“The World Is a Ghetto” by WAR
Walkin' down the street, smoggy-eyed
Looking at the sky, starry-eyed
Searchin' for the place, weary-eyed
Crying in the night, teary-eyed
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
Wonder when I'll find… paradise
Somewhere there's a home… sweet and nice
Wonder if I'll find… happiness
Never give it up, now I guess
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
[Instrumental Interlude]
There's no need to search anywhere
Happiness is here, have your share
If you know you're loved, be secure
Paradise is love to be sure
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
The world is a ghetto.
“The Mighty Quinn”
I could remember it like it was yesterday… I think we all have a purpose. I really do, but I think life is a race between reaching that purpose and reaching our breaking point. I never knew success and fame, never knew happiness. I only knew the street and the pain and I didn’t want to know it. I’d sit on curbs and dream of something better with tears in my eyes that would aggravate my swollen and sometimes cut cheeks and lips. Rich bitches in their Benz’s, Audi’s, BMW’s would drive by me laughing at my boy clothes, stained in dirt and water because we didn’t have change for the laundry. They call me Princess Diana… Princess of the slums. I didn’t know what my purpose was, but I knew as the nights went on, too hot, too cold, no heat, no air conditioning… I knew the breaking point was catching up on me. And I remember it like it was yesterday…
“Come on, you fooking bitch!! Beg me to release you!! Fooking beg me!!”
I had Sandy in a choke with a knife pressed against her neck. The bitch had been bullying me all through school. Now, here we were freshmen in college and she’s at me again. But on this day, I’d had enough. I used to sit back and take it; sometimes, I’d even cry. Here I was in hard East London and Sandy, dumb brunette bitch spent her days on The King’s Road shopping. I took abuse, racial, emotional, physical… I could always take a bloody beating, but this bitch had caught me on the wrong day. My name is Diana Quinn, but there’s already a more famous Diana Quinn from Los Angeles and teamed with a girl from the UK, traveling the US in that tag team, so I go by Dynamite Quinn. Why? I’m a shade over 5’1”; I’m about 120 lbs, light tan skinned baby faced Black girl with shoulder length black hair, light brown eyes, though sometimes I wear silver metallic contacts, roots in Egypt but born in the poorest house in London. My name is Dynamite because dynamite, as the saying goes, comes in small packages.
“Help meeeeee!!!” she was screaming and I knew that my scholarship was going out the window. I knew that it was all over for me. I’d come so far in life, put up with so much fooking bullshit from bitches like that bloody cxnt, but I had to fook it all up by bringing that knife to school. I always figured if I had to fight, I would throw down, but I always lost them. I never fought Sandy; I thought we would one day in the hallway, but for some reason, I feared her and she barely hit me in the belly, but I went down out of fear. She would taunt me every day, even as I would come home to sick parents and a sickness deep inside of me. I used to wear hand me downs, boy clothes, to school and get laughed at and picked on. I’d walk home and girls would try to rip them off of me and beat me up. That’s how I discovered my strength; I jerked my jacket back from a girl and yanked her off her bloody feet and down on an exposed pipe, since we lived so close to a cesspool. She broke her jaw. I learned humility in those slums; when you had to walk by or play near a pool of piss and shit from everybody in the neighborhood, you learned that you weren’t any better or worse than anybody else. Funny, the shit came from all these different people and it got along fine… humans can think, and they can’t get along for nothing in the fooking world.
I never got to hear Sandy tell me I had won, but as I was being tackled to the ground and felt the tears running down my face, I knew damn well the bloody cxnt would never fook with me again. I stared into her eyes and she looked terrified and that was enough for me. Then I really started to cry because I knew that I would be kicked out of school, I would lose my scholarship, and I may even go to jail. And guess what? All three happened. But you know, my sentence was lessened because my classmates testified in letters about the abuse Sandy had done against me. I never really regarded any of them as my friends because they certainly didn’t fooking help me, but I guess they hated her just as much as I did.
Yes, I can remember it like it was yesterday… the way I fooked everything up, let my parents down and by the time I got out, they were dead. The cancer had taken my Mother. Father didn‘t last two weeks after his love was gone……………………….
