“You okay?”
“Okeydoke, let’s hit a road,” replied Scuzzy.
For the rest of the round, Mambo kept Scuzzy at the end of his left jab but did not commit to a power punch as the Bucharest Brawler’s eyes were clear as a Quaker’s rap sheet. Little did Mambo look forward to sampling Scuzzy’s punches if his fists proved as hard as his jaw. At the bell, Scuzzy dribbled down onto his stool, more exhausted than injured.
“Where’s the cutman?” roared Viddi.
“I’m the cutman,” drawled Beardy, brandishing the corkscrew on his Swiss Army knife.
“He’ll never walk again,” some ringside wisenheimer cracked.
“Cut his eyelid,” commanded Viddi.
“But no hit in eye,” remonstrated Scuzzy.
As he announced his new strategy, Viddi poured liberally from the bottle of Alabama Mama down Scuzzy’s throat. “Okay, you gotta gimp the geezer. Go whorehouse on him. Then go roughhouse. Go whorehouse again, then go to town on him with the world and his wife watching.”
“I go to town with wife?”
“Go old school on him.”
“We go to school?”
“Remember what Abe Lincoln said,” injected Beardy. “We shall fight them bitches. We shall never surrender.”
“You have to Jones him. Then give him a kisser-upper. Throw in a little Archie Moore. Once you’re done Mongoosing, use love taps.”
“I bring no taps.”
“And try catching him with a Hail Mary. Then it’s bedtime for Bonzo.”
“I pray?”
Referee Thorndigger caught a faint but mysterious whiff as he passed Scuzzy’s corner. “You whooping it up between rounds?”
After all the Alabama Mama, Scuzzy plodded out of his corner wobblier than he went in. This time, Mambo came out with a straight right, catching the YMCU champion flush. The primitive one went southpaw, laying thunderous right hooks on Scuzzy, snapping his neck back each time. Not to a cheering corner did the Bucharest Brawler return.
“I said left, left, left,” crowed Viddi. “How difficult is that for a Communist to understand?”
“I go left, left all the time and he hit me.”
“No, no, to my left. First you Obi-Wan Kenobi the bum, then go south on him when sourpuss isn’t giving you a gander-and throw in a little thumb for good measure,” exclaimed Viddi before darting to the middle of the ring.
Viddi stood himself in front of Referee Thorndigger, halting the popular march of Pixie the card girl to the bitter disappointment of the whole auditorium. “I wish to file an objection. On deep background,” added Viddi as the crowd remonstrated with abandon.
“Get back to your corner before I DQ your drunken heinie,” thundered Referee Thorndigger.
“I’m claiming unfair distraction in breach of the letter and spirit of the Queensberry Rules and the Tammany Hall Regulations of Fistic Fighting.”
“Stop your yappin’ and get back to your corner, pronto.”
“The ringading’s shaking her tush at my guy much more than she’s sashaying for the house fighter. That’s dirty pool.”
“Never mind her tush. Get out of my ring.”
Distraught, Pixie returned to her seat only to find Mercy Beaucoup firmly in place between Trixie and Lulu claiming to be a model scout from Nouvelle Vouge.
“Why you piss off referee, Viddo?” For the first time, Scuzzy seemed to be taking an interest in the proceedings as Rhino spilled more Alabama Mama down his gob.
“Psychological warfare, my friend. Boxing’s a battle of minds,” quoth Viddi, pointing to his forehead as he liberated the bottle from Rhino and partook of it unstintingly.
For the last three rounds, Mambo le Primitif had pounded his opponent with every fiber in his body and then some. Yet he had never witnessed boxing tactics as exhibited in this match and grown more and more apprehensive, mindful of stories of boxers from strange lands resorting to hemlocked gloves and breathing garlic into their adversary’s eyes.
As Mambo paused for the briefest of flashes to appraise Scuzzy’s Lithuanian defense pose, popular at the Prussian Kriegsakademie in 1805, the Bucharest Brawler appeared to melt down into the canvas before emerging again with a nuclear left uppercut, leaving Mambo suspended in air for a twinkling. Once landed, Mambo-who had never tasted the canvas-adopted the peekaboo stance while Scuzzy proceeded to pummel him into the corner.
Before he could scarcely walk, Viddi’s grandmother Amma Hia (who upon a time spent her entire lottery winnings on stock in the Hindenburg) taught him the Nordic adage, “You can’t fool the country pumpkin.” He was not raised to be taken in by such threadbare shenanigans just as his careful study of the manly art of self-defense was about to bear fruit. Immune to the transparent posturing of Mambo and his handlers, Viddi shot to the ringside table. “I demand this travesty be paused for deliberations.”
Bert Yulson, the New York boxing commissioner, thought he recognized the rather obstreperous gentleman with the funny hat from somewhere.
“My fighter’s shoelace is practically undone and the referee ain’t doing a blessed thing about it,” complained Viddi.
“I don’t see anything wrong with his shoelace.” Mr. Yulson was as calm as Bournemouth in winter.
“It’s coming apart any minute. That bum’s playing possum, just waiting for my guy to slip on his own shoelace.”
Mambo had yet to respond to the last three overhead rights from Scuzzy as the crowd clamored for the fight to be stopped when Viddi, seeing through their pathetic ruse, jumped over the ropes as Referee Thorndigger was just about to step in.
“I demand my guy be allowed to tie his shoelace,” roared Viddi as every soul in the auditorium rose in protest to his intervention.
“Are you out of what passes for your mind?” growled Referee Thorndigger in disbelief.
“But I make Mambo kaput,” objected Scuzzy.
A ruckus broke out, the scope of which was unheard of in the annals of the noble art of self-defense. The ensuing melee lasted almost fifteen minutes, with the crowd in attendance throwing everything not bolted to the floor into the ring while Viddi argued with Referee Thorndigger and Referee Thorndigger argued with the boxing commission and the boxing commission argued with Viddi whether Scuzzy should be disqualified for Viddi’s stepping in as Viddi tugged at Referee Thorndigger’s sleeve expounding the letter and spirit of the Queensberry rules and those of the Ukrainian Athletic Association to which the U.S. was a signatory member since the 1896 Athens Olympics while Beardy emptied the last dregs of Alabama Mama, no longer having to share the murderous mead with Viddi.
Before starting the fight once again, Referee Thorndigger gave Scuzzy a long, harder-than-granite look and grumbled, “Whatever you’re paying this guy, it’s too much.” Without further ado Scuzzy resumed his biffing of Mambo.
“Too bad Mambo doesn’t have the presence of mind to employ the same tactic I did,” Mercy Beaucoup muttered rather loudly, already making quite an impression on the ring girls.
“You fought the Hungarian?” squeaked Pixie. “What happened?” echoed Trixie.
“All I say is, good thing it was stopped,” answered Mercy Beaucoup, his shiner lending credence to the grandeur of his statement.
“Ooooo,” cooed Pixie and Trixie in saucy unison.
As the bell rang for the last time, Mambo was held up by his tribal dignity alone while Referee Thorndigger’s scowl betrayed his concern.
Alas, the last of the Alabama Mama had somewhat diminished Viddi’s and Beardy’s professional acumen. “Stop the bleeding,” commanded Viddi, stepping with force on Scuzzy’s toe. As the boxer howled like a Steppenwolf, desperate to extricate his foot from under his trainer’s heel, Viddi rose to the occasion. “Hurry up. Can’t you see he’s in pain?”