach a little. She was actually able to stand up and flex her body backward, stretching her stomach muscles, as the bell went off for the next round.
This round, Tanya used her strong kicks to keep Marta at a distance, retracting her leg rapidly to prevent her from grabbing it. She never let Marta close within grappling distance the whole round. And her kicks more often than not found their target. Marta was starting to tire as she was forced to keep trying to close on Tanya. Finally, four rounds later, Marta quit, giving Tanya a victory in her hardest fight so far. She went back toward her dressing room, but went straight into the shower, bikini and all. She stayed there under the hot, stinging water until just before her next bout.
Her fourth bout was uneventful compared with the previous one. She won after eight rounds. Her only problem was that her opponent would not stay down. Tanya would knock her down, but she would get back up and continue the fight. The referee finally had to stop the fight and declare a Technical Knockout when she was so tired and dazed she could not even respond to the referee asking her if she wanted to submit. Tanya had a lot of respect for her, as she never quit. With some more training and a lot more muscle and conditioning, she would have been the winner of this contest. Tanya thought she may be supplanting Maria as the queen of the club in a couple years. Tanya was back in her dressing room waiting for her last bout, the fight for the title, when one of the other girls burst into her room. She yelled, "Maria's been defeated! And by a new girl!"
Tanya had seen how fierce a fighter Maria was and knew how highly her fighting skills were regarded by those who had seen her fight regularly, so she was a little worried at hearing this news. However, she had gone this far and was not about to quit now.
Tanya walked into the club to the cheers of the crowd. Tony, her manager, met her at the door and followed her, directing her to her corner. There, he held the ropes for her and she slipped into the ring. The announcer came into the ring and announced her, to the applause of the crowd.. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her opponent just getting into the ring, as Tony had turned her around to put her gloves on and get them adjusted tightly around her fists.
The announcer announced, "And in this corner, Lilly from California!" Tanya thought, "So, another American. I wonder why I keep running into Lilly's?" and she turned around to survey her opponent.
Not Lilly, but Lily! HER Lily!
Tanya was shocked by this, but had no time to ponder it as the referee called both fighters to the center of the ring. Tanya had a million questions she wanted to ask Lily, the foremost being what she was doing here, but she knew she would not get the chance, probably until well after the fight.
The referee went over the rules, as minimal as they were, then told them to touch gloves and go back to their corners. They touched gloves, and Lily winked at her and smiled. They both nodded to each other, signifying to each other that they would be going full out with no punches pulled, then turned and walked back to their corners. Lily had been a top fighter in the kickboxing competitions she had entered. Tanya knew that. Her only advantage was that Lily had come from her previous bout directly into this one, while Tanya had had a period to relax. But she knew that this was not a real advantage, as she had already fought Lily before and had lost.
That last fight at the beach house, she had really been trying to win and had gone all out. She figured that if Lily started losing there, she could fake getting knocked out, letting Lily win as was written in the script. But Lily had won that fight, being a much stronger fighter than she was. Tanya had picked up a few tricks this last week herself that she fully intended to use to her advantage, so this fight would probably be a tough one, but the outcome was by no means certain.
At the bell, both fighters came out fast from their corners to the center of the ring. Tanya threw the first punch, but only by a fraction of a second. She had to dodge and get her other glove in the way to stop Lily's punch. Neither of the punches hit home. Each followed up with a second, then third punch, as fast as they could throw them. This flurry of punches continued.
Usually, fighters are cautious the first round, and throw only light punches and feints to feel out the other fighter and to gage their skill level. In this case, they each knew enough about the other's style to ignore the first round slowness. So, they got right to work trying to knock the other one out of the competition, with no preliminaries. Lily was still faster than Tanya. She made contact several times during that first round, once to Tanya's head and the rest to her body. But the blows did only minor damage. Maybe Lily was tired, as she had certainly punched harder before. Tanya only scored with a couple punches, but she saw each one did much more damage, based on Lily's reaction to them. At the end of the first round, they appeared to be even.
The second round, Tanya tried her trick of keeping her guard high and letting Lily punch her stomach. She knew Lily had a strong punch that had incapacitated her previously with a single blow, but she also knew she couldn't keep Lily's punches away from her stomach throughout the fight; that eventually, one would get through. She wanted to control the moment of that punch, so she would be ready for it. So, she kept her fists high.