Prison never rehabilitates you; it may break you; it may kill you; it may turn you into something else… but it never fixes you. When I went into jail, I was very fooking scared. I was the smallest girl there and the prettiest as well. I had many fights in the slums and at school, but nothing could prepare me for this. By this time, I had won only three fights of so many and those three were accidental showings of my strength. But I didn’t think that would do me any good in jail. These women were hard women and I quickly got the name “Princess Diana” for my demeanor and good posture. I had come from dirt poor, true enough, but I learned etiquette and I always felt that if I conducted myself as a civilized person, I would be treated as such by those who thought poor and Black equaled savage. Fat fooking chance of that getting me anywhere. The meals were disgusting; I saw girls get privileges by sucking off guards and there were female gangs controlling the jail from the inside. It was almost impossible for someone to not be swallowed up by the atmosphere and the hate inside of those walls. Listening to my cellmate Dora’s tales of abuse and rapes made me angry. And while none of it had happened to me in jail yet, I would dream of powerful women who made a mistake being brought here to be broken and maimed.
Prison was where I really learned to fight. Catherine O’Malley was an old broad, red hair and green eyes from Belfast, but she was a legend in and out of prison. She was one of the pioneers of female boxing and competitive fighting in Europe, especially in the UK, but she never hit it big because she couldn’t stay out of trouble. She was just a woman who loved to fight because that’s all she knew how to do. She was the type who could won ten straight cage fights, but didn’t get a title shot because she’d gotten into a brawl at a soccer match and ended up in jail. Everybody respected her. I’m not gonna go into all of the details of our first meeting, but let’s just say we didn’t get along. I had been lifting weights and getting myself in shape because all the tv shows said that’s what people do in jail. I didn’t have that much time to spend there and I would be out in a few months, but she tried me. I broke her jaw and I almost felt sorry for her because when I hit her old ass face, her teeth shattered and she went down hard. But the old fooking bitch got up and came at me and picked me up over her head and carried me around. She could wrestle and it wound up being a big laugh rest for the other girls, watching her carry me around or watching me knock her down and break her face, just so she could spit blood and tooth chippings out and say, “Is dat all ye fooking gut?” I grew to love this woman; she trained a lot of us girls in the art of wrestling and dirty boxing.
I learned how to hold and hit, how to grab a girl and control her with my grappling, driving my knees into her belly, then hit her kidneys or her pussy or her ass when the ref’s vision was blocked by her body. I learned to slip punches and throw counters; I learned ground and pound and how to drop hammer fists, but I really put my focus on my wrestling more than anything. Catherine told me I was the strongest little girl she’d ever seen, even stronger than the legendary great Welsh fighter Barbara Pound, who was only 4’11” and 98 lbs, but only lost once in her whole career. Then I read somewhere that Barbara Pound used cocaine before her fights, and me, I was clean and I still am.
I was small, but I was strong and I had a good body, large tits, strong arms and legs, a big ass and nice abs with a bellybutton that was shaped like a T and I even read in some stupid women‘s health magazine that girls with bellybuttons shaped like T‘s have the highest sex drive. Catherine taught me how to get on the inside and pound the body; we’d watch tapes of Joe Frazier and Rocky Marciano, and Bernard Hopkins and Mike Tyson. She showed me some footage of Marie B. fighting girls like Kayla and Samantha, who were a lot taller and how she’d use her wrestling skills to get them down. She showed me Siena Blaze’s fights with Sheba the Great and Sheba’s ability to slip punches and feed off the energy around her and those beating drums vs. Siena’s constant body attacks and submission skills. We really bonded and I realized that I was being turned into a machine… a real fighting machine, and I don’t say that in jest either.
We watched Isis Jones, the 6’1” 200 lb honey skinned girl with gold dreadlocks, born right in London like me to two Jamaican parents, won a gold medal in wrestling at the Olympics. We watched her win that medal on tape over and over again and I watched how she used her size and brute strength, but through Catherine, I saw the strategy and the positioning. The commentators were talking about Isis like she was an animal; the Black girl uses force and power… I used to think that way too, but I realized that Isis was using angles and outthinking her opponents. These stupid racist commentators did this fooking shit to Serena and Venus Williams when they play tennis too and while Catherine was White, she was only interested in my training and safety. Not that race ever mattered to me, back home, bullies didn’t have a set color. I was small and cute; they were taller, richer, meaner, bigger… whatever the fook you want to call it.
