Anne Sachman vs. Lorenza Saldano

“Best of Both Worlds” Chess Fighting Match

Rules: The match will consist of eight rounds: three rounds of Muay Thai, three rounds of Boxing, and two rounds of Chess. Each fighting round shall be three minutes, while each Chess round shall be six minutes. The rounds shall occur in the following order:

Round 1. Muay Thai
Round 2. Boxing
Round 3. Chess
Round 4. Boxing
Round 5. Muay Thai
Round 6. Chess
Round 7. Muay Thai
Round 8. Boxing

Victory: A win can be attained by knockout during the fighting rounds, by checkmate during the chess rounds, by a surrender or concession, or, if no winner has been decided after all eight rounds have been contested, by a decision based on the six fighting rounds.

This was going to be the most unique fight that Lorenza Saldano had ever been in.

In her youth, on the oft-brutal streets of her hometown of Tijuana, Mexico, Lorenza had been a little she-devil, a spitfire, a brawler who showed no mercy when she fought and expected none in return. After years as a wild child, she had been sent to the United States to live with her uncle. He shaped her up. She matured. She took up boxing, with its highly structured—though no less violent—matches, and it was in boxing that she had become a world champion.

She had only ever paid passing attention to the other martial arts disciplines which seemed to skyrocket in popularity beginning in the final years of the twentieth century and continuing strong into the new millennium. She was a boxer, and couldn’t afford to mess up her rhythm or her timing by dabbling in other sports. She had tried muay thai a handful of times, only ever doing it for fun.

She had never expected that she would need to use that limited knowledge of muay thai in an actual, official fight.

Luckily, Lorenza had been drawing on her streetfighting roots as of late, and muay thai seemed to harken back in many ways to that wilder time. Lorenza had spent the last two weeks taking a crash course in the exotic martial art, and felt like she could hold her own in the discipline against a typical opponent. Unfortunately for her, she would be facing a muay thai world champion in this bout.

She could only hope that the other woman was as bad at chess as she was. Lorenza hadn’t played the game in years, and, as focused as she had been at preparing herself for the muay thai rounds, she had neglected preparations for the thinking game.

“And now entering the arena…” boomed a powerful female voice, “…the former boxing champion of the world, the Tigress of Tijuana, the One and Only…”

“Looooorrrenzaaaaaa Saldaaaaaaaaanooooo!”

Lorenza would walk out to the ring to the loud roar of the crowd. As a former boxing world champion, she had fans everywhere, and her first three AFW matches had all been exciting enough to keep that fanbase growing. She was wearing her usual attire: white sports bra, white gloves, and a pair of green trunks with red trim along the sides. The only addition was a pair of green ankle wraps, replacing her usual boots. Those were for the muay thai rounds. She would be able to kick. The thought made Lorenza smile. It could very well be fun.

Stepping into the ring, Lorenza would straighten up, proudly displaying herself to the crowd, waving a glove as she would circle the ring once before heading for one corner to await her opponent’s entrance, giving her short pony tail a flip over her shoulder as she did so.

Spoiler:

Anne's first question when it came to chess:

How do I find a socially acceptable reason to flip the board and bugger off?

Anne's second question when the first one remained unanswered:

Which one's the king? Is it the one with the cross or the fancy showercap?

She never progressed far enough into the game to ask how those little horsie things moved. Grandmaster prodigy, she was not.

She never minded though. She knew what her strengths were, and strategic games certainly weren't one of them. After all, she had other talents to compensate. Kicking ass and taking names, to name two of them. Still, on the offchance that her opponent was both both brawn AND brain, she opened up computer chess on her laptop 2 days before the match, got smacked around by the computer on Lv 2 setting, and called it a day. At least she knew the showercap could move anywhere now, and the horsies were lame, so they could only move in slanted L's.

That was all the time she was willing to waste on chess basics. The rest was spent on training and training and training; she knew exactly who her opponent was, and she didn't need a google search to check it out: Unmatched in her day, an impeccable KO artist, the Muhammad Ali of her side of the profession - Lorenza Saldano.

