EuroBash 2021 - England Vs Italy

Adele retreated and Nicky followed. It felt like a retread of every fight she had participated in since she enlisted in this foreign promotion, but with slight deviations each time. Madison had the speed to give her the edge in their joust for ring control and the counterpunching to keep her in check, while Suzy had the volume to keep her on her toes even when the brit pushed offense. Adele, on the other hand, had not shown her hand yet. Maybe she didn't even have a hand. Maybe she had spent her hands away clacking away at keyboards to troll English soccer fans, trying to justify undeserved Italian smugness and ill-conceived superiority. Maybe, maybe, maybe-

She needed to focus. She needed to kill Adele Monstrosorry and lay this monster (both the girl and the soccer-derived blood feud she had found herself in) to rest.

Adele's jabs stung, but they paled before the damage she did to herself with that fist-to-fist confrontation. She shook her left glove once, twice, trying to shake away the burning jolt coursing through her arm. She never broke stride as she did so, her arms returning to full guard as she circled to the side of Adele rather than pursuing her in a straight line against the ropes, ensuring that her opponent would still remain caught against them, ensuring that the area she could navigate was as limited as could be. Out-fighters worked by establishing a pocket and working just outside its range, and Nicky had a loooooooooooooooooot of annoying practice against them recently. What was one more?

Nicky feigns going in for the big, vicious uppercut into the chin, before her arm swerves mid-swing and goes for a hook into the chest instead. She would continue throwing as Adele tries to swerve and evade and keep distance, peppering her with one-two jabs to the face, to the chest, sudden banging hooks to the side... and then out of nowhere, an uppercut right into the toned belly.

It was clear to the cheering audience that Nicky had every intention to finish this in the first round, nay, the first minute if she could, and she was doing her damnest to make it a reality.

Nicky was trying to knock her out. Adele could have easily read that on her face from a while away. Her eyes were burning with a rare determination that the Italian had seen in her own reflection just minutes before. She didn’t know how badly Nicky had wanted it until their gloves connected and a bolt of pain ran up the length of her arm.

She had expected that Nicky would have to take a moment to herself as well to recover from that brazen act. That she wouldn’t be so desperate to go back on the assault. Adele couldn’t have been more wrong.

A hook to her stomach forced Adele to stagger, opening her up for subsequent punches that her guard was almost too slow to break. One jab slipped in and tagged her on the side of the cheek, punched against the gloves guarding her chest. The force behind each blow sent shockwaves through her body. Nicky was moving to kill, ensnaring Adele in a net of relentless offense. She had nowhere to run and was only inches from the ropes.

She couldn’t keep challenging the Brit like this. There was just no merit in doing so. A part of her was tempted to rise to the occasion and exchange a slurry of knockout blows driven on instinct and adrenaline alone. Maybe she would get lucky and she would drop Nicky before she dropped her. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get a knockout. Maybe she would just use up all of her energy and have nothing left by the second round. That was too many ‘maybe’s for her the Anzioan to be comfortable with. Even as she was being battered in a hail of blows, she had to keep her head.

Remember what padre taught you, Adele. You just needed one moment. One second.

There.

Nicky was coming at her from below with an uppercut. The Italian separated her guard as it came in and tensed her stomach, gritting her teeth as her toned abdomen absorbed the strike with a clean smack. Adele breathed out and stepped forward quickly in the same breath, throwing a right cross counter to the center of Nicky’s face.

Nicky was frustrated and she didn't really know why. She was winning. She was pushing Adele back. She was dragging her down to the deep end of the pool and drowning her in the unrelenting volume of her offense. She was letting everyone know she was the superior fighter, and yet she was paradoxically frustrated about it. Even months after the fight had concluded, Nicky would struggle to really understand why she had felt this way...

But her best guess was that underneath that anxious, pride-fueled need to win this was a need to construct a narrative around this. A fighter without a story was a fighter unseen. You could be the best damn thing in the world and nobody would give you a second look if your career did not come with the story. Ali and Foreman, Gatti and Ward, Sugar Ray and LaMotta, Saldano and Rodriguez - the basic boxing narrative were that of two of the best people in the business who didn't like each other, who couldn't quite get the better of the other, and were struggling to find out over the course of multiple matches.

She never had that spark with any of her opponents. It was never personal. Even her encounter with Madison -despite how much trouble the other girl gave her in the ring- was a polite affair.

Adele though... She hated Adele. But she wasn't delivering. The grand contradiction of it all was she was both terrified that Adele was too much for her, and simultaneously disappointed that she didn't seem to be quite enough to be more than a footnote in her career.

