Anne Sachman vs. Lorenza Saldano

Lorenza was not the sort of dirty fighter who blatantly attacked the referee. That was how she knew that Anne almost definitely was to blame for the official's untimely nap, even as one of her own jabs, intended for Anne's chest, caught the referee on the cheek as she suddenly jumped in between them, punches from both sides squashing the girl's face in between them, causing the blonde to drop quite abruptly, like a rock, down on the canvas—or she started to, before Anne grabbed the official and used her as a weapon against Lorenza, shoving the short blonde into the Mexican fighter.

Lorenza used to be a bitch. Not like Anne—not in the ring, anyway; she was trained by someone who would never allow her to be this petulant in a real match. But she had worked hard to change her demeanor, to relax and have fun in the ring, at least when she was fighting women she respected. She didn't respect Anne, but she did respect the referee, for doing her job and sacrificing her body for it. So Lorenza's first instinct when the girl was shoved into her was to catch her, hold her up, see if she was okay.

She was okay. She was just knocked out. But Lorenza's brief focus on the blonde allowed her opponent to launch forward, using the ref like a ramp...and smashing an elbow right into Lorenza's head. Lorenza growled and was forced to drop the official as she stumbled back, momentarily stunned by the blow, bringing her fists up to try to keep Anne at bay!

Momentum, her oldest and fastest friend, was with her again.

This was a brawl now - and none of Lorenza's inability to use any part of her body beyond her limited fists would help her here. Anne smelled blood at the stumble, and she surged forward, her leg lashing out in a push kick to bat away at Lorenza's hasty guard. The crowd was cheering louder than ever, excited at the drastic turn of events that had turned an odd but legitimate match into a vicious brawl with no one left awake to enforce the rules - and the blood haze in her head was spurred on by the audience's enthusiasm. Anne would intend the impact of the push kick to sent Lorenza hard into the ropes, and just as she bounched back, Anne would step in, greeting the boxing champion with an elbow strike to the face.

Of course Lorenza would pay for being considerate. Anne clearly would have killed the referee if it meant she won the fight with Lorenza, as she bulldozed the poor blonde girl on her way towards delivering a hard kick to Lorenza's wrists, trying to bash her guard in. The force behind the kick was enough to throw Lorenza backwards, but maybe not as far as Anne would have liked. Lorenza stopped about halfway before running into the ropes, stamping her feet down hard on the canvas, refusing to move any further as Anne hurdled over the ref and moved in for another elbow.

Lorenza would not break so easily. Now they weren't boxing, or fighting muay thai, or even playing chess. This was a brawl, and, as confident as Anne might be about Lorenza only being able to use her fists, the Mexican champion had to imagine the girl had no knowledge of her childhood in Tijuana, the street fights Lorenza had been in back then, the half-dozen times she had nearly gotten herself killed. As Anne swung at her face, Lorenza dropped low, swinging an arm around to smash her fist into the girl's shin, trying to chop her down like a tree with that sudden, powerful blow to the leg!

Anne had spent the better part of the last 15 years deflecting and defending all sorts of kicks. She had honed her shin to conditioned perfection kicking trees, punching bags that were bigger than her in her youth, and checking kicks till the sun set into the waves and the cows came home. If Lorenza wanted to play on her turf, she was more than ready for it.

The brutal smash against her shin, on the other hand, she did not expect. Her elbow struck air as Lorenza ducked low and swung her arm into Anne's shin with a hard smack. Instinctively, her leg rose to check it, but it was awkward and ineffectual. The blow landed cleanly and Anne growled, wobbling, before she lost her footing.

Street rules then. She had tried to keep their illegal exchange civil (for a given definition of it), but if Lorenza wanted a real gutter showdown, Anne was more than willing to oblige.

The failed elbow thrust shifted into a violent grab that snagged a huge chunk of wet, sweat-stained hair as Anne fell. She dragged Lorenza down and to the side as she fell and, if she were successful, would keep one hand snagging her opponent's hair, the other hand trying to take her back and secure a chokehold around her neck.

Anne had turned this already fairly rough battle into some kind of dirty, all-out brawl, and as much as Lorenza would have resisted this sort of fate, she was going to make sure that Anne paid for her overconfidence, as she bashed her fist into the younger fighter's shin and took her down onto the canvas. Some women might have cracked their knuckes, hitting a bony part of the body like that, but not Lorenza, and, with Anne down, she was going to keep on pounding her now that she had the advantage.

Anne was not giving up so easily, of course. She grabbed onto Lorenza's long, silky, blue-black hair, dragging Lorenza down with her, Lorenza hitting the canvas on her side, albeit not as hard as Anne had to hit after she got her leg taken out from under her. Anne's other arm immediately went for Lorenza's neck, trying to wrap around back of it and tighten it into a full chokehold!

"Ugh, fuck..." Lorenza groaned, as she felt Anne trying to choke her. What use was that going to be when Lorenza had full use of both of her arms? She would immediately swing some sudden jabs from close range at Anne, hitting her at what seemed like near-light speed, as close as they were, trying to smash in Anne's face as punishment for everything she had done, and force her to release that chokehold right away!

Lorenza was going to fuckin’ die.

The match didn’t matter. Boxing, Muay Thai, stupid fuckin’ chess, who gave an actual crap about any of it. The only thing that mattered in the blood haze that was her vision was leaving this stupid, uppity bitch at an unrecognizable stain on the ground. Anne’s arm snaked around lorenza’s neck like a python seizing onto its prey, tightening and tightening further, while her other arm tugged wildly at Lorenza’s sweat-stained hair, trying to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible on her hated rival. Her grip on either was a tenuous one, fighting both Lorenza’s buckling body and the slippery, sensual surface of sweat and blood and whatever other fluids the other girl was bleeding - but she kept it going.

Until the punches came.

One, two, three, four. Even from her awkward position, Lorenza proved herself a boxer through and through, she had to give her that. The first punch rocked her world, the second reopened the bleeding on her nose, the third grazed her as she shifted her head a little, and the fourth caught her on the cheek, snapping her head fully to the side - and only making her angrier.

Making her meaner.

Her spare hand relinquished Lorenza’s hand, and slammed down straight onto Lorenza’s face in a cruel falling elbow as she screamed her fury, her hate, her need to see Lorenza’s broken before her. Again and again and again, she rammed her elbow down as Lorenza’s fists came plummeting up-

And then she was dragged off, still kicking, still screaming for blood, still striking wildly with her elbows. More hands found her, and then more, as more AFW officials joined in to drag her away from Lorenza and to her corner. There were words, directed at her and at each other, and a shockingly cold explosion in her face as a bucket of ice water was dumped over her head.

Okay, she thought, her cold, wet hair stuck to her equally cold, wet face, blinding her. Okay, she needed that.