The gangs didn’t touch me because I lived in that little space reserved for a gym. I could walk around the courtyard and walk around the whole jail without anyone bothering me about anything simply because I was the apprentice of the baddest woman in the fooking joint. She wasn’t a gang boss and she wasn’t pitting me up against anybody from another gang. I was getting a reputation as a bad ass and I hadn’t done anything other than lift weights and beat girls up in sparring. They were calling me Dynamite because of my slams and takedowns and my explosive style, but they got to see my craftiness as well. My sidewalk slam was my trademark; I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve put out with that move and I don’t care how big you fooking are; I’ll pick you up and slam you down. Day after day and night after night, we trained. I stuck to Catherine like a wet bathing suit to a hot car seat because I was still very much afraid in that place, but when I was sparring or on those occasions when I did fight in a sanctioned match against another girl, I was invincible. Like I said, I wasn’t in the jail for that long, but I beat girls from other jails who were brought in to fight me. I was so afraid to lose and it was fifty percent because I didn’t want to make Catherine out to be a liar after she built me up and talked me up to so many people. The other fifty percent was because if I lost, how did I know Catherine wouldn’t dump me and I wouldn’t be getting raped and jumped by the gangs, even as my release date approached? I ended up winning a trophy the warden and guards put together and I got a steak dinner. They were surprised for two reasons: I wanted the whole jail to get steak dinners, even if they were that cheap chopped steak, and they were shocked at how fast I ate it and that I even requested a steak dinner to begin with. After that, no worries about gangs.
But you know, jealousy is a motherfooker. On the outside, I was so used to being treated like shit and pushed around. I never realized what was to come because I was so in love with being liked and respected. Then one morning I woke up, and Catherine and the other girls who had helped train me weren’t even speaking to me or looking at me. Everyone else loved me; everyone else would smile at me or strike up a conversation when I’d walk by. I had more girls wanted me to train them than Catherine did and I was helping them, but she wouldn’t even speak to me or look at me anymore and I didn’t know why. If she wasn’t going to train me anymore, then I wasn’t going to fight anymore… I didn’t feel like I could do it without her. She was training other girls, but they never amounted to anything. She was really showing her age and when she’d tell those stories about the old days, not too many were listening like I was. She was freezing me out and I didn’t know why. I tried to talk to her; she ignored me. I tried to apologize, even if I didn’t know what I was apologizing for; she ignored me. I can tell you, I’d rather be cursed the fook out and beaten within an inch of my life than ignored. When you ignore somebody, you don’t even acknowledge them as a human being and I’d been considered less than human. It hurt, but it didn’t break me.
It was around this time that I found out she had been making money off my fights and was blowing most of it on bathtub or toilet whiskey… and yes, the whiskey is called that because it was made in a bathtub or a toilet… in jail. Tangy, eh? I found out Catherine had badmouthed me as her “little black bomb” or her “black dynamite stick,” but she was going around telling people that my ego was out of control and that I was nothing but a “black plague.” I didn’t understand any of it because I trained hard. But I was just a slave to her; all those times we sat watching tape, all those jogs around the courtyard and how she taught me to train my body and my mind… all for the purpose of using me. I thought she was protecting me from the gangs because she cared about me; no; she was just claiming me as her property. If she wanted me to cut my arm off, I may have done it because that’s how afraid and respectful I was of her. But she was just using me and brainwashing me. Her problem was that I was training fighters and that my reputation was greater than hers, even if my reputation as a fighter was due in large part to her training and knowledge and every fooking time I was asked, I said that. But she was seeing me as competition and I even heard she went to gang leaders to have me hobbled or even killed, but I was too well liked and I had made a lot of money for them too.