Until that cross-counter.

She was making good progress into Adele's body, slipping through cracks in her guard, working away at her arms, and finally landing that uppercut. The loud, wet smack of British glove onto Italian flesh was accompanied by another set of sounds: the audible whiplash of a head snapping back, a yelp of pain, and the shuffle of shoes as Nicky staggered back, guard up, her face stinging hot and her vision blurring before refocusing. She rubbed her cheek slightly, hissing in pain-

And laughed.

it wasn't the uproarious belly laugh she had given earlier, but a low, bitter chuckle that revealed her mouthguard. Okay, she thought, the Italian had teeth. And it was time to tear each one out of her mouth one by one.

Nicky was surprisingly still for a few short seconds. She still had Adele trapped in the space between the ropes and the turnbuckles, ripe for the picking for the 1 or so plus minutes they still had together. She stared down her opponent, feet shuffling, her guard raised and steady, the tension in the air ratcheting up with each passing second, waiting for the inevitable moment where Nicky would strike.

But it didn't come. Instead, she moved forward, breaching the pocket but not throwing anything. Yet. Instead, she would punish or guard against any of Adele's fleeting attempts at striking outside the boundaries, batting aside or slipping jabs, taking them on her hands, and avoiding the big haymakers and overhands. Instead, she focused on closing the already tiny circle of space Adele had to maneuver, forcing her to either retreat fully to the turnbuckle-

Or try to slip past her.

And Nicky was ready for either.

Adele knew right away what Nicky was intending to do. The blonde brawler was playing aggressively and denying Adele every chance to do so much as breathe without her permission. She wanted a Round One KO. She wanted this to be a shoutout. There was no better way to work towards that than to force the Italian into the corner. It was smart, and Adele could hardly be upset about it. It’s the kind of strategy she would have gone with if her training suggested even an ounce of consideration down that path. The frustration for Adele was that she was just letting it happen.

The only chance for her to survive was to draw a line in the sand. There would be a point that Nicky wouldn’t be allowed to cross.

When her cross-counter landed, there was an instant satisfaction that rushed through her veins. It was no glancing blow. Nicky felt her strength full-on and finally retreated a few steps. Adele wanted to feel proud, she wanted to press the attack, but she knew that all she accomplished was buying herself some time. Nothing confirmed that better than hearing the British woman's insane laughter over the sound of her labored breathing. Adele's brow wrinkled in frustration and confusion. What was so funny? Was Nicky that cocky over a few good hits?

Suddenly the blonde was at her once again, approaching fast and hard. She stepped back on reflex and threw a couple of stiff jabs at Nicky in between, only to see one parried and the other shrugged off like a stray bullet off the side of a tank. Nicky was only looking at her now and that made Adele nervous. The Italian bit down on her mouthguard and raised her arms again.

Adele didn't know what Nicky's plan was once she got close. She didn't know if she could hold her back or if it was even better to keep running away. There was one thing that Adele knew for certain: her back would not touch that corner.

The Italian threw herself forward and opened on Nicky’s guard with a step-punch straight into the center of her guard. Nicky deflected it, but that was expected. The British bulldog was going to advance and the Anzioan was going to meet her on the open field with every inch of artillery she could muster. Adele threw hook after hook at the British woman's guard, hoping to break through and force her back in a desperate fight of fire against fire.

Nicky fully expected Adele to try to stall out the rest of the round, slowly giving up strategically minimized bits of ground until she was forced back to the turnbuckle to fight out the last 30 seconds or so. Like every single out-fighter she had ever fought, Adele was going to waste, waste, waste her time with these little jabs and pinpricks and then try to squirrel her way out of a beating by using the clock against her.

Fine, Nicky thought, that little pocket of time was going to have to be enough for her to put the Italian away.

But that didn't happen.

Imagine Nicky's (un)pleasant surprise when Adele defied her prediction, dug her feet in, and went on the offensive. The step-punch came as a surprise, the sudden aggression throwing Nicky back, and arms visibly shaking as her guard took it head-on. Nicky winced and took a step back. Adele advanced, throwing hands like she didn't have tomorrow, battering away at Nicky's rattled guard.

She lost another step, and Adele gained ground again.

Nicky looked into Adele's eyes and saw that same grim determination that she had seen so many times in the mirror while she was trying to steel herself before a match, right before a hook broke through her guard and smacked her squarely in the face, sending her stumbling back. Spittle and sweat flashed through the air. Adele clearly didn't have the knockout power of some of the monsters she faced back in Europe, but Nicky still wasn't keen on taking too many of that.

