#fightpara

“Just stay down.”

Every word hurt to speak. Nearly as much as every breath hurt to take. 

“Please fucking stay down...” 

Because he honestly wasn’t sure how much more he could handle.

For a man who had resigned to losing as soon as he’d seen his name opposite Johnathan Parsons’, few had expected the fight to go the way that it had. Berat had endured more rounds than he could’ve hoped for. Landed more hits than he could’ve expected to on a man who’d been doing this for decades longer, and decades better. Yet there he was, in spite of it all, still standing, chest heaving, watching a certifiable monster hunched over in pain before him.

Silently praying he wouldn’t get back up. 

By all accounts, the Rutherford didn’t usually let her fights drag on for this long, lest she get bored. But there had been nothing boring about this exchange. Nor did he imagine she wanted someone so respected and feared amongst the British ranks to go down to somebody as insignificant as him. So it was settled: they were still head to head, bloodied and bruised, with eyes so swollen he could barely see the older man in front of him, until one of them could finally finish the job. And Berat truly wasn’t sure he had anything left in the tank to be the one to do it.

The Turk had come out swinging because he knew he had no other choice. He’d faced Johnathan once before (had been lucky to fucking survive that) and knew that his usual just wasn’t good enough to take him over the line. He had to be bold, take risks, grasp at every opportunity he possibly could... and he had. 

Not all of the risks had paid off, though. The state they were both in said as much. The men were exhausted, and were in agony even the adrenaline couldn’t mask. Had Lara had any mercy at all, she’d have called it a draw. Ended things before it got truly desperate. But they all knew mercy wasn’t a word in her vocabulary. Berat was concussed. Had lost at least one tooth. The mess his hands were in suggested he’d dished out plenty in return, yet he didn’t much feel like he was doing more than barely surviving. Johnathan’s nose looked broken, and that wasn’t to say the damage that’d been done below the surface. 

But no matter what Berat did, the monster kept coming right at him.

They’d both hit the canvas more than once. The last time, he was sure Parsons was going to put his hands around his throat and hold him there until he died.

This time, it was him, though.

Struggling, digging deep to find something to drag him back from the brink.

Maybe Berat should’ve seen it as an opening, a way to finally finish things, instead of a pause to take his own much needed break. Maybe he should’ve lunged and slammed the leader’s head into the fucking ground and just ended it; something he cared more about than the win, at this point. But his legs were like lead. Broken fingers throbbed. Every bone in his body ached. The skin on his face was pulled so damn tight over the swelling it was white hot. And he just couldn’t.

And that summed him up rather neatly, he supposed.

Never quite able to see things through to the end.

A perpetual fucking quitter.

“You think I’m going to stay down for someone like you?”

The words were so icy they were a certifiable gut punch without his opponent even lifting a finger. Berat absolutely despised the Rutherfords with every fibre of his being, but he’d sure never heard one speak to him with such mutual hatred before then. Disdain. Disgust. Determination. So focused was he on retaining consciousness, reaction times sluggish at best, that’d he’d barely had chance to open his mouth to curse before the old man had lurched toward him, new found energy and aggression boiling over.

He hadn’t had chance to get his hands up.

He’d barely had chance to try and steady himself on his feet to brace.

Not that any of it mattered.

When Johnathan collided with him, using the last of his energy in one enormous burst, he rammed the Turk head first into the post. Once by convenient accident. The second time, whilst he was dazed and confused from the first, with both hands, purposefully; maybe with the intention to end him and the fight.

Berat was sure he’d blacked out for a moment. 

When his eyes opened again, he was face down on the canvas; skin stuck to the material, caked in blood. The loss was so significant that it’d already started to pool. The Turk struggled to bring his hands to his sides. Leverage to attempt to get himself back to his feet. He could barely breathe; somehow, the excited screaming of the crowd just as asphyxiating as the pain ripping through his chest. 

He could hear someone calling his name, but he couldn’t figure out who.

Nobody had expected the exchange to be quite such a...show.

It seemed the Italians arrived in London with something to prove.

Living up to a reputation impressive enough to follow him from Porto Velho, Pecatti did not disappoint on a stage his finds so infamously easy. The older Seleznyov brother was certainly a formidable competitor, as always, but much to the dismay of the Russian crowd, the man’s ability to offer up any real resistance was short-lived. The fight, on the other hand, was not. The Italian had no qualms about dragging things out to showcase his immense talent in the ring. In fact, judging by the smiles, it seemed rather like he was enjoying himself.

Whilst the fights Ayaz had participated in before tonight were few and far between, whenever he did put his name down on the list, a masterclass typically followed. The Rutherford had honed his skills far beyond what the streets of Haringey had taught, and that much was made clear by his swift, clinical, militaristic approach in the ring. The fighter didn’t hesitate. Calculated each strike to an unmatched degree as well as everything else that came in between.

Perhaps that was why, when he greeted his opponent with a headbutt powerful enough to immediately put the man on the floor, it’d taken the crowd aback.

It was a hello in a language the street rats would understand.

-

“You got better at this, Ayaz.” “You didn’t. Maybe you could use another lesson from my ex-wife.” “Which one? They’re both fucking crazy.” “That’s very funny.”

