Suckerpunch: (2011) (3 page)

I asked Nick, “Who’s your all-time dream matchup?”

“I bet he gets asked that a hundred times a day,” Gil said.

“That’s because it’s a valid and intelligent question. Nick? What do you say? Lee vs. Norris? Ali vs. Tyson?”

Nick smiled. “Hélio Gracie vs. Bruce Lee.”

I almost hugged him but settled for a low whistle.

Gil kept his composure and gave a satisfied nod. “I’d pay to see that one.” By
pay
, he meant cut off his right leg.

We hadn’t asked any specifics about why Banzai Eddie was taking us out to dinner, but curiosity was starting to overcome my limited manners. Having marketing and matchmaking on board was a very encouraging sign, but I’d never heard of any fighter going from the undercard at a one-off event to the Warrior limo. It was like winning the townie festival face painting contest, then getting invited to touch up the Sistine Chapel.

Eddie was sharp. He knew what was happening across the car and said, “We’ll get to it. I just don’t like talking deals in cars. Seems like we’re doing something dirty, illegal.”

I nodded. He’d said “deals.”

Eddie leaned forward. “Our business should be conducted in the same establishments where multimillion dollar deals go down. We should be one table over from the NFL and NBC. Coke and McDonald’s. Nike and Kobe. They don’t think we belong in the same tier as them, but we do.”

The car floated to a stop at the curb, and Gil reached for the handle but pulled back when he saw the shape of the driver hustling along outside the windows. The door opened and I followed Gil out.

Without moving his lips, Gil said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

We were behind Caesars Palace near an overhead door with guys in service uniforms rolling heavy carts around. Some staff members on break were standing around a melting ice sculpture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, tapping their toes in the puddle it was turning into. They stopped long enough to check us out, weren’t impressed, and went back to the puddle.

I was impressed. Casinos like having important people come through the front door. It makes the tourists think they should be there too, either to get a photo or because they’re just as important. Telling a casino you want the back door—and getting it—means something.

We trailed Eddie, a fast walker on those legs, until we came to a set of double swinging doors propped open with large cans of olive oil. Steam and noise rolled out from the opening, and we went through into the kitchen of Restaurant Guy Savoy.

Gil and I had heard of the place, but we’d never even been in Caesars Palace, let alone what some considered the best restaurant in the city. We looked at each other’s clothes and faces and decided there was nothing we could do.

Eddie said something to a waiter, who left and came back with a guy in chef’s whites. That guy greeted Eddie like an old friend and didn’t even glance at our clothes while he led us to a table near a window that was surrounded by waiters sliding partitions into place to make it a private dining room.

They finished and disappeared, and the guy in whites sat us down, Gil on my left and the Warrior crew across from us, just like in the limo. A waiter showed up with menus and got waved away immediately. The chef told us not to worry, he’d make us all very happy, and he was gone.

I looked around—nice lighting, good smells, a comfortable murmur of conversation from the other tables but nothing intrusive. The tablecloth was probably the softest material I’d ever felt, possibly made from clouds. I sipped the ice water and tasted pure glacier. “What’s good here, the club sandwich?”

Eddie laughed. “The only bad thing about eating here is once you do, every other place tastes like dirt. Now let’s talk before the food comes, because I don’t want you to think I’m bribing you with the best meal you’ve ever eaten. And if you’re going to walk out, I want you to do it before you get a taste. Is there anyone I need to get on the phone while we do this?”

I was confused and must have looked it.

Eddie said, “An agent, manager, some kind of rep?”

“I guess that’s me,” Gil said.

“Good deal. You ready, Woody? How would you like to fight on the next Warrior Pay-Per-View card?”

“Yes, please.” I suck at poker too.

Eddie clapped Nick on the shoulder. “You see? That’s what I’m talking about. No questions asked. Do you want to fight? Yes. Boom. It’s on. Now, Woody, I know it’s short notice, but your fight tonight wasn’t much more than a hard sparring session.”

I frowned. “Short notice?”

“Yeah, our next event is the day after tomorrow. Didn’t you know that?”

“Whoa,” Gil said. “You want him to fight
this
Saturday?”

“That’s right, brah.”

“Are you adding a fight to the card?”

Eddie smiled. “Nope.”

Then Nick smiled. It wasn’t quite as charming as before.

“Morris is out,” said Eddie. “He pulled a hammie running up some goddamn stairs.”

I said, “And Morris was going to fight . . .”

“Junior Burbank,” Eddie said.

I sipped the water again. Someone had pissed on my glacier.

Eddie’s team was prepped and drilled for this. Nick said, “Gil, you were saying how tough it must be to find the right matchups, but this one is a no-brainer.”

“On two days’ notice?” Gil asked. “No brains sounds about right.”

Benjamin leaned in and splayed his hands on the table like he was going to do a magic trick. “Rematches put asses in seats and TV buys in the bank.”

“Rematch?”

“Woody is the only guy to beat Junior,” said Eddie.

Gil laughed, but he wasn’t happy. “That was three years ago. At a barn in Illinois.”

“It was a sanctioned fight,” Eddie said. “It’s on both their records. And I know quite a few top ten fighters who got started in that arena.”