Little girls at that time didn't have that many idols. Little girls who beat things up had even less.

As for the match itself though...

She wasn't gonna beat the Tiger in the boxing rounds. She knew it; Lorenza probably knew it. She just had to survive them, and not throw out any illegal kicks or elbows. She was thankful it started with a Muay Thai round; at least the fight started in her element and her favor. She may not have known what a chess queen piece was before this week, but she sure as hell who was gonna be royal by the end of this match.

“And now entering the arena…” The female voice boomed again, “…the former Muay Thai champion of the world in over 3 weight categories, the Queen of Muay Thai, the Mocha Menace…”

Who the fuck called her that? She hated that name. She thought she had buried it.

“Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne Saaaaaaaaaaaaaachmaaaaaaaaan!”

It sounded cooler when they called the Tiger's name. Maybe it was the syllables, she thought.

Anne walked out to the explosion of the crowd, though sadly noticeably not as loud as Lorenza's. Muay Thai had a smaller viewership, and she hadn't been in any matches at all, so it was understandable. At least that was what she told herself. She was wore a green, striped sports bra, red gloves, and a pair of greyish blue trunks, along with the usual ankle wrappings. Sliding into the ring, Anne would wave a lazy glove up as she made a round around the ring, catching Lorenza's eye for a brief moment, before going to her corner.

This was, she thought, gonna be a weird match.

Lorenza’s opponent came out shortly thereafter, and Lorenza couldn’t help but be impressed by what she saw. Anne was an incredible physical specimen. She had the same kind of sexy but muscular body as Lorenza did, and she was ten years younger than the former boxing champion of the world. Her stomach looked like it was carved from chocolate marble.

Lorenza knew she was going to be in trouble during the Muay Thai rounds. Anne certainly knew that, too. Lorenza knew she needed to really pile on the punishment during the boxing rounds if she had any hope of winning.

The boxer made brief eye contact with her opponent as she entered, but wouldn’t look too closely. Instead, Lorenza would do some shadowboxing, throwing lightning-fast combinations into the air in front of her, punctuating them with some kicks and elbows, as she knew she would have to use them against her world-class opponent.

“We have a real battle of champions here today! Our two fighters have four world titles between them! This is far more than just a simple fight…” the announcer’s voice would continue, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy.

The referee—a pretty girl dressed in black and white stripes—would march out into the center of the ring, beckoning for the two fighters to join her. Lorenza would do so without hesitation, walking confidently, stoically forward to the center of the ring to meet with the referee and her opponent. Now, Lorenza would make hard eye contact with Anne, trying to measure her opponent up and figure out what her strategy might be here.

Unlike Lorenza, Anne had been staring unashamedly at the former boxing champion the whole time, from the moment they broke eye contact to her little shadow boxing exercise and all the way to their visual reunion in the middle of the ring. Her stare wasn't hostile or angry, but it was veiled and unreadable, and eerily focused. When Anne stepped to the center of the ring and got into the staredown with Lorenza, she wasn't searching, she wasn't necessarily estimating, and she certainly wasn't planning a counter-strategy. She just saw it as a challenge, and didn't want to be the first one to look away.

She first saw Lorenza on TV perhaps a decade ago, when she could barely reach up to her mother's shoulder. A born winner, on the rise, and with a heavy history, the Tiger was the iconic, if not uncommon, rags to riches story of woman's boxing. She wanted to tell her what Lorenza's success meant to her, how it drove her. She wanted to ask why she quit at the peak of her career, but all she could do was stare with that veiled could-be-a-threat look. Anything less than that could be interpreted as weakness, and Anne was not so secure in herself, at least not in this ring, that she could afford friendliness.

She waited for the bell to ring.