-

Oh, he absolutely had gotten better.

It was precisely the reason that he’d used his new found status in Lara Rutherford’s good books to request the match up in the first place. Ayaz held bitterness for most of those in Haringey—they’d all done their part to make his younger life a living fucking hell—but there were few he hated more than the man he’d once called his best friend. The anger didn’t sway him, though. It didn’t make him sloppy. It didn’t make him impatient.

It made him a merciless fucking machine.

The crowd was ardently and loudly on his side—Rutherfords outnumbered most in attendance, after all—but in spite of all his ego, he didn’t let it go to his head. Ayaz’s assault was relentless. Hasan hadn’t even managed to draw blood until the third round, and even that had only been the result of a mistake on his enemy’s part. The matchup was unfair. In any other fighting ring, the skill disparity would’ve been condemned as negligent on Lara’s part.

But that was precisely the point, and the Rutherford loyalist didn’t give a shit about what was fair, and what was slaughter.

-

“How does it feel, knowing your sister is rooting for me and not you?” “Feels an awful lot like I don’t care. Happy to disappoint two sisters tonight.” “You? Disappointing women? Surely not...”

-

For a man struggling to keep on his feet, he sure could run his mouth.

Perhaps, had he focused more on avoiding Ayaz’s strikes instead of attempting to insult him, he would’ve been looking better. Still, it wasn’t entirely one sided. Eventually, the freshly minted Rutherford Lieutenant also started to feel the struggles and exhaustion of a match that’d dragged on for far too long. A showcase was one thing—he’d been hell bent on embarrassing Hasan in front of his peers as much as beating him—but it wasn’t worth making a mistake that’d cost him later now that standards were slipping on both sides.

Demir didn’t deserve the satisfaction.

So, after waiting patiently for the opening, Ayaz dealt a blow that put his opponent on the floor, once and for all. The man’s face looked like a Jackson Pollock and he still had the audacity to sneer like he was somehow better than him.

The Rutherford held up a hand in warning.

He said they were done. So they were done.

-

Initially, it had been shaping up to be a well-balanced fight. Whilst the Frenchman had the physique, the Rutherford had years of experience and technique to bridge the gap. Though the French crowd (still fired up from the previous exchange) were overwhelming in their support for their fellow fighter, it didn’t take them long to realise they were betting on the wrong horse. 

With masses to prove after his loss to a Frenchman the year prior, the Rutherford stepped into the ring with blistering fury, and a very personal need to take attention away from catastrophic loss of Dev earlier in the evening. Instead of said anger turning into erraticism, however, his military experience shone through; each crushing blow delivered cleanly, decisively, and with little opportunity for his opponent to do much more than attempt to defend himself.

Though never quite a crowd favourite in the same way as Dev, Seung-hyun’s terrifying reputation (to rival his fellow home fighter’s) was more than enough to encourage them onto his side. It was perhaps the quietest the audience had been all night; waiting to see whether the Russian would be able to find away around a man known for making martial arts look like exactly that. 

Seung-hyun immediately set the pace. Circled his opponent in the ring, baiting and goading, until the Baryshnikov’s impatience had him lashing out in the kind of frenzy expected of him. There was no denying the Russian’s talent for hard hitting, and his height and build gave him a notable physical advantage. But the Rutherford was unfazed. Seemed not to feel the pain or the stress; even as the blood poured from his nose, mouth, and anywhere else Andrei’s fists could make good contact. And in spite of looking the worse off physically of the two, he kept coming with precision strikes dangerous enough to give his opponent pause. 

Especially as Andrei began to tire.

From the first punch to land, it was abundantly clear that the fighters were not particularly well-matched. Despite the Russians cheering on their man as loyally as any other, it was not enough to carry him through the fight with the only man in Lara’s arsenal whose reputation rivalled Daryani’s. With speed as terrifying as his brute force, Seung-hyun dispatched his opponent quickly, cleanly, and with comparatively little effort to those who fought in the ring before them. It was enough to give many in the crowd pause, and a new person for the other fighters to fear facing at some point in the future. 

At least the Russian was able to exit the ring of his own accord.

Fresh off the (hopefully not literal) high of the previous French victory, Fournier entered the ring with an energy that would ultimately prove unmatchable for the duration of their fight. Despite the comfortable dominance of the older man, however, Nabirye was not without shining moments that had people hoping that this wouldn’t be both his first and last fight. The brawling nature of his attacks combined with a quick, well-refined defence smacked of future potential in the ring.

On paper, they were so evenly matched (at least in skillset) that it seemed near impossible to predict who the victor would be.

Naturally, that didn’t stop people from trying. 

The former soldier was quick to take advantage of the Frenchman’s slow start, and seemed to have entered into the exchange hoping to end it as quickly as he possibly could. The amount of time Cohen had spent in the ring compared with his opponent certainly made him seem more comfortable, but it didn’t take long for Lefebvre to find impressive stride. What was expected to be a masterclass of professional hand-to-hand soon descended into anything but. Neither man seemed interested in keeping things clean. Tensions were high, tempers seemed frayed, and the roaring of each fighter’s respective corner did little to deter them from seemingly looking for more than just a win.