When I got out, I had no place to go. And the night before, they really threw me a party like none other. Even Catherine and her crew were there, but she got drunk and tried to tell everyone she was the reason why I was so successful, only to be led away early by the same girls she’d trained. I had been the Princess of the poor and I’d been the Princess of the prison, but now I was just poor and fresh out of prison. My parents were dead; our shack had been plowed over; the cesspool had overflowed and the area where we once lived had ground that was a combination of mud and shit. The city was planning on renovating it and turning it all into a big apartment complex. I knew I wasn’t going back to school and I knew that I wasn’t going back to jail, though a part of me wanted to because it was so simple in there. They tell you when to eat, when to sleep, and for me, when to train and when to fight. I’d walked the straight and narrow on the outside and I’d been treated like shit for it. It took me becoming a criminal to get respected.
I went to a fighting organization out in London and saw a shaven headed woman who was in a white dress. She wanted to know my credentials and she was very rude. She talked up her organization like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but she treated her fighters like shit during our tour and she acted like she was the whole organization. Maybe she didn’t act like that; I don’t know, but that’s how she came across to me. There was another blonde woman there with eyeglasses and a clipboard who kept rolling her eyes at what the bald one was telling me. But the glasses girl was nicer. Baldy told me I wouldn’t make it because I was too fresh and too soft in the middle, but that I‘d make a good valet. She told me that she had a girl named “Diana Quinn” and that’s how I found out about the other one. When I told her I fight under the name “Dynamite,” she told me that my name was stupid and that she’d give me another one. Fat fooking chance.
I went to Cardiff to a gym and saw a girl with all these tattoos and dyed blue hair who you guys know now as Gemma Rox and I wanted to train with her and her trainers, but she told me to fuck off. I didn’t approach her at the gym; I caught her at a pub down the street. Don’t ask me why she cursed me out; she was drinking and looking all sad. I guess I came between her drink and her thoughts. Honestly, I wanted to punch her in her fooking face for cursing at me before I got say hardly a word, but I walked away from it. She seemed to be egging me on like she wanted to fight me, but drunk as she was, I would’ve been doing her a favor beating the shit out of her. She looked like that’s what she wanted. Then, I happened to be hanging around Ricky Hatton’s gym in Manchester and I saw a flier for a fight team called Punishment MMA that was based in the United States in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were branching out and were in Manchester looking for fighters. I showed up; I showed off, and before I knew it, the girl everybody didn’t give a fook about was in the US sparring and training with other girls who nobody gave a fook about.
I was back in school at the University of Cincinnati on another kind of scholarship and I was surprised at the grants and waivers I was getting. I was being paid to go to school and I couldn’t believe it; maybe the US was where I needed to be. I finished my Bachelor’s in Political Science in two hard years of taking many hours and working hard at the gym. By then, I’d been back to London twice. Both times, I had competed in freestyle wrestling, and both times, I’d won gold. And yes, I went back to the jail and visited the girls I knew who were still there. I was disappointed to find out that some of the ones who got out weren’t doing so well on the outside. Some of them had even committed suicide. My only experience with that stuff prior to going there myself was seeing the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” where that old man hung himself because he couldn’t function outside of prison. I understood, though the thought of hanging myself never occurred to me because I felt Catherine had my back and wouldn’t let anybody fook with me. And Catherine… I did visit her and I showed her my medals. I had tears in my eyes and I told her that she was the reason I had gotten them. It was true; in a weird way, finding out that Catherine was just like the rest of those fooks motivated me to show that I could make it. She knows what she did to me, the racist egotistical bitch. She knows she never thought I could make it this far… but I fooking did. The same with Sandy and the same with that baldy or Gemma Rox or anybody else who’d ever doubted me. And this is what brings me to today.
I’m at the World Freestyle Fighting and Wrestling Championships in Cairo, Egypt. I am in the 55kg division, which equals 121 lbs and while most of these girls weigh more and cut weight to do this, I weigh right around 120 lbs, so I‘m fine. I’m representing England and I’ve mowed right through my first two opponents who were from Albania and Morocco respectively. My opponent is out of Puerto Rico and she just goes by Little Moe; she’s 5’3”, usually at 126 with a background in boxing and a mouth that doesn’t stop running. She beat Aubrey Collins, who was the blonde bombshell for the U.S. and she beat one of the girls China sent. Now, it’s just the two of us. She’s got long curly black hair and brown eyes and she comes out in a rip away tuxedo, complete with a hat. I’ve never seen her fight before; I was too busy giving myself a haircut. I decided that for the final round, I’d cut off my black locks and now, I’ve got very short hair that I’ve dyed platinum. Don’t ask my why I’ve decided to do it now; I just feel like it’s time for a change.