Another two steps lost by the staggering brit, another two steps claimed by the Anzoian on a mission. Her breathing came heavy, her guard was raised weakly, and her vision was slightly blurred from both the last hook and dripping sweat seeping into her eyes. Adele was relentless and she barely had any room to breathe before the next set of hooks.

Good.

In every interview after this match, Nicky would claim that this was all part of her first-round strategy. She was, she would lie with the silvered tongue of Boris Johnson, luring Adele into a false sense of superiority. Letting her get some hits in, letting her find comfort in going on the offensive so she could do what she was about to do next. And while certainly a cover for the humiliation of letting an out-fighter push her back, Adele's sudden offensive streak was something she had been hoping for.

Navigating opposing volume while delivering her own, even from a position of weakness, was one of Nicky Gunnery's strongest forte.

She struck back. Vision still blurry, she took a quick gulp of breath and moved in. The first hook grazed her head as she ducked down, letting it swipe past her damp hair, battering at her long blonde pigtails. She took the 2nd hook on the shoulder with a bark of pain, as she bent her legs, gathering the energy like a coiled spring, and sending the mother of all uppercuts rocketing into Adele's chin with her left fist. Maybe it was enough to put her to the canvas. Maybe it wasn't... and Nicky sure as hell wasn't gonna take that chance. if the uppercut connected, Nicky would lash out with her right hand in a vicious overhand, catching Adele's head on the way down.

She had tasted Adele's power head-on, and now it was her time to return the favor.

It was therapeutic in a way. Maybe this was how Nicky felt. It could have been the adrenaline or the bloodlust or the determination to not touch the corner at her back or the image of Nicky with a bloody nose that was driving her onward. Probably the latter. Months and months of pent-up frustration had been dwelling around inside of her gut. Her fire was burning so hot that she worried there might be a hole burning straight through her stomach.

Adele had to keep the pressure on as best as she was able. As much as she loathed to admit it, Nicky was an astounding adversary. Her power spoke for itself as the final seconds of the round ticked away and the first impressions of exhaust started to wear Adele down. The last thing that she wanted was to let this British bulldog break free from her barrage and feed her a hidden knockout punch. Just keep going, just keep going, just-

Too late.

By the time she read Nicky’s deflection and saw the uppercut coming at her from below, it was too late for the Italian to do anything. The glove of the British slugger smacked into the underside of her jaw Adele could only manage a hasty guard to absorb a partial amount of the force from Nicky’s overhand. Even so, her punch wracked the Anzionian, forcing her to stumble and fall backward. Her ass hit the floor and the back of her head followed closely after that.

“ONE!”

The countdown from the referee shot a pang of adrenaline through her. Adele pushed up from the canvas and quickly scrambled to two feet, hastily raising her guard as if it would all undo the past few seconds. Nothing doing. Adele raised her gloves and prepared for another rush. Just to tag her, just to do something.

DING!

And with that, the round ended, and Adele’s heart sank like a torpedo in Anzio bay.

And down she went.

There was no sweeter feeling for Nicky than dropping your opponent to the curb. She could feel the Italian's body wilt against her uppercut and completely crumble against her follow-up overhand, and that fierce surge of triumph exploding through her body was all the more gratifying because the object of her humiliation was Adele Monstrosorry, part-time boxer and full-time bridge troll. Before Adele's butt even hit the floor, Nicky had already turned on her heel, running over to her corner with her right glove held high and a big smile flashing her mouthguard, soaking in the cheers of the crowd. She could barely contain her excitement as she got to her corner and leaned against the turnbuckle, fidgeting up and down as if she wanted to preemptively jump for joy, all while she watched her Twitter archnemesis get counted out.

There was no way Adele was surviving that. No way. The Italian gave a better fight than she ever expected from a Social Media haggler, but she had been outmatched at every turn, overwhelmed, and finally put down like the pasta-stealing stray that she was. She was done. There was absolutely no doubt about it. She was not on Nicky Gunnery's level. So when Adele jolted up almost immediately, it was clearly a fatigue-induced hallucination, because there was no frickin way Adele took one-and-a-half of her best shots and just got up like it was nothing.

The boxing realist in her processed it quickly though. Her smile faded, the palpable excitement in her body went cold, her guard was raised, and she stepped forth to make sure that Adele hit the curb for good. Both girls squared up, and Nicky stared into Adele's eyes, her muscles tensing, ready to unleash the most furious barrage in her entire boxing career yet-

DING!

