To Love A Fighter |||| l.p.

Hard Lessons

Liam's POV

I show up for my first day of training excited to just get my body demolished by whatever is coming. My first hour is with Pat,  so I go into the standup room and its split in half. We've got a few guys on bags and theres 2 people in the ring. "Liam! Get on a bag, we're getting started" We go through a few series of drills and I'm sweating up a storm in the first 15 minutes.  Pat does not slack, he keeps me moving between bag work and hitting the mitts with him. My arms burn as I hit the mitts, Pat calling out combination after combination, I start to growl with the intensity. "There we go,  figured you had a monster in you! Move move!" Pat laughs. He switches off from me and moves between fighters, some I recognized from the website, others I didn't. everyone was in pretty good shape, although you could tell the difference between the professionals and the amateurs.

As I'm hitting the bag Stella walks with a tall asian man with a serious expression and a shaved head. She's wearing a hoodie and some loose blue shorts, muay thai shorts. She's carrying a bag and has her headphones in and had a blank look on her face. A little unreadable.

I'm hitting the bag distractedly and notice no one really stops to look but some glance in her direction. Training comes first, I gather. Stella I'm sure has established herself as just another teammate with the community here. Except for a few guys in the bags next to me, "who the fuck is that? is that a girl? she coming to train with the big boys? bahahaha!" The professional fighters turn around and glare, "hey who said that!" I shake my head and step away from the 3 giggling gentlemen. The loudest one steps forward, "I did, you her boyfriend or something?" he retorts cockily. The fighter smiles, "no I'm not, but thats my teammate you're talking about and rookies should show some respect to their new teammates or you don't need to be here," He states calmly. The new guy's face flushes angrily at the response, "hey man, I'm an up and comer and I can say whatever the hell I want, and what I'm saying is that I don't want some girl taking up space here if she can't train with the guys and help me get to the UFC! So what the fuck are you gonna do about it?" At this point I'm starting to get mildly pissed off, who the hell is this guy? Has Stella taken out her headphones? What if she hears about this? The professional just smiles and looks toward the ring. I also look and see Stella looking over, looking mildly amused. She hops down and walks our way, at this point boxing is over and everyone is staring, Pat looking annoyed and Stella's coach looking expressionless.

"What's your name bud?" she asks in a friendly manner. The rookie looks like he's trying to cover his embarrassment but maintain his tough cover, "Alan, remember the name bitch." Ooohhhh, everyone is silent. No support of any kind towards either party. Stella stares him down,  unruffled. Most girls would have flipped at the b word, but I take it this is not the first time Stella has had this conversation. She smiles cooly, "Alan, I understand that you are very concerned about your budding career, so let me do this for you. I'll give you a brief match, just to make sure that you feel comfortable training with me around. If I win, you shut the hell up and train, because if you want to make it big you should have bigger things to worry about than some girl at your gym. if you win, I'll leave so that you can train in peace." Alan smiled "I don't hit girls," Stella looked at him, "then the match should be quick then" and hops back in the ring to prepare. The guys who have been here longer are shaking their heads and laughing. The rookies look nervous, frankly I'm excited. I have a feeling this guy is about to get his arse handed to him.

They step in the cage and she steps up to touch gloves and he declines. How rude! Stella smiles, displaying her mouthpiece with fangs and steps back. The bell goes off and the match starts, and Alan lunges forward with a barrage of wild punches. Stella weaves, moves and dodges to step in close to him. She grabs his hip like a side hug and grabs his opposite arm. All at once she steps in and tosses him over her shoulder and he slams to the ground. "Ooooh!" the crowd gasps. She then sits on top of him and straddles him and starts to rain punches straight into his face. He tries to protect his face but she is too fast with her punches, he tries to knee her back to no effect, and finally he just tries to push her off of him. As soon as his hands extend into her chest to try and bench press her off, I notice her grab one of his arms, spins around, traps it between her legs for an armbar and proceeds to hyperextend his elbow. I wince at the sight, yikes. Alan howls in pain as he frantically taps to have her stop and she lets go and steps off.

She's on her feet and stares at him, her gaze is ice. He's clutching his arm and gritting his teeth in pain. "its not broken and you'll be fine in 2 weeks. I didn't pop it," she states matter of factly. "Fuck you!" he yells and his howls turn to whimpers. Stella laughs, "underestimate your opponent like that in the UFC and you'll experience far worse pain. Man up. It only gets worse if you don't realize this quickly. Either accept the lesson now or you have no business training with the pros," Alan's face falls, I guess it dawned on him. He stops whimpering,  stands up, and steps out of the ring without another word. Everyone starts to leave after he does. "Ready Romel?" she asked the serious faced asian, and he nods in response. Oohhh, that's the muay thai coach, I realize.

The guys around me excitedly whisper about the fight between Stella and Alan. "She's fuckin' scary bro. I'm staying away from that chick" I overhear one of the rookies murmur. I'll admit, even I got chills. Some of the pro fighters were just laughing and shaking their heads, one comment caught my ear, "I remember when she did that to me, that guy got it easy. But its the best way to learn!" Among the pros there was respect, among the rookies there was fear, Stella sure leaves an impression on everyone she meets. I turn back to watch her drill with Romel, seemingly oblivious to it all. I turn away to move to my next training session, I guess I'll know more tonight.