I come out with flag out my nation on my singlet while she’s now in a two piece with the Puerto Rican flag on her trunks and tattoos on her arms, sides, shoulders, and back. Rules are simple; you win by pin or submission; you keep the fight in the circle; striking to the face and body is legal; no knees to the head while on the ground. She’s smiling and winking and posturing for the crowd, but my eyes are on her. She’s blowing me kisses and shuffling her shoulders and all that other dumb shit, expending her energy before the buzzer sounds. When I see girls do this type of stuff, I wonder if they’re trying harder to psyche out their opponents or psyche themselves out. It’s all just fooking stupid to me.
“You ready to get knocked out?” she’s saying as we come together, “You ready for me to pop your little, firecracker ass? I AM women’s fighting.”
She’s still talking as the ref backs us up. I’ve been trash-talked before; I’ve been trash talked my whole life. This is the World Championships; I can win a gold medal that would be nearly equal to an Olympic gold. Not to mention, this is fooking Cairo; my late parents were from Cairo. Moe has this group of girls behind her, cheering for her as she shuffling her feet like a bull, ready to charge me and I just wait for the buzzer to sound. When it does, she comes dancing out with her right fist just below her chin and her left low with the elbow pointed towards me and her left fist just above her small oval shaped innie bellybutton. I take two jabs that snap my head back and an overhand right that stumbles me. I look at her and she’s smiling and talking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying over the crowd noise. Her jabs are thrown nearly underhanded; I haven’t seen that done before and it doesn’t make it hurt any less. I’m moving on the edge of the cage and she rushes in again and I go for a grab around her waist, but she gets me with two left hooks to my right side, a knee that hits my forehead, and an uppercut to my belly.
I straighten up and raise my arms to protect my face, but she throws another left hook around my guard that gets my right ear and throws a quick knee to my solar plexus that freezes me. Then, she gets really cocky and tries to take me down, but I’m the wrestler and I throw her back. I eat three jabs to my mouth and as soon as blood on my lip, she fires a straight right to my left eye, a left hook to my cheek, another right to my stomach and an overhand right just above my left eye and I almost go down. She backs up and smiles at me.
“They call you Dynamite, huh?” she taunts, dropping her arms, bouncing to a squat and jabbing my bellybutton, then switching to southpaw/left handed stance and popping me with two right hooks to my jaw and nose and a third that hits me to the stomach and almost doubles me over. I drop my own arms as she backs up and taunts me, then she jumps in with a right handed jab to my stomach, but I block the overhand left she tries to throw, but she switches back to orthodox/right handed stance and throws a combination of punches to my head that force me to cover up before she backs up again, just to jump in with a right hand to my belly.
“Where’s the explosion, bitch!” she laughs, but she sounds equally angry, “I am motherfucking Women’s fighting, bitch! Nobody can touch me!”
And she is proving it so far… I throw a combo of punches, trying to hit her cocky ass mouth, and the bitch slipped then and bounced up and down, each time, hitting my belly and she got me with a hard jab to my chin. I was loading up on my punches and she could see them coming. Plus, she was making me chase her and going to the body, taking my energy. I remember Catherine showing me footage of Nikky Smalls, the brown skinned girl from Milwaukee, who used this kind of style to beat the greatest female fighter of all time, Rachel Apache after making Rachel lose fourteen pounds on short notice before the fight. Rachel was bleeding from her arm before the bell from an IV she had gotten because she was so dehydrated. That always kinda pissed me off. I mean; don’t get me wrong; we’ve got our fooking cocky bitches in the UK too, male and female. David Haye, Naseem Hamed, Lennox Lewis, and Joe Calzaghe… all of them cocky, but for the most part, they backed it up. And speaking of Hamed, that’s who this bitch was reminding me of. Nikky Smalls got her style from Sugar Ray Leonard; she admits that; this bitch was doing way too much talking and taunting and I was playing her game, chasing her around and taking punches. I have to change it up.