“How many of them are still fighting on no-name cards for gas money?”

“Hey,” I said. “Which one of you is on my team again?”

Gil put a hand on my arm. “I’m just curious. Because you’ve fought more than Burbank since then and haven’t lost, either. But he’s been with Warrior for two years, and this is the first we’ve heard about a rematch.”

“The timing’s right,” Eddie said.

“For Burbank to avenge his one loss?” Gil asked.

I looked back at Eddie, like watching ego tennis.

“I think he deserves the opportunity,” Eddie said, “just as Woody’s earned the chance to prove it was legit. It’s up to them who comes away with the win.”

“But you want him to win,” I said. “You meaning Warrior, the whole company.”

Eddie shrugged. “We want a good fight. It’s no secret we’ve put a lot of marketing behind Junior, but he’s easy to market. Big, blond, aggressive. He’s what guys want to be like and what women want their guys to be like.”

“Not my woman,” Gil said.

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, paused, and started over. “Another reason Junior is so marketable is because of what he
isn’t.”
He looked at me, and I knew what was coming next. “He
isn’t
associated with various criminal elements. Or rumored to have been involved in illegal pit fighting. Or—”

“I got it,” I said.

“Do you?” Eddie asked. The table narrowed down to him and me. “Because I’ve heard some things, and while it’s really none of my business, if you’re going to fight for me, for Warrior, you represent the brand in everything you do. You take a dump and start to walk out without washing your hands, I want you to think, ‘Will this make Warrior look bad?’ You get what I’m saying? Football players get busted all the time for knocking their wives around, drunk driving, hell, packing an arsenal for the end of days, but see, the NFL is
established.
They can survive it, because people know it’s a good product and they want their players to be a little crazy. Makes for good highlights.”

“But not
too
crazy,” Benjamin footnoted.

Eddie stayed on me. “MMA is young. We’re like a new cola coming in and competing with Coke and Pepsi, and if we get a few bad cans poisoning people before we get the benefit of the doubt, they’ll pull us off the shelf like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Good-bye, Warrior. Bye-bye, Woodshed. You just fought that piece of crap Porter? I’d never let him in the same building as a Warrior event. With his history? No way. And Gil’s right; where you just fought, you know what they had in that arena last weekend?”

“No,” I said.

“The Nevada State Pinochle Championship. I’m not fucking kidding you. Wall-to-wall sweaters and hearing aids. You want to keep fighting at that level so you can stay under the radar and screw around with who the fuck knows what, let me know right now. I’ll take you back to the glorified bingo hall, and you’ll never see me again. Other than in magazines, on billboards, the Internet, and TV.”

I poked my silverware around. I didn’t know who he’d talked to about me or how much he knew. The people with the worst of the info wouldn’t have given him anything. Or couldn’t. And if he knew any of that, he wouldn’t have brought me to Guy Savoy and sat at the same table with sharp knives. I said, “All that stuff is behind me.”

“See, that’s the sticky part. With a guy like Porter, he gets busted and put on probation. All the world can see whether or not he’s keeping his nose clean. But with you, it’s all whispers and sideways looks. So either it’s all bullshit and you’re a Boy Scout with a massive slander campaign, or you just never got caught.”

“Which one would you prefer?” I asked.

“I would prefer that you promise me I’m not going to get a call at 4 a.m. telling me you’re holding some chick from Cirque du Soleil hostage on top of the fucking Stratosphere.”

“You won’t get that call,” I said. “I don’t like heights.”

Nick thought that was funny, and Eddie cracked a little smile but got right back to business. “Promise me.”

“You want my word on it?”

“I’ll take that over a contract any day. But it
will
be in the contract.”

I stood up, said, “You have my word,” and leaned over the table.

Eddie rose and we shook on it. We sat back down. I felt Gil staring at me.

“You never gave me your word,” he said.

“I got a couple you can have right now.”

He ignored that and said to Eddie, “I’m going to have to look at that contract.”

Eddie pulled a stack of trifolded pages out of his inside jacket pocket and handed them over.

Gil opened them and sat back.

Benjamin said, “So, is any of that stuff true?”

“What stuff?”

“Come on.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure whatever you heard was exaggerated.”

“I hope so. Because from what I heard, you—”

Gil pointed at page three of the contract and said, “This is only for one fight.”

“We’re in a tight spot here,” Eddie said. “We don’t have time to go over Woody’s medical records, see if there’s anything preexisting that could keep him from fulfilling an extended commitment. If he even wants one. Then there are the exclusivity clauses, sponsorship deals, appearance schedules and fees . . . It’s a huge hassle. After Saturday, we can all sit down again and talk about the future.”

Gil flipped a few pages. “More money would be nice.”

“Always,” Eddie agreed.

“How long do we have to consider the offer?”

“Until I stand up from this table.” Eddie tapped his fork against the bottom of his water glass. It looked a bit like he was pouting because we weren’t bowing while signing the contract with tears of gratitude, but maybe it was just the light. He let the fork fall. “And it isn’t an offer; it’s a goddamn gift.”

“You came to us,” Gil said.

“Lucky you.”