The Art of Being Tony (Tony Winters Book 1) Read online

  The big boxer, who did look hard after all his recent weight loss, nodded slowly.

  “Yeah? What have you got for me?”

  “Dan ‘Savage’ Tindal. His record is decent, but nothing you can’t beat. Fourteen- two- two. He tends to be a brawler, but is sloppy. Especially when he gets tired, which varies a lot for him. If he’s been taking this seriously, it might not be until the later rounds. You’re ready for that. You’ve been working your fundamentals for the last two months and it’s going to be hard for him to hit you.” That was a relative thing though. After all, if you boxed, you got hit.

  If the man was going to step into the ring with him, instead of a professional fighter, he would have known that they’d be trading punches, at least until Anthony was knocked out after a minute or so. It nearly didn’t have to be mentioned, but Mark was nervous, so nodded anyway rather than saying something mean. Not that it wouldn’t be easy enough to come up with something for that. For instance, he probably shouldn’t have been saying anything, letting Rick do that part. The person in charge.

  He just sat back, listening however. Everyone except the driver was.

  Anthony started to feel shy, but kept going, leaning in a bit and trying to seem confident. These people liked that kind of thing. You had to be right, as well. That was a given, but if you were, then they preferred a person that didn’t hold back much.

  “You have him on endurance and conditioning, as a bet. He has you on power, as far as individual punches go, since he loads his about half the time. Going for the big knock out. If you have your guard up, that’s going to blunt a lot of that. He isn’t really stronger than you, so don’t forget that. He does have a few flashy moves, but that’s most of what he’s got to come at you with. Even if he tries to change that up and actually box suddenly, you’re better than he is, skill wise.” That had been clear from the tapes, even if no one had mentioned it.

  Brawlers could and did, win at times. Forgetting that would be a massive problem for Mark.

  Rick nodded a bit, but narrowed his eyes. Still, he didn’t say anything.

  Denny however, did.

  “That’s true. You also have him on hand speed.”

  That got a nod, from almost everyone. It was a trade off, but true enough. If you went for power all the time, you had to pull back and use your whole body for each blow. A good boxer could hit someone five times with a jab before one massive punch could be thrown off.

  Even Tony could have hit the guy twice in that time. Maybe three times. The thing there was that what you did to move fast, not committing the body, just using the arm, didn’t carry much stopping power. Mark could slug it out, but that was, as a boxer, his weakest point. He preferred technical fighting and was good at it, but if the man coming at you was just throwing half wild punches, you had to land a lot of your own to keep him at bay.

  Looking around, he made a face.

  “Now, for the specifics, I think that Rick should do that part?” After all, Tony would make sure that Mark had the best advice he could get. Even if he didn’t love him all the time. Right at that moment that meant professional advice. Not something coming from the new kid.

  Which apparently was the right thing to do.

  They didn’t go over things the whole time, because it was a four-hour trip, so they took a break in the middle of it and of all things, watched a movie. It wasn’t even Rocky or anything inspirational. Just a thing about a soccer playing dog.

  It was cute, but not very realistic. After all, the little tan guy on the screen couldn’t really kick at all and just kind of hit the black and white ball with its shoulder. They did cover that there was no rule saying that the players all had to be human, which was probably true.

  So when the final team brought in a kangaroo to go up against the tiny dog, it was totally fair. The pooches team won in the end, due to a combined sacrifice, made by the dog and the boy that owned him. Basically they set the kid up to kick the final goal, while the dog and he, were both launched painfully into the air by the evil kangaroo squad.

  Causing them to both end up in casts, but taking their team to victory.

  In all, it was kind of ridiculous, but no one mentioned that part. Jen just cuddled up against Rick’s arm as they watched, Mark looking at the screen a bit vapidly. Doc Hampshire actually read the whole time, from an electronic book device. Anthony had to admit he was a bit jealous.

