The Rules of the Challenge:
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No gloves required.
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Win by submission, knockout, or surviving the timer.
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No eye gouging or biting.
Trent wasn’t fighting for the money. He was fighting for the dopamine hit of watching someone lesser fold under his hands. Big Eli watched him throw a spinning hook kick. It was technically perfect, beautiful even. The crowd of mechanics and mill workers collectively oohed. Big Eli stared at Trent’s feet. They were clean, uncalloused—the feet of a man who fought on padded mats under bright fluorescent lights with a referee standing by to make sure nobody actually died.
"500 dollars," Big Eli muttered, staring into his club soda.
"Don’t do it, Eli," Rusty warned, his tone dropping the jovial bartender act. "That kid’s broken two jaws this month. He’s fast, and he likes hurting people."
Big Eli closed his eyes. The headache at the base of his skull throbbed. He hated violence. He had spent his twenties drowning in it. As a young soldier in Vietnam, he hadn’t just seen violence; he had survived it in the worst ways imaginable. He had spent the last forty years trying to scrub that cold, calculating part of his brain out with manual labor.
But the tractor needed an alternator.
"Hold my drink, Rusty."
The crowd parted with a low murmur of confusion as the large older man stepped off the sticky floor and approached the mats. He awkwardly lifted one leg over the makeshift rope barrier, then the other, looking like a grandfather stepping over a low fence to check on a stray calf.
Trent stopped his shadowboxing. He dropped his hands to his hips, a smirk cutting across his face, looking Big Eli up and down. "You lost, old man?"
The crowd snickered.
"I heard 500 dollars," Big Eli said. He didn’t look Trent in the eye. He looked at the peeling duct tape holding the blue mats together.
"You got a death wish, grandpa," Trent laughed, stepping into Big Eli’s personal space. Up close, Trent smelled like spearmint gum and raw adrenaline. "I hit hard. I’m not going to go easy on you just because you got dirt on your jeans."