8
“Well, we’re finally here,” Billy “the Eclipse” Bonner said to UBA boxing fans around the world.
There was no blackout that night. Every seat in the stadium sold for a thousand dollars or more. Movie stars, political leaders, gangsters, Backgrounders, and thieves were present. More women than men filled the 120,000 seats; 750,000,000 people around the world had paid the one hundred dollar pay-per-view price.
“You better believe it, Champ,” Chet Atkinson replied. “This is the most important night in the history of boxing. This is it. The battle of the sexes, the War of the Roses. Lady Macbeth and Don Corleone. D Day. Tonight Fera Jones goes after Travis Zeletski’s undisputed heavyweight crown in a fight they said could never happen.”
“All the regulars are here tonight, Chet, but there are some who never come to these matches. Lana Lordess, governor of Massachusetts and head of the FemLeague, is in attendance, as is the secretary of state. Prince Peter of Great Britain and Premier Hernandez of Cuba are also in the audience. They might do better to have political analysts than two barkers like us.”
“That may be, Champ, but we can worry about the world tomorrow. Tonight there’s a fight we have to get through. What are the main strengths and weaknesses we should be looking for?”
“Well, the main thing is the body. Both of these boxers bang pretty hard to the ribs and liver. They’re both good on the inside. Jones is the taller of the two but only by a quarter of an inch. Zeletski measures six eight and three-quarters. He’s got a slight reach advantage at eighty-five inches and he’s the heavier of the two by ten pounds. Moscow-born Zeletski has been fighting since he was ten. He has a good solid jab, a shuddering right cross, and a left hook that we haven’t seen since the days of Joe Frazier. He’s lean and fast and knows how to cut off the ring.
“Fera Jones is the boxer’s boxer when she keeps her cool. She can dance and she can sting. Both gloves have knockout power. Her weaknesses are her tendency to cut and her temper. When Fera gets mad she throws caution to the wind, and that’s a dangerous attitude when you’re facing a wily opponent with knockout power.”
“What are Zeletski’s weaknesses?” Chet Atkinson asked.
“He’s pretty good all around, but the one thing he has to watch out for is the mistake of treating Jones like a woman. She’s a female, but so is the lady tiger. If he lets up at all it will be his downfall.”
“How do you see the fight unfolding, Champ?”
The close-up of the boxer/announcer’s face revealed the scars under his makeup, small mementos of his eighty-seven fights. There were blemishes on the whites of his eyes and one cheekbone appeared flatter than the other. He seemed to chew on each word before letting it go.
“This is going to be a tough fight for both boxers. Jones’s new trainer, Pell Lightner, has no real experience in the game. He’s a newcomer but he gives good advice. As you know, Fera’s father is hovering between life and death at this moment at Staten Island’s Neurological Institute, going through the preparations to receive a tissue transplant to reverse the effects of a decade of Pulse use.”
“Will she be able to put it out of her mind and concentrate on the fight?”
“Only time will tell. But even if she can, it will still be a grueling twelve rounds.”
The announcers talked for another forty minutes before the fighters were in the ring, and fifteen minutes more while a fight that broke out on the floor was being stopped. It was a full hour before the first bell rang.
In the years since, the first minute of that round has been discussed, watched over, and compared to other great fights in pugilism history. The only way to see it is in slow motion.
Zeletski came out quickly with his hands up and his jab pumping. He hit Fera’s nose seven times in less than five seconds. Each blow jolted her dirty blond hair. Each blow landed because Fera kept her hands down, not protecting herself. Zeletski gained confidence and threw a left hook into Jones’s side. The blow could be heard at ringside.
Fera smiled and waved her hands for him to do it again.
He did.
Fera flinched and buckled some but her smile remained.
The referee was worried. The announcers were too.
Zeletski grinned and nailed Jones with a straight right hand. While she fell back he sent a roundhouse left.
That was his mistake.
Or maybe the mistake was getting into the ring that evening. Maybe there was no beating Jones that night.
Fera moved gracefully under the looping left hand and then rose delivering a textbook right uppercut. Most analysts say that that was the end of the fight. The impact threw Zeletski back so violently that his left fist boomeranged, making his own glove the source of the second blow of the combination. The third, fourth, and fifth blows were left jabs, and even though Jones missed the following right cross, she followed with a left hook that Zeletski himself says caused the blindness in his right eye and the loss of hearing in that side’s ear.
By that time the referee was jumping to save the Russian’s life. Fera Jones’s punches were so hard and fast that they kept the now unconscious Zeletski from falling. The referee had to wrestle Fera to the floor to stop her. Pell ran to his aid by sitting hard on his fighter’s chest.
She threw them off, but by that time her bloodlust was waning. Zeletski lay on the canvas, surrounded by parmeds and bleeding from his ear and mouth. While he was carried from the ring on a stretcher, Fera’s hand was being raised in victory.
And when the camera crews came to get her statement, to hear what was next for the invincible Fera Jones, millions around the world and some in the front row froze to hear her answer.
Sweat was pouring down the twenty-one-year-old’s face. She was breathing hard and smiling.
“First I want to thank Diana for my strength and Legba for my man...”
Lana Lordess rose to leave.
“... but this win is for my daddy,” Fera said.
“I’ll be the first to admit that I never thought I’d see this day,” Billy Bonner said during the postfight interview. “Zeletski is the best we men have to offer, and you finished him in under a minute.”
“It was meant to be,” Fera said. She was looking into Pell Lightner’s eyes.
“I know that your father is being operated on at this moment. You must be worried about him.”
“I’m not worried. I’m a fighter. He is too.”
“What’s next for you, Fera Jones?”
“Luna Land. I’m going to Luna Land.”
9
At three the next morning Fera and her boyfriend were the only ones in the waiting room outside the operating theater where Leon Jones was having brain tissue transplanted into his cortex. Pell had crawled under a row of chairs where he seemed to be sleeping.
“Pipi,” Fera whispered.
The young man opened his eyes. “Yeah?”
Fera went to sit on the floor next to him. “I been thinkin’.”
“ ’Bout what?”
“About my mom and all those things Lordess said. About you.”
“Me?”
“Daddy’s always sayin’ that boxing is just a metaphor.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when you call something one thing but really it’s something else.”
“Huh?”
“Like if I called somebody a worm or a germ or a dog. He’s not really, but then again he is.”
“I get ya.”
“Me boxing is like that. They put me out there to stand for the poor girl who can’t fight for herself, guy too.”
“So I see you fighting and I feel like it’s me out there?” Pell pulled out from under the chairs to sit by his lover.