  It was different trying to go without fast food and eat only meat and salad, with a bit of fruit now and then. He missed television a bit too, having watched only fights for the last month and a bit, except for three minutes each morning when he looked at The Weather Channel. Books though, that one was hard to kick. Most of what he knew had come from that sort of thing. Mainly from libraries and second hand book stores, but they’d been what had shown him that life wasn’t just what he saw, day to day. That out there, someplace in the world, people had adventures and good lives. Even, at times, that they could get ahead by working hard.

  Even comic books had that kind of thing in them if you knew to look. The hero didn’t just win, most of the time. Not in the books he liked. They fought and struggled and went from the bottom, or near that, to protecting innocent people. Sometimes at great cost to themselves. That was a thing that his real life hadn’t actually informed him about. Not really.

  Everyone just looked out for themselves and screwed over whoever they had to, in order to get what they wanted. Even his mother had done that. Often with him. As a kid there had been a lot of times where she’d spent her last few bucks on cigarettes, instead of food for him, for instance. Honestly, he kind of thought that even Denny, or Mark, would have made sure some random kid they didn’t know ate, before they did anything like that. Not that they smoked, but the idea was the same.

  It was like there were actually decent people in the world.

  Worse, they seemed to want him to be that way too. It was getting hard to keep his act up, at times. Tony was a great guy, maybe. Strong and he didn’t quit, or whine about anything. He did his share of the house cleaning and more, at least once he’d learned how to do it. At the gym, it was the same way. Tony showed up and did everything, exactly the way that Rick and Jen wanted him to. To the very best of his ability.

  That part was fine, but sooner or later he was going to mess up. Not be able to push anymore, or possibly he’d get sick. Then… Well, he didn’t know what would happen. Most likely, it would be everyone being nice to him and helping him past the rough spot. Which only partially seemed right.

  It made sense, if he was going to be helping them and they wanted him back on his feet, but… Really, he wasn’t doing enough so far. Not to earn what was being given. Even the first day they’d put him in a nice room that had its own bathroom. Just the rent for that would be more than he could possibly be making.

  The event itself was a bit boring, since they only had one fighter doing anything that night. Mark was up for the last match, too. Nine rounds, which actually played a little bit toward Tindal’s side, since the other man tended to be a bit heavy around the middle. Twelve rounds would have set up Mark better, given the work he’d been putting in. Tindal’s love handles were probably from love of food, rather than being lazy. Their fighter looked a lot sharper when they both got into the ring and were called out.

  There was polite enough clapping for both men, but neither had the home ring advantage. The venue was huge and a little over three quarters full, which was, Jen had assured him, good for a boxing match at that level.

  When the fight started, the crowd got their money’s worth. The two men met in the middle of the ring and Mark practically floated from side to side, hitting Tindal in the head, fairly hard, almost every time the other man loaded up a big punch. It clearly pissed the guy off, making him try even harder. In the fourth round the other man was practically foaming at the mouth, desperately trying to hit Mark, when everything changed.

  They closed then and while Mark was battered by some
really hard blows, only a few actually hit home. Tindal on the other hand, was being worn down, over the course of the night, until finally, he tried so hard to hit Mark that he slipped and landed on the mat. He scrambled to get up, but Anthony could hear Rick yell something from the corner.

  “Load him up!”

  After that, there was no rest for Tindal in that ring. It was hard, brutal, non-stop battering. Done with better than decent technical form, though that floated out a bit. Mainly in that Mark started to let his hands drop. It was a thing that everyone that had fought knew and that the people watching probably didn’t really get. After a while, it became almost impossible to hold your hands up any more. They just got too heavy, no matter how strong you were.

  That meant Tindal rocked their man back, catching him in the head with a mean right. It didn’t take him down. No, instead it was returned in kind. The set up wasn’t a good one. For a few blows, Mark just traded with the other man. They were equally strong, but that wasn’t what the plan had been. Mark should have been holding to good form, instead of trying to knock the man out like that.

