Carmen Rodriguez vs. Mad Max - Welcome Back, Max

He stopped humming. If the headbutt didn't do anything else, if it just whiffed off of, a complete no-sell, the simple fact that it had accomplished that much was enough for Carmen to call it a small victory. She still had a long way to go, but she was off to a good start.

You could tell Max was a Tension vet - on reflex, he moved to cover his junk. That was the one part of his body that Carmen had absolutely no interest in whatsoever. A lot of girls on the roster liked to go for the low blows, and many of them got away with it - wrestling refs were much less attentive than their boxing cousins. But that didn't mean she'd follow the same route. She'd been able to win above the belt before and she could do it now.

The blow brought him to knees right after Carmen fell down. Not what she was going for, true, but the stomach shot had gotten the job done. He was down, vulnerable, and she moved in quick to take advantage, moving in and pulling his head towards her. She got him in a front headlock and kicked forward, falling on her back and hitting him with a snap DDT, 166 lbs of Rodriguez muscle driving his head into the canvas.

The humming just grew louder in his head. Perhaps it was there to drown out those voices. He couldn't think about that right now. There was a match going on right now.

Maxwell could feel the daze of his breathlessness leaving him. His foot was placed firmly on the mat so that he could get to a vertical position. This boxing girl had gotten the best of him early on and it wasn't going to end soon it seemed.

Carmen easily took control of Maxwell's head. He could feel the pain happening before anything even progressed. He planted his left hand on Carmen's abdomen trying to brace himself for the impact. His efforts would be for naught as his eyes saw the mat close-in and his head felt that pain he was already anticipating. His body would be sprawled a bit after the impact Carmen delivered.

Carmen had to admit, there was something satisfying about executing a wrestling move that you just couldn't get with punches. Oh, it didn't have that immediate snap, that powerful contact, of course. But grabbing an opponent, executing a move you've been working on for weeks and seeing the final result was a nice experience. She got a little burst off pride every time she pulled one off and she saw the benefits of her training.

She bathed in the moment as Max went flopping away from the DDT, but not for too long - now came the follow up. She was tempted to try an aerial move, go for the splash that she'd been working on with Domino, but that was a little risk this early in the match. Now, she need something quick and reliable. Not too flashy.

She ran to the ropes and bounced off, building a little momentum before she jumped up and drove into Max with an elbow drop, right in the edge, jerking down before the impact to get a little added power.

"Uggh..." moaned Maxwell as he lay on the mat in pain. His arm twitched to move, but he couldn't figure out where it was. Carmen had successfully kept Max from having any ring presence whatsoever. Was this his new fate, to look like nothing more than a Jobber? The thought that somebody like him would be reduced to nothing but the punching bag for the Tension girls drew a bit of ire.

His fist clenched as his eyes opened slightly. What was that noise? That noise behind the humming? It sounded rhythmic, like drums. No, no..it couldn't be drums. The drowsy silver warrior turned his head towards the noise to see a pair of boots rushing to him. "Shit!" he muttered under his breath. His head was killing him and it was affecting his entire body, but his adrenal glands pumped the hormone through his veins. As Carmen was in the air, Maxwell's body willed itself to roll just barely out of the path of destruction of the elbow drop. He wouldn't get far as a glancing of the elbow would catch his back and the Puerto Rican girl's head would hit his side before his rolling took him to the edge of the ring while laying on his stomach.

Carmen was a little surprised that this had gone so well, frankly. She knew Max had been out of the game for a while, but he looked like he was in good condition, like he took care of himself in the interim. She had the height advantage, but with his experience and natural male strength, she figured they would be even enough for a real challenge. Clyde was around his size, after all, and he'd beaten her after a hard match.

But she'd dominated so far, and what's more, she did it without even going to her bread-and-butter punches, relying on her mediocre - at best - wrestling skills. If this was going to be the match's pace, she would get an easy win, and an easy win's hardly a win at all. A stain on her record.

'Fortunately', though, it seemed like Max was far from done, as he rolled out of the way at the last second and gave Carmen nothing but the canvas to slam her elbow into. She hit it hard right on the bone, sending a ripple of pain all over her arm, and she rolled to the side, hissing while she gave it a little massage to take some of the edge off. She'd figured the elbow drop was a low risk move, but apparently the risk wasn't low enough.