"No!" Nicky screamed. Her rage was garbled by the mouthpiece, so she spat it out into her glove and tried again. "No!" she shouted much more clearly. "No, no, no, no, no, no."  She stamped her foot like a petulant child, her right glove swishing at the air as if she wanted to hit something. She had her. She had her. She had her. She frickin had her, and the only thing that saved Adele Monstrosorry was the arbitrarily timed structure of this boxing match. "Frick no!"She wasn't usually this bad of a sportswoman, but with all the eyes of Twitter combat media watching this, she was under so much pressure to win this and not become some kind of boxing punchline. It was just too much to pretend she wasn't horribly upset at herself for not clinching it in the first round.

With no outlet for her impotent rage, her focus turned to Adele. She marched right up to her opponent, all but barreling into her. Forehead met forehead, chest met chest, bare belly met bare belly. She wordlessly stared her opponent down, her eyes promising the finish she couldn't deliver in the first. A small part of her wondered why the referee wasn't interfering or why her corner wasn't dragging her back. That question was answered a dozen seconds later with a simple query.

"So how do you wanna do this, Miss Gunnery?"

"What." Still staring Adele down, the hostility in her eyes gave way partially to slight confusion.

"The penalty. You won. Unanimous 10-8."

Right. In her zeal to end Adele, she had forgotten about the penalty game.... a penalty game she was 90% sure had been cooked up by Adele screaming at Momentum matchmakers over the few days it took to arrange this match. 10-8? That didn't really say anything. A knockdown was an automatic 2 point deduction. Apparently, the judges didn't think she did enough to warrant a 10-7. Her heart sank... and her rage grew. Whatever. What were the penalties again? A punch to the Italian's belly (which Nicky was suddenly and very acutely aware she was pressed against) or a bunch of kicked soccer balls to the face. She continued staring into Adele's eyes, wondering which option her foe didn't want...

Frick it.

"Let her choose, ref." Nicky said with a small, bitter smile. She butted her toned belly into Adele's in spiteful challenge. "She dug this hole for herself, she can pick the shovel."

She wasn't the only one feeling defeated right now. Though for Adele it was in a much more literal sense.

Sweat dripped from the Italian's freshly beaten brow and from the tip of her nose to the canvas beneath her boots. Her arms were still shaky, still processing the crushing realization that she had lost this round. The judges may have decided that Nicky had won by a slim margin, but for Adele that last knockdown spoke volumes higher than either of their performances so far. The boxing gloves at her sides were suddenly burdened by a tremendous weight. A terrible stir in her heart forced her body to tremble.

All anyone would see is the Italian fighter being knocked down in the last seconds. All they would talk about is the sight of her as her British adversary strutted away with an arm raised in victory. All they would say is how easily Nicky put her in her place in under five minutes. She felt sick to her stomach about it at first.

The Italian’s eyes rose to the figure approaching her and the tremors at her feet. All of a sudden, Nicky was in her face. Adele almost took a reflexive step backward before she caught herself. What was she doing?

The Anzonian scowled and pushed back against Nicky's solid body. If she wanted to start the second round right now, Adele would be more than happy to show her adversary that this first round was nothing but a fluke. You know what? That was fine. Let her get comfortable, let them all think about what they wanted. She would turn this around in the next round and then nobody would-

"So how do you wanna do this, Miss Gunnery?"

“What…?” Adele looked to the referee, then back to Nicky. Oh. The penalty. Adele had scraped and begged to have that particular addition thrown into the match rules and it had completely sailed her by. However, just one look at Nicky’s punchable face in the opening moments was enough to make the Italian forget about the whole thing.

“Merda.” Adele said to herself under her breath. Knowing this spiteful woman, the Anzioan widely assumed that Nicky would take the easy shot to her gut, if only because the British woman already looked ready to commit such an impulsive action, penalty or not. Adele had already tensed her stomach for it, ready for the strike to come at her at any instant to catch her off guard. And Nicky did catch her off guard, just not in the way she expected.

“Huh?” Adele was confused by the action for a moment before she realized what the blonde woman was up to. She was challenging her. Daring Adele to be stupid enough to dig her own grave. All the Italian felt was pity that this woman - this child - would throw a fit and give away her advantage. It only confirmed to Adele that she did not know how to keep a level head. That was something she could use.

“Football." She said too quickly. Her mind caught up with the rest of her and gave an affirming nod to the referee. “...Football. Give her two shots.”

It felt fitting to give the football apologist her just desserts. She snapped her eyes back to Adele and read her face. A knowing smirk suddenly accompanied the Anzioan’s unwavering scowl. “Maybe one of those will sting this time, ah, signora?”