  Which, apparently, he remembered after the bell rang and came back out, blocking and moving back enough for Tindal to become entirely sloppy. His gut heaved as he sucked air in and he fought pretty hard, but still went down in the ninth round, not making it to his feet before the count was up.

  Unlike with Riley at the last fight night, Tindal just hugged Mark a bit and accepted that the other man had won. It was better that way and left the crowd happier. It had been a good fight, really. There were things that could be fixed, no doubt, but most of the easy stuff would really be on the other side.

  Thankfully, he had to doubt that Tindal’s team was going to come for him to find out what they needed to do. Then, they probably knew already. If Anthony did, then they would.

  There was no way that they were getting in until near daylight, however. Things had run late and it was almost one in the morning when they got out to the bus, since Rick had to go off to talk to someone. What that was about wasn’t made clear, but Denny whispered to him as they got on the bus.

  “That’s Don Teevan. He’s huge in the fight game. A promoter.”

  “Ah.” It would have been better if he could have said that he knew what that meant, but it wasn’t happening that day. Rick was back with them in half an hour though, give or take and they were heading back directly enough. Almost everyone else was able to at least doze on the bus, but that wasn’t going to happen for him, so he just sat there, wondering why they’d had their own doctor with them. She hadn’t done anything all night and really there was no need for someone with real credentials just to act as a cut man. A few of the other fighters had bled a bit, but Mark was fine. Even Tindal had been, in the end. It was probably just a precaution, since they were so far from home.

  When they got in, it was nearly six, which meant that, tired or not, good boy Tony was going to have to run, get a shower and some sweats and then open things up for the day. On the way home, he nudged Jen, pushing on her arm a bit.

  “You two can get some sleep. We’re going to run faster this afternoon, so be ready for that.” It was a short run for him and his speed had gone up a lot, over the last few weeks.

  She grinned at him.

  “Thanks. Raul was talking about you, the other day. He wants to know what your hourly rates are for sparring. I think he wants to get Nick set up for that. Call it Wednesday?”

  He blinked and then nodded. He’d heard of people getting paid for that kind of thing. Not all the time and it seemed a bit weird that the man wouldn’t just ask him about it, since Nick had worked with him before, helping him out.

  “For Nick? Free, of course. How many rounds? Twelve? Or, ten, I guess? Double what he’d see in a pro fight, right?” That was the rule, he thought. Even if no one did it most of the time. It meant that some of the boxers had to try for twenty-four rounds when they were going in for title matches. Really, they needed to set that up before that. If it worked then, it should work for people that weren’t at that level yet.

  Rick looked at him and then gave a single nod as they walked along.

  “You should set that up for Ash too, Jen. Maybe on Monday? It’s been hard finding anyone near her size that will work with her like a person and not a china doll. Dani isn’t horrible, but she’s a bit weak in some areas, still.”

  Anthony shook his head, his eyes already a bit heavy.

  “And I’m not? We can do that though. Her fight is in mid-July right? No one has said much about that yet.”

  Rick turned to go up the front walk of the house, which needed to have the yard taken care of. It was small and there were flowers growing in the tiny bed, but there were weeds too, which needed to be pulled. That was made clear, since Jen started to stop and do that.

  “I need to be better about this, but I’ve been so busy.”

  His uncle just opened the door and waved them inside. The air was brisk, but not really cold. It was June, after all, heading toward July.

  “Ashley is going up against the tenth highest ranked female MMA fighter. Fox Rends. She used to be a man, until about two years ago and fought in the lower ranks of the professional men’s field. No one else will touch a match with her, after she messed up Missy Holms six months ago. They figure that it’s cheating, since she has a biological advantage. Ashley can beat her, even with that, but we need to get people in with her that won’t hold back so much. That and who will force her to bring her best game on her feet. Ash knows submission and rolling. The big thing will be in making sure she’s ready to be hit by a man. If she can take that, she can win.”

