Carmen Rodriguez vs. Black Dragon - Through the Fire

Leg sore, body hurting a bit, but Carmen had been through worse and come out. She'd fought Clyde. She'd fought Kyo. She'd fought Lorenza. Maybe she hadn't cleanly beat them, but she'd come close each time. Black Dragon wasn't a pushover, but neither were they, and she'd only gotten better with time.

Running with the sore leg hurt, but Carmen managed to push enough of the pain out of her mind to turn Dragon's manhandling against him. She rolled with his throw and tried to use the power as she bouned off the ropes and came back, getting as much speed as she could manage without falling down. Her legs were hurting too much for a full drop kick, but that didn't mean she couldn't get off the ground. A Running Knee Lift? That would work, and she aimed it towards his stomach once again as she came dashing back.

As Carmen fell down, Dragon was expecting the woman to just collapse under the weight of the throw. Then out of seemingly nowhere she rolled to her feet and bounced off the ropes. She used the same momentum to charge at Dragon with her knee up.

The suddenness of the attack caught the man off guard. He stumbled backwards grasping his abdomen as a reflex from the pain. "Agh!"

It wasn't a happy landing for Carmen - she came down hard from the jump and put more pressure on her bad knee that she would've liked - but it worked and gave her a wide open Black Dragon to play with. She had him, now she had to get him down, and once there, she'd need to keep him down for as long as possible.

"Ven aca..." She muttered under her breath as she reached forward and grabbed Black Dragon's neck with both hands, getting a tight grip. She almost looked like she was about to go for a straight choke, but instead, she turned around while she held him, dropped to one knee, and tried to pull him over with a Snap Mare, looking to dump him right on his ass in front of her.

After slowing the pace down for so long, Dragon was caught off guard by the sudden offensive from Carmen. He was expecting her strength to have waned to the point that she wouldn't be able to put up much more of a fight. Instead, he found himself flipped over and onto the mat from the snap mare.

Black Dragon was down and the crowd was roaring, but Carmen couldn't join in the celebration. It was a Snap Mare. Just a Snap Mare. He'd be up again in about three seconds, if that long, which meant she had to follow up with something quick and effective.

"Not as easy as you liked, asshole?" She dropped down behind Black Dragon, snaked her arms under his shoulders, and tried to lock her hands behind his neck to push his head forward in a full nelson hold. Not likely to get a submission even if it worked, but it would wear him down and get Carmen off her feet for a while.

The momentum had shifted in Carmen's favor rather suddenly and Dragon hadn't expected it. She locked in a full nelson hold on him and started to wear him down. But as he had a chance to regain his composure, he started to get mad and fed up with the sudden offensive. He wasn't having any of it. He leaned back for balance while pulling himself to his feet. He then flexed his arms down in an attempt to break the hold through sheer force for strength.

Carmen had solid upper body strength. Steel in her arms, honed through years of training. Even so, she could tell going in that overpowering Black Dragon wasn't an option. They were close to the same height, but he was wider, thicker, hardier. She'd thought that, with a move like this, it wouldn't matter too much. She was wrong.

Carmen had it locked it correctly, perfectly secured, gripped tight. That wasn't the problem. Black Dragon was just too strong. He was lifting up, taking her with him, and he brute forced his way out the hold so hard that Carmen almost thought he'd take her fingers off.

She grunted as her hold was knocked away and she pushed at his back the second she was able, trying to create some distance between them as she stumbled back.

As Dragon managed to break himself free from the hold, Carmen stumbled away and at least this time, he let her go. A grin crept across his face as he stretched his back and shoulder muscles in the mean time. He was a little sore from the pain Carmen did put on him, but he was trying to play it off as a taunt of a sort. He imagined she was in a pain of sorts just trying to figure out what to do. He kept his gaze on her, focused on her movements although by then he wasn't worried about her getting the jump on him anymore.

Enough so that he hadn't even noticed his teammate had slipped out of the crowd and to the side of the ring. She had a chair in hand, and was approaching not Carmen, but Army. Dragon and his little interaction earlier was apparently enough evidence for her to assume he'd charge in when the match ended. And she didn't want him to get the jump on her partner. She charged at the large man with the chair high and swung it towards him, hoping to catch him off guard.

Cocky bastard.

As a boxer, Carmen had grown used to a level of ego from her opponents. Came with the territory, part of the allure behind the sport, good for intimidation. But Dragon brought it up to an entirely new level. He was showing her his back. It was hard to imagine a more insulting pose to take in the middle of a match, and if he thought she was going to stay put and endure it, she was more than willing to show him just how mistaken he was.

Carmen started to cock her fist back, ready to prove her point in the most violent way possible, when the sound of the crowd distracted her. They were booing Black Dragon, but there was something else mixed with their reaction. Shouting, calling her name, like they were trying to get her attention. She paused and glanced over her shoulder, just in time to see one of Dragon's cronies heading towards Army with a steel chair in hand, as her brother looked on without a clue. "Army!" She spun towards him. "Behind-"

He turned around on to find the chair waiting for his face, smacking him with a loud THWACK! that seemed to echoe all the way to the rafters. He fell hard on his back and rolled from side to side, as his face screwed tight in pain.

All Hawk needed was one chair shot to put Army to the ground. She grinned at her work despite all the boos that were raining down upon her. She couldn't have cared less about them. She had done her job, and the dent in the chair meant she had done it well.

Dragon had heard the chair shot and turned around to see his teammate standing outside the ring with the chair in hand. He was angry for a split second, but then realized why she had done it. He didn't much like unnecessarily cheating as it made them look bad...but he could make an exception for this time. With Carmen's back turned to him, he planted his fist into the mat and leaned into it like a linebacker about to take off.

Then, as she turned back around, he sprinted forward and speared her with a full head of steam.