Lorenza noticed the intensity in Anne’s eyes as the muay thai practitioner stared back at her, and the boxing veteran recognized a challenge for what it was. Now that eye contact had been established and the two were staring each other down, Lorenza refused to be the first one to break that eyeball to eyeball connection. Anne seemed to be equally determined, and, as a result, this staredown was going to last a very long time.

One minute of hard staring passed, and then two. During that time, the referee girl had gone through most of the rules. There would be eight rounds—three rounds fought in each woman’s particular martial art, and two rounds of chess. The fighting rounds would be three minutes, and the chess rounds six. The rules were actually fairly complex, and they went on and on, as the referee quickly went through overviews of the rules of both boxing and muay thai. Halfway through the spiel, Lorenza would take an additional step forward, bridging the last foot of the original gap between herself and Anne. She would lean forward and press her forehead against the younger fighter’s, still staring, their eyes now barely an inch apart.

This was one of Lorenza’s favorite positions. She loved getting up in the face of an opponent. She had done it throughout her boxing career, and, in her recent fights with her new friend and old rival Carmen Rodriguez, they must have spent an hour doing nothing but pressing foreheads and staring at each other. As Anne seemed intent on turning the staredown into a competition, Lorenza was more than happy to add her own signature touch to it.

The referee hesitated as the Mexican boxer stepped forward, then, seeing that Lorenza wasn’t making a move to strike Anne before the bell, the official would finish her explanation. “Fighters,” she would say, in a tone which drew Lorenza’s focus back into the real world, “are you ready?”

Lorenza didn’t take her eyes off of Anne’s. She kept on trying to read Anne’s thoughts, size her up, psych her out. But she did part her lips wide enough for a reply to the official’s query: “Sí. I’m ready.”

Once Anne had answered, the bell would ring, and the match would get underway. Lorenza would push off of her opponent, putting some space between them and ending the staredown. She knew that this was going to be tough, especially since they were starting off with a muay thai round. Still, she had no intention of losing a single round of this fight—even if her chances in this first round were rather slim.

Anne's initial, involuntary reflex was to back down, and the moment she did it she knew what a mistake it was. She retreated from the forehead mash, her eyes averting Lorenza's for a second - but it was enough. She had lost the staredown, and when she returned the gesture a second too late, it was to keep the losing margin from opening up further. She knew Lorenza knew she was intimidated by her now. She wondered whether her opponent could see her cursing herself inside her mind.

That was when she made her second mistake. She had to apply her own assertive gesture to compensate for Lorenza's early one-upmanship - so she kissed her. A swift peck on the lips, and she felt terrible about immediately afterwards, and the way Lorenza's body language shifted suggested she intended to make her feel terrible about it too. Fights were always personal, no doubt, But Anne had inevitably added a extra layer of it.

Well, shit. This was going well. She wasn't expected a little hug at the end of this fight.

"Yeah," she said to the referee. "Let's go."

Okay, so maybe she did have a plan. She wasn't expecting to win the boxing rounds under her own power, no sir. But she had a Muay Thai round to cushion her before the inevitable beatdown, and she thought-

When the bell rang, and Lorenza shoved her off, she tried to take that little gesture in the most negative light possible. She needed anger, cold, controlled anger, and she shifted into her stance: back slightly hunched, hands up, feet even. She came in first, throwing a powerful low kick to Lorenza's left leg; testing the waters.

-What was a boxer without her footwork?

Lorenza wasn't really expecting any of what happened during that staredown. She was surprised when Anne backed up and glanced down, basically conceding the psychological advantage to Lorenza, even as she tried to rally and resume the staredown. Lorenza was brimming with confidence, and, though her opponent was also a world champion, she had backed down when Lorenza had went to size her up. That was very, very big. Both fighters knew it, and it seemed as though the audience knew it, too, based on their sound.

Lorenza would have never expected what happened next, though. The peck on the lips was quick enough that Lorenza might have thought it was accidental—or even imagined, on her own part. But a glance over to the referee told her that it most definitely wasn't. The official's eyes had widened for a few seconds, before she would finally call for a start to the match.