  As they got in, Anthony nodded, not getting all of what was being said clearly. He didn’t think that was the case, at any rate. It didn’t make a lot of sense to let someone that had been born a man fight women, from a strength perspective. It would be like letting a woman take steroids when the others weren’t allowed. Still, sometimes the opponent was just stronger than you were and that was what you had to deal with. It didn’t mean they were going to instantly win.

  “I’ll try to do what I can that way. I wish I was better. Then I could be of more help.”

  The words got him patted, by Jen, but no one commented on them, just going in to sleep. On the good side Rick got into work early enough for him to get to the late service again at First Baptist. Then he spent the rest of the day trying to work out how to really help Ash.

  The truth was that, while he had decent cardio endurance, he wasn’t that great at the rest of things. Fighting took pretty much everything you had that way. Speed, power and muscular endurance. It was at least as important for grappling as boxing, too. Probably any kind of fighting, really.

  The best he could really come up with was to find some old footage of Fox Rends, both from the last year and when she used to be a man and then go over what they did in a fight. The patterns were the same, regardless of hormone treatments. The commentary on that was a bit brutal, after the change, since Fox hadn’t come out being exactly pretty.

  She had gone in for the full operation, so was pretty committed to the whole thing. It wasn’t a joke, or a way to get some wins that she couldn’t manage as a man. Even though that had kind of been true. In raw skill, she wasn’t really a great fighter. Better on her feet than on the ground. Fox had a weak guard, but tended to subdue the females she worked with by doing a simple ground and pound. A double leg takedown, into a mount position, then beating them while sitting on top.

  Basically meaning that Ashley just had to get past the raw strength part of things in order to win. The stuff that was a problem for them, finding someone tough to actually spar with her. That evening was spent in front of the television, going over moves that would mimic the same style that Ash had to be ready for. Alternating with cleanup and towel duties.

  Thankfully Rick let him use the television in his office for that part. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked. He also helped him out a bit, getting
some props for the next day. Not that it was going to be exactly right, but it should, if not taken as a joke, which it kind of was, help to set the mood up well enough.

  It required a bit of hokey music, which was from a classic fight movie track and a fog machine. That and a woman’s fight outfit, which meant borrowing a sports bra from Jen. The shorts too, except that he actually wore a cup, not wanting to have his goodies slammed first thing. That wasn’t going to work against Fox that well, after all.

  Ashley went out onto the mat like a normal person, but then the lights dimmed and the music started playing, along with Anthony dressed up like Fox Rends to the best of his ability, punching the air and making outrageous dance movements with his behind, copying the tapes exactly. She’d only started all of that after the change, but she really did it at all of her fights, now.

  It was true that Fox had a better chest going than Anthony did, but the rest of it was kind of similar. They both had the bodies of in-shape men. If anything, he was a bit smaller that way, being lighter by a few pounds. Not as dark either, since it was clear that Fox loved to tan.

  Jen, having been up on things, came to the center of the ring and acted like it was a real fight. Except that it was for ten rounds, not four or five. Three minutes though, since it was training for a women’s match-up.

  “In the blue we have our own, Ashley Lancaster! In the sexy black, we have Faux Rends! You know the rules. Just like all the sparring matches. Lose a mouthpiece or a glove and we stop the fight until it’s fixed. If your opponent taps out, stop instantly. When in doubt, pull back. Ready? Let’s get it on!”

  Then, after tapping gloves, Anthony raised his hands and darted in with a fast backhand, slapping Ash in the face. It got her to put her guard up, since it probably stung a little. It was exactly the move that Fox had used in nearly half her fights. A weak attack, but done hard enough that most of the women were stunned for a few seconds, letting her come in for a double leg.

  That was pretty much the only throw that was ever used by the woman. It worked too and Ash went down, decently hard, letting him climb on top. Then he started to hit her. Hard. It wasn’t anything near what Fox would be doing, since she was probably stronger than Anthony by a good bit. Thankfully, Ash recovered and pulled him close, making it harder to get any solid blows in. He kept doing it, making little, very short, punches at her head on the right hand side, while pushing against her face and throat, trying to get away enough to either stand or batter her.