“Get out.” That was the first thing Garrett Wilson said when eighteen-year-old Tanya Adams walked into Elite Combat Academy on a Saturday morning. Thirty students were already on the mats. Music played...
“Pick one.” The first fighter said it like he was doing her a favor. “Any one of us.” Naomi Carter stood with her back less than three feet from the padded wall...
The buzzer sounded. Everybody heard it. That was what made the silence afterward so ugly. Three minutes were over. The round was finished. Twenty-four people stood around the edge of the mat...
“You ever spar before?” Lena Brooks looked up from the bench. The question came from Derek Sloan. Thirty-one years old. Six-foot-one. About one hundred ninety pounds. Third-degree karate black belt. Brazilian jiu-jitsu...
“Pick somebody.” Ethan Cole stood in the center of North Ridge Martial Arts with a black belt tied tightly around his waist and a grin that told everyone he already knew how...
“Easy money.” Derek Voss looked across the makeshift mat and grinned. “This man won’t last sixty seconds.” Thirty people packed into the back room of the Iron Horse bar laughed with him....
They said she was too small for jiu-jitsu. Too young. Too quiet. Too fragile. Then, two months later, ten-year-old Mina made the gym’s fifteen-year-old junior champion tap in thirty seconds. But...
“Thirty seconds.” Derek Vaughn smiled as he stepped onto the mat. “That’s all I’m giving you.” The laughter around the cage grew louder. Across from him stood a forty-seven-year-old janitor wearing...
The laughter started before the match did. It came from the young fighters leaning against the cage. From two coaches standing near the heavy bags. From a man recording on his phone...
The fluorescent lights above Apex Striking and Grappling hummed with a thin, irritating sound that most people stopped noticing after five minutes. Marcus Reed never stopped noticing it. He noticed everything. The...