Bryan Daniels vs. Makoto Takeda - Hard Restart

And he kicked out. Of course.

Makoto just scoffed, rife with irritation as her opponent simply refused to roll over and die like a good little bitch. The crowd seemed to be getting behind him, wanting to cheer on their great white hope, but she was far less impressed. She just saw a man who’d been given a way out, but was too proud to take it.

She didn’t immediately attack him, though. Instead, she took a moment to think. Consider her next move. She couldn’t just kick him. No, she had to hit him with something grand. Something hard, something fast.

Mako decided quick enough, and then she was off. She broke into a dash as Bryan started to rise up, bounced off the ropes to build momentum, and then came bounding back towards him, full speed. When she was close enough, she raised her leg and bounded towards him, trying to him in the face with a running knee bomb.

Luckily for Bryan, a cocky pin attempt did more than just stroke Makoto's gargantuan ego. It also just so happened to grant Bryan the precious seconds needed to get his mind back in the game and recoup from what was a rather heinous few minutes of match time. The model athlete not knowing where he went wrong here, but he imagined it was right around the time he intentionally took a spear from Makoto just to keep her from taking a nasty fall and possibly getting concussed.

Not the smartest idea, in hindsight. In the end all that got him being was smacked around by the little snot. Live and learn, he guessed.

Groaning as he shuffled and turned around, Bryan took note of the lack of pressure being applied by the pint-sized gang leader. Her notable absence somehow being scarier than if she were actually there. Once on his hands and knees, he only vaguely noticed where she was by peeking up through his sweat-soaked hair to see her bouncing off the ropes. No time to think. Just act.

"Hah!!" Bryan took his own advice by propelling himself upward with a sudden burst of aggressive adrenaline, his arm extended to the side to deliver what he hoped to be the mother of all lariats to her. Whether it connected or not, which he obviously hoped it did, Bryan would flop back down to the canvas after having put every facet of his lingering strength and charging momentum into the burly clothesline.

Makoto was a runaway eighteen-wheeler, speeding down the highway, promising death and destruction for everything in her path. She was a wolf on the prowl, closing in on the helpless lamb with her jaws wide open. She was a bullet from the gun, moving with forward with unstoppable force, and as she came bearing down on Bryan, she was more than ready to take his head off.

But something was wrong. All of the sudden, he was close. Closer than he had been before. Too close. And his arm was extending, and he-

Makoto was on her chest. For a moment, she wasn’t even sure how that had happened. Bryan had hit her with a lariat, she should’ve gone to her back, right? Unless...yeah. He’d clobbered her so hard, she’d done a full spin in the air. Maybe two, who knew. Whatever the case, it hurt like a bitch, her chest felt like she’d gotten hit with a baseball bat, and she had the exact sort of experience to make that claim.

Gritting her teeth, Makoto pressed her knuckles against the canvas and started to push up, up, up…

...and then flopped back down on her chest. ”Fucking hate you.” She grumbled, half of her words muttered into the floor. ”Hate you so much.”

The surrounding audience weren't the only ones in attendance who didn't know Bryan still had that rush of energy still in him. The model athlete was just as astonished himself that he still had the strength, speed, and wherewithal to mow Makoto down like that. And with a pulverizing lariat so impactful that people in the front row were half expecting to be on the lookout for one of Mako's boots flying through the air.

"Yeah, yeah...change the record, willya?" Bryan grumbled into the canvass himself while laying beside the motionless carcass of the hate-filled biker leader. The odd coupling of combatants now taking a prolonged siesta together while face-down in the middle of the ring.  For now, Bryan was perfectly content with melting into the canvas and taking a snooze. But screaming fan-girls and a clamoring audience reminded him that a wrestler's work was never done until he got the 1,2,3.

Twisting to the side with an aching groan, Bryan equally shoved Makoto over as well before hooking her leg high into the air for a weary but effective pin attempt. His perfectly sculpted pecs and chiseled abs grinding down on her as he buried his panting face against her neck and collarbone, easily blanketing her entire diminutive frame with his heaving muscles considering she was barely 5 foot nothing.

"One!"

Sweaty, aching, with an annoying white guy laying over her. This was probably closer to Devine’s ideal way to spend a night, not hers.

Bryan surprised her. She hated to admit that, utterly loathed, and she was never going to utter the words out loud, but the guy was surprisingly tough and resourceful and he could take a beating, damn it. Somehow, the fact that he was a worthy opponent just pissed her off even more.

But there wasn’t much she could do about it now, though. She was to hurt to get up, which meant she was dead weight for Bryan to flip over and flop on.

”TWO!”

The referee’s cry sparked some life back into her, though, as she realized her pride was on the line here, not just from the risk of losing to Bryan, but getting beat by a fucking clothesline, of all things. It wasn’t easy - Bryan was a substantially heavier man. The saving grace, though, was that his pin was sloppy, so she didn’t have to expend too much effort to get a shoulder up.