The Italian picked Football.

Was Nicky supposed to take that at face value? Did Adele genuinely think getting pelted by rubber balls was a preferable option to getting punched straight in the stomach, or was she employing reverse psychology, getting Nicky to believe this was what she wanted when the opposite was true instead? Muddling the waters was her parting smirk-accompanying shot about how none of Nicky's punches stung. Did she WANT her to go for the punches? Was the goal trying to get Nicky to change her mind and go back to the belly shots? In the seconds that it took the referee to get the balls, Nicky's eyes searched the smirking countenance of Adele up close, trying to find an answer to the Italian troll's little game.

Also, she was pretty sure Signora was some heinous slur. The curse of being English in the European circuit was that every single foreign competitor was oh so eager to press their bilingualism in your face. For shame.

"Miss Gunnery," came the referee's voice. Urgent and wary. Clearly expecting a brawl to erupt between both girls. "If you would detach yourself from Miss Montessori-"

"Monstrosorry." Nicky corrected reflexively, smiling right back into Adele's face.

"-and take your position."

With extreme deliberation, Nicky removed herself from her staredown with Adele, shooting one last lingering glare at her before she turned around, walked halfway across the ring, and placed herself right in front of the two footballs that the referee had arranged. Now, Nicky knew nothing about football as a fan per say. Her entire altercation with Adele was built around the defense of a game she didn't even really care about. She knew nothing about Liverpool or Manchester United or even who was on the National team that lost to Italy. She was completely clueless about the sport she was defending the honor of.

But she was still English, and that meant that at one point or another, she had been roped into playing football whether she liked it or not.

Unfortunately, she was good at it too. She couldn't answer a thing about strategies and formations and positions, but as lead striker on the woman's team at Sandhurst academy, she could do the one thing she needed to do-

Kick.

Shooting Adele one last venomous look, she took a few steps back... and charged full speed ahead, her leg flashing out to send the first ball rocketing towards Adele. Before the ball even made it halfway across, her leg had already found the 2nd ball, and she launched it towards the right of where Adele was standing, anticipating a possible dodge, hoping to score at least one vicious kick against her.

Nicky was a child, through and through. Adele had created that fairly accurate impression from the moment she exchanged virtual insults over a real-world event that neither of them was within a thousand feet of. Then she wasted good time, effort, and money burning the fruits of her family's labor for something as petty as winning an argument. The longer she knew this British bulldog, the less she wanted to.

The icing atop all of her insults was the final one: Monstrosorry. Calling her names? Honestly? She even smiled at the Italian as if it was the most hilarious thing in the world. That should have gotten under the proud Italian’s skin somehow, but instead, she maintained her composure. Not for lack of trying. The instinctive desire to slug Nicky across the face was only barely manageable. You know what? It was fine. Let this brute be angry at her. Let her get vain and make a stupid mistake.

So football. What was Adele after with this tactic? A plot? A dirty trick? Some kind of game to throw her opponent off balance?

Hell no. Adele chose her punishment with the full intention of having Nicky be the one to dish it out, without hesitation. Unlike some incredibly insecure, arrogant English women with a bad taste in sports teams, Adele never felt the need to dance around

The ball launched with the speed of a cannonball. Adele’s reflexes threw her body to the left in a desperate dive. The speeding latex orb nearly scraped her side as it glanced the skin of her ribs. Adele hit the safety of the floor without so much as a scratch. Her lungs expanded to welcome an easy sigh of relief before the sound of a second cannon snapped her eyes back open. In a blink, a 30MPH ball of death was a foot from her face. No time for conscious thought, no rational way to proceed other than pure reflex. Adele’s arms rose to defend herself. The resounding impact carried out from the ring’s epicenter like a thunderclap.

The impact blew her hair back in a gust of wind. For the entirety of the once ravenous audience was stunned into deathly silence. The next moment, however, was accompanied by a lone chuckle from the middle of the ring. Captured between the awkward grip of Adele’s boxing gloves, the Italian gently lowered the ball to the ground and revealed the pristine white of her defiant smile.

"Anzio Arbalests, Varsity. I was Goalie of the Year, three times in a row. Too bad for you.” Adele answered the unspoken question on everyone's mind. The crowd surrounding the intense action roused to life once more. ‘Po po po po po po po’ to the tune of Seven Nations Army was the screaming lifeblood of those in the Italian’s camp. Adele braced against her knee and stood up tall from the floor. A long smirk greeted Nicky from the other end of the ring as she punched her gloves together. It was her turn now. "Good power by the way, but no finesse. No challenge. Kind of like your boxing."