Max's arm draped over the bottom rope as he breathed heavily. His fight-or-flight response was the only thing that kept him from suffering another rough move in a row. Carmen's moves could have spelled an early loss for Max had they been executed with complete expertise, but thankfully for him, they were just being executed by a boxer-turned-wrestler. It didn't mean they took any less out of him.

His body ached, particularly his head from the headbutt and DDT it had sustained. Maxwell's left arm reached up for the middle rope as he aimed to bring himself to his feet. His face, while contorted with some pain, would show a glimmer of ambition as he leaned against the ropes, his eyes focused on Carmen as he plotted to get the match in his favor. Slowly and softly, he would start the humming again.

As much as the missed elbow drop hurt, Carmen lucked out - from the looks of things, Max was in no shape to follow up, taking his time to get back up. Carmen rolled over and started to push herself up as he did the same, shaking her head as her brother started rally the crowd.

She looked him in the eyes as they rose - he was hurting, but he looked way too damn confident for a guy who hadn't even really connected a move yet. She could lay him out, easy, it was just a matter of not letting him get under her skin.

And then, right on cue, he started humming, again.

"Okay, fuck it." She stood up as quick as she could, stepped forward and threw a double jab at his face, two snapping punches at jaw. If that's the way he wanted to play it, mocking her, then he could suffer the consequences.

A trickle of sweat crawled out from the silver spiky hair. It made its way down the right side of his face, passing by the eyeball and curving around the cheek. The mixture of salts and water eventually found its way into a dimple created by the smirk that Maxwell wore on his face as his eyes drank in the the sight that was Carmen's visual frustration with the enigma.

His body ached, but that didn't deter the silver warrior. Maxwell got his body off of the ropes before Carmen started making her own way towards him. His eyes saw the Latina's hands clench into fists and instantly he knew what was coming his way. There was no time to dodge, but his brief time in the octagon did teach instill one good instinct: protect yourself. Max's hands shot up to protect his face, but their journey would prove to be too far from his torso area to be able to provide quick enough protection.

The jabs sent his head reeling backwards as his jaw took the raw damage from a closed-fist punch, something the ref would no doubt have something to say about to Carmen. Meanwhile, Max spun back to the ropes and clenched his jaw, making sure it wasn't broken, which he couldn't confirm. His eyes now wide open, Maxwell would turn to look at Carmen while the ref scolded her for the closed-fist punches. A small taste of iron filled Max's mouth as he awkwardly ran at his opponent, aiming his shoulders down for a takedown at the Latina's abdomen!

Max tried to get his guard up in time, but it just wasn't fast enough. The blow hit, slammed into his face, sent him back and, most importantly, put a stop to that goddamn humming. Carmen was about to move in for the followup, when she ran into an obstacle - the referee.

"No closed-fists!" The ref was a small chit of a girl, blonde with glasses, but that didn't stop her from getting in Carmen's face like she was ten-feet tall.

"All right, all right." She held up her hands and backed away, sighing. It wasn't the first time she'd gotten crap for the closed-fist thing, but it was inconsistent. Sometimes the referee cared, sometimes she didn't, and Carmen frankly didn't see the problem. She could kick someone in the face, knee them, slam them into the turnbuckle, stomp on their head, but a punch was right out? Sheesh.

The referee moved away and Carmen started to move back in for the kill, but that little break was all Max needed to find his second wind - or first wind, really. He came at her with a shoulder tackle to the stomach and drove Carmen hard into the mat, dropping her flat on her back and leaving her dazed from the sheer alacrity of it all.

Maxwell was indeed catching his second....first.....wind of the match and it came with an opening that he normally would have been on the other side of. The silver-haired warrior launched himself and his shoulder tackle right for Carmen's abdomen and took her down to the mat!

Max would gladly follow up his assault by straddling Carmen with a malicious grin on his face. "So you like bashing heads huh?" He would grab a handful of the Latina's short hair to make her lean forward. As the ref counted the hair grab, the insane one would reel his own head backwards before rushing it forward and head-on at Carmen's skull, letting her hair go so that the head would ricochet off the mat. The pain would certainly hit Max as the impact caused his holding hand to grab the forehead, the previous impacts doing him no favors. His jaw felt dislocated, his head ached, and his body was growing tired. He loved it! This is what he had been missing for so many years!