It was the first time Lorenza had started a bout with a kiss. It wasn't exactly a bad way to start things off, but it did make things...painfully awkward.

Lorenza pushed off of Anne and bounced back, wanting to put some space between herself and the seasoned muay thai fighter. Anne didn't want to let Lorenza have that space. She lunged forward quickly, throwing a kick at Lorenza's leg. The boxer would plant her other leg and launch herself backwards, narrowly avoiding the kick, feeling the tips of Anne's toes brushing across her knee. Lorenza would put her arms up in defense, trying to prepare herself for when the inevitable next attack came.

Anne made an annoyed tch sound at her failed kick. She was desperate, she knew, to recoup the psychological advantage she ceded to Lorenza with her little misstep, to return to a more even footing against her opponent in the eyes of both the boxing champion and the crowd. She had sparred with base boxers before, albeit never in a real match, and for all their striking power, they just never -perhaps unconsciously- had any respect for the legs. They never considered it an asset, and they never considered it a vulnerability. None of them knew until a seemingly weak kick toppled their balance. Anne hoped that, for all of Lorenza's fighting prowess, she had that same mindset.

She pushed forward, throwing a quick one-two jab combination, coming in close to do what she really wanted to do. Her right leg swept low again, but this time she went for the back of left knee with a hard kick, hoping to score that quick, impromptu knockdown.

Lorenza had managed to backpedal fast enough to avoid that first kick. She knew in her conscious mind that she had to watch the legs, she had to stay light on her feet so that Anne couldn't make her pay down there. Her conscious mind might not always be in control of things, however. She might not even see the next strike coming.

When Anne approached her again, the younger fighter lashed out with a couple of quick jabs. Now, Lorenza was in ehr element. She tightened her guard, easily deflecting the two jabs, absorbing them and taking no damage. She was feeling good, and was ready to send a retaliatory jab of her own at Anne's face, when the muay thai practitioner unleashed her surprise. Lorenza's boxing instincts did not prepare her one bit for a blow to the back of the knee, and, with a groan of pain and surprise, her leg would buckle and her knee would drop down onto the canvas.

Lorenza was not going to give the referee time to count, however. Before the official could even move in, the boxer was back up on her feet. She rushed forward, ignoring the twanging pain in her left leg, and would throw a couple of quick exploratory jabs of her own, hoping to make up for that unfortunate start...

Well, that went well, she thought as the boxing champ came tumbling down. Anne could barely, just barely keep from breaking into a yelp of triumph and a fist pump. Even if it was for the smallest of seconds, Anne had achieved first blood. She got the first knockdown. She met Lorenza's eyes briefly, as if to say she got her. Unsurprisingly, Lorenza recovered swiftly, even before the Ref had even taken a single step to put herself between them, and moved in on her with a few exploratory jabs.

Anne's muay thai guard was a farce; she was never gonna match Lorenza in a fistfight. To even consider matching her on that field was a fool's errand at best, a knockout-in-the wings at worse. No, her guard was there to catch the Tiger's fists with her arms and her shoulders, to keep distance from Lorenza's fists, throwing her own punches only to keep up the illusion that she was even engaging from that angle. Her objective was Lorenza's balance; her explosive footwork. If she kept to a low kick game, slowly and steadily wearing away at her lower limbs, Lorenza's footwork would be gradually eroded...

Sounded good on paper, but what plan survived contact with the enemy? This one had to.

Her main problem was losing all access during these tactics during the boxing round, to say nothing of the inanity of the chess rounds. She knew she could dominate here, she was sure of it. She was the master here, and the Tiger was playing her game, and with half a deck.

She took the first jab on her shoulder, diverting it from a direct punch into a graze on her cheek. The second jab she retreated from, before moving in again, another low kick to the left leg. Anne was trying to cut Lorenza off, forcing her into a corner, so that she could truly work her magic on her.