Suckerpunch: (2011) Read Online Free PDF Page B

somewhere inconvenient.
     
    Jairo dropped into side mount, his torso on top of and perpendicular to mine. He gained about three hundred pounds and put them all on my lungs. He had his right elbow tight against my left hip and his right knee digging into my right hip to keep me from turning. I bent my right leg and crossed that foot over my left knee to keep him from sliding over into a full mount.
     
    He started pushing my left wrist away from my body, but that was to get me to pull it in so he could grab my wrist with his right hand, wrap his left arm under my triceps, reach through and grab his right wrist, and pop up into a kimura. I didn’t fall for it, but it was a decoy anyway. He dropped a few elbows into the air above my face to show he could. Point taken.
     
    Gil said, “Now this is the tricky part.”
     
    “Really?” It came out much higher than I’d expected.
     
    Jairo paused but kept his weight on me.
     
    Gil said, “You’ve been training with Jairo to avoid submissions, but I think Burbank will go for pure ground and pound. So while you’re working on angles and creating space, he’s going to completely smash your head.”
     
    “Tricky,” I agreed.
     
    “So you should probably get up. Jairo, don’t let him, but pretend you’re a big dumb blond wrecking machine instead of a big sexy Brazilian wrecking machine.”
     
    “I can’t help this,” Jairo said.
     
    We got back at it. Jairo wrapped his left arm behind my head to get a better grip and brought his left knee back to drive it into my ribs. I put my right hand on his left hip and pushed him away and off balance. The knee came in, but it hit my shoulder and didn’t cause any trouble.
     
    He tried again, and I pushed and rolled to my right and shrimped my right knee up into the space created between us and twisted clockwise on my hip so we were face-to-face. I reached down and pulled my right leg all the way out from under his hip and locked him tight in my guard.
     
    “Good,” Gil said. “But now he’s going to posture up and rain devastation on you.”
     
    Jairo leaned back at the waist and brought halfspeed hammerfists down toward my face.
     
    I covered up and moved and kept my head off the mat so it would have somewhere to go in case a hammer slipped through. I caught his right hand in my left and clamped down on the wrist and kept it close to my chest. I tried to pull it across my body to get him to fall to my left so I could roll him that way, but he was too strong. His left fist came down, and I snagged that one and got good hand control. He couldn’t hit me anymore, but that went both ways.
     
    Gil said, “Now what? You can keep it stagnant until the ref stands you back up, but that could take all day. Meanwhile, the judges are thinking he’s in a dominant position and you’re just flopping around on your back because they don’t know shit.”
     
    “I bait the powerbomb,” I said. “Make him stand me up. Or take him down when he tries.”
     
    “I’m waiting.”
     
    We went through it. Over and over. By the time we were done, we had half a dozen options for if and when Burbank took me down and tried to murder me. I kept saying
if.
Gil stuck with
when.
Jairo stayed out of it. He and I were soaked with sweat and sitting in the cage with our backs against the fence when Gil’s wife, Angie, came into the gym.
     
    “Woody, the camera crew from Warrior just called. They’re on the way over.”
     
    “That was fast.” I took a breath through my nose for the first time that day.
     
    “Eddie wants his hype,” Gil said. “And you know what he wants you to say.”
     
    I stood and waited to see if my body accepted it. I didn’t quite die. “I’m not going to say it.”
     
    “Come on.”
     
    “No.”
     
    Angie said, “For me?”
     
    I considered it. She was way too good-looking for Gil, taller than him, and ten years younger, blonde with a light spread of freckles across her little nose. She taught