Makoto managed. Just in time.

”Goddamnit…” She muttered, trying to slide her way out from underneath him. ”Get the fuck off…”

"Aw, come the f..." Bryan caught himself from putting a quarter in the swear jar as he propped up himself in a seated position besides Mako, breathing heavily while passing his hand through his perfectly conditioned hair. He was in a mix of shock and disbelief at just how much fight Mako had in her. It was about the only thing he actually admired in her, but he got the feeling if he said that to her or complemented her in any whatsoever, that she would just bark out about how much she hates him and kick him in his gonads.

Once he was capable of doing so, Bryan would exhaustively get back to his own feet with a wincing groan. He sluggishly approached the pint-sized gang leader and offered her the same courtesy by tugging on her arm. After slipping his right leg behind Mako's right thigh, Bryan gradually arched forward with Mako bending backwards along with him. With the odd coupling engaged in what looked like a dip in a ballroom dance, Bryan was actually winding up for his reverse STO finisher, "One Night Stand."

"You gotta admit...there's much worse ways to take an "L" than by waking up to find someone as devilishly handsome as yours truly weighing you down to the canvas." Bryan whispered with a heated tone and a grin while wearily looking down at Mako, quite honestly saying whatever was in his delusional and rattled brain at this late point in the match.

Despite the hate she’d been getting from Bryan’s gaggling group of groping groupies, Mako earned some small applause with her kick out attempt. Why, she didn’t know or care. Maybe there were impressed, thought she was tough, but their opinion on the subject mattered absolutely fuck-all. There was no way she was going out to Bryan. Not like this.

Not that she could do much else but kickout, though. She was too stunned to fight back as he lifted her up, moved her body around, got her in position for...something. She wasn’t sure what, but she had a feeling she was about to find out.

Not before Bryan said something, though. Small surprise. Fucker loved the sound of his own voice.

Well, she might’ve been too hurt to fight back, but there was no way she was going to let this happen without some sort of response. So.

Mako brought her head back, then jerked it forward and reacquainted Bryan's face with its good friend: her forehead. Another headbutt.

Drenched in sweat and in utter shambles while holding up the rage-fueled biker girl with a Napoleon complex, Bryan could honestly say he's still woken up besides uglier women in the past. He's had one night stands with far more bodacious hotties as well, but considering the unbelievably loooow bar that Mako was setting in terms of sexiness, that was definitely not saying much. But right now he'd even be willing to show this little gremlin a good time if it meant her staying down for the three count after taking his face smashing finisher...

...which, of course, she didn't. Instead all he got was the umpteenth skull-rattling headbutt from someone who was far better at taking them than him. The model athlete seeing those same familiar stars before shoving Makoto to the side and collapsing to one knee. A jeering audience not exactly helping with his throbbing headache, but not much probably could as Bryan groaned while shielding his cringing face.

"Sheez...again with the face..."

The referee was giving Makoto shit for headbutting, but she might as well have been on the Moon for all the good it did her. She wasn’t hearing it. She wasn’t seeing it. All she did was focus, straight ahead, on the annoying redhead who just wouldn’t stay down, who kept being a giant pain in her ass. A pain that she was looking to eradicate, right now.

She was tossed aside, but with the fury running through, Mako was quick to rise again. She was a little loopy from the headbutt, but it seemed like he was worse, with a nice, big opening for her to take advantage of.

”Always the face.”

Mako moved in, brought her leg up, and swung it hard towards his head with a fierce shin kick, looking to knock what little sense he had clean out of him.

Makoto may not have cared in the slightest if her already homely mug got scratched or banged up, (actually, it might even be an unintentional improvement), but a hefty portion of Bryan's income was hinging on his handsome visage being as flawlessly presentable as possible. So every impactful headbutt or sock to his kisser only got the model athlete more and more worried that some permanent damage was being done here. He squinted and shook his head to straighten his blurry vision through his half-lidded eyes just in time to see the cheap-shotting gang leader on her steady approach.

He was on his knees and looked woozy, discombobulated, and was clearly a prime target for a finishing blow of any kind. Luckily...Makoto was apparently developing a bad habit of telegraphing her moves. The model athlete knowing that another shot to his head was incoming before he instinctively raised his arm to catch the swift shin kick in the crook of his arm. Reaching up to hook his other arm around the back of Makoto's head before collapsing backward in a tumbling roll, Bryan would end up springing a surprise small package pin on the diminutive Makoto!! With Bryan's muscular frame weighing her down and Mako's other leg entrapped between Bryan's knees, the fast thinking ref suddenly collapsed to the canvas after being taken by surprise herself by the impromptu pin attempt!!

"One!"