Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
BAILEY
The positions. The striking angles. The way distance works.
But there’s something about being in the space where violence is happening that changes your relationship to it.
The sound is different. The smell is different.
The temperature of the air changes. The floor underneath your feet vibrates with the collective energy of thousands of people watching someone risk their body.
I’m in the waiting area, sitting on a bench, still in my street clothes. The fight is in four hours. The preliminary bouts won’t start for another three hours. But I’m here early because waiting in the hotel room was making me worse and here, at least, the energy is part of the ritual.
Around me, other fighters are doing their own versions of the waiting.
Some are shadowboxing in corners. Some are just sitting, breathing, running the fight in their heads.
Some are on the phone with people on the outside, trying to maintain connection to the world while their nervous system is preparing for violence.
This is the thing nobody tells you about fighting: the physical part isn’t actually the hardest. The hardest part is the waiting. The waiting is where your mind gets to work on you. The waiting is where doubt can creep in if you let it. The waiting is where champions separate from everyone else.
Fallon’s outside the facility right now.
Doing some kind of pre-fight ritual that’s hers alone.
She told me she has to do it by herself.
That she can’t be in the same space as her fighter the day-of because her anxiety would transfer.
That she needs to spend time alone in whatever room she finds, processing the plan, the contingencies, the thousand things that can go wrong.
She needs to mentally run through all of it so that come fight time, she’s not thinking about the contingencies. She’s just coaching.
“Morrison.”
Jake’s there. My brother. He took time off work to be here, which means money he doesn’t have and time he can’t afford to lose. But he showed up. He’s always shown up.
“You okay?” he asks. He’s sitting next to me, not touching, just present. That’s the thing about good family. They don’t need to do anything. They just need to exist in the space and that existence is enough.
“Nervous,” I tell him.
“Of what? The fighting?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not nervous about the fighting. I’m nervous about what I’m going to do after.”
Jake studies me for a moment. He knows there’s something. He’s known there’s something since I started training with Fallon. He’s seen the way I move around her. The way my breathing changes when she’s near. The way I’m different around her than I’m different around anyone else in the world.
“You’re going to tell her something,” he says.
“Maybe.”
“Bai, whatever it is?—”
“I know,” I say. “I know you’ve got my back.”
We sit in silence for a while. The arena is filling up around us. Fighters coming and going. Cornermen showing up. The preliminary fights are starting. I can hear the crowd noise from the arena floor, the ambient sound of violence being appreciated by thousands of people.
“You’re going to win today,” Jake says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you. You’re going to win today because you want it more than your opponent wants it. That’s the difference between a fighter and a person who fights for money. You’re going to go in there and you’re going to make him understand that he made the wrong choice getting into the cage with you.”
This is why I have brothers. This is why family matters.
Not because they understand the technical aspects of what you’re doing.
But because they understand you. They understand that when you’re nervous, you need someone to sit with you and tell you that you’re capable of the thing you’re about to do.
Four hours later, I’m in the locker room getting taped up.
The athletic commission official is checking my wraps, making sure they’re within regulation.
Fallon’s there, wrapped up in her own version of focus.
She’s here but not here. Her mind is running the fight in real time.
She’s already seen it happen a thousand times.
She’s already responded to every contingency.
“You ready?” she asks me, and the question contains something more than whether I’m ready for the fight.
The question contains asking if I’m ready for everything else.
Ready for the moment afterward when the adrenaline drops and clarity returns.
Ready for the possibility of victory and what that means.
Ready for the fact that I’m about to make a choice that’s going to change everything.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready.”