A jab to my right eye, a left hook to my jaw, a left to my liver and right to my belly and I double over, placing my arms around her waist and feeling some deceptive softness. Sometimes when you’re fighting a cocky fooking bitch like this one, you forget what you are and what brought you to this dance in the first place. I am a wrestler, and I lift Moe up and drive her down on her back hard.
“Ahhh!!!” is what comes out of her cocky fooking mouth this time as I mount her, making sure that my knees are on either side of her waist, my left arm is interlocked and twisting her dangerous right and my right hand is sending punches to her face. When she brings her left arm up to protect her face, I just start with the forearm smashes. I don’t care if her arm is in the way; if she wants me to break her hand or her wrist, that’s on her, but something’s going to fooking get broken.
“Is that all you got?” she says, spitting out her own blood, “You think you can beat me? Fuck you!”
I don’t think I can beat this bitch; I know I can. I put my right forearm across her throat and apply pressure while getting my legs around her waist and squeezing and continuing to work that right hand. She fires punches with her left to my right side and they do hurt, but I’ve got her under control… then the bitch fouls me by squeezing my crotch. I must not have gotten the body scissors on tight enough or it’s my dislike for having my vagina pressed against another woman’s while wrestling. I’m still a virgin and to be absolutely fooking honest, I don’t know what I’m attracted to, male or female because I haven’t met anyone I felt genuine attracted to. But if you’ve got to know, I was starting to find Moe attractive. Moe is able to turn me over in my pain and instead of following up, she stands. That tells me something… she doesn’t want to be on the ground with me. She knows I’m a wrestler and she respects that, but she had me down and hurt and she didn’t follow up. I’ll have to make sure that if I get her down again, which I’m pretty sure I will now, I won’t let her get back up.
“Come on, bitch,” she whispers as we circle each other, “Come get some. All I do is drink beer and whip ass.”
Who does this dumb fooking bitch think she is with that line? Stone Cold Steve Austin? She’s bleeding from her mouth and her left eye. I’ve got a busted lip and both my eyes are swelling a bit, but the left one is a bit better. She jumps in looking for another of those left hooks and I step in and fire a short right hand to the point of her chin. She cries “Unnnhhh!!!” and her legs turn to spaghetti as she tries to grab me. And you know what? I let her grab me because I’m the fooking wrestler. I grab her in piledriver position and spin her, turning my body and slamming her down on her back hard. I remember back home, humanitarian aid would come with these big bags of ice and even in the jail, I’d use ice to lift weights sometimes. You’d have to break the ice because the pieces had frozen together and whenever I’m throwing or slamming a girl, that’s what I’m trying to do… break her. I want to see her fooking kidneys bust shoot around her body, then bust up through her ribs and out of her tits from me slamming her on her back. I want her fooking skull to shatter. Well, maybe I don’t really want that, but when I’m fighting, there’s no sympathy. None too many have had sympathy on me. She gets up before I can come down in mount and turns her back on me, jogging away, but as I pursue her, she spins and nails me with a left hook to the jaw, then a double left hook to my jaw and right side, but I duck under the big overhand right she throws and nail her in the stomach with a right of my own.
“GOOP!!” she groans as she jerks and she backs up and smiles at me. I know I hurt her and before she can get any bounce in her step, I get inside her reach and start pounding her ribs with lefts and rights. She’s got her arms crossed in a Philly Shell defense, but I’m way too close to her for that to be effective; I use that defense too from time to time, but I’m still learning it. She’s turning away again, so I grab her around her waist from behind, trapping her right arm and I throw her back hard in a German suplex. I know she’s really hurting now, but she’s got heart because she’s up before I can get to mount, and I’m really, really fast. Now that I think about it, I probably could get mount on this fooking bitch, but I know she’s hurt and I’m being patient because of her awkward style. She throws a combination of punches at me, but now it’s my turn to slip them and I do, tagging her to her bellybutton with a left hook and watching her sputter and spit, then with both my arms at my sides, I tag her with a right cross just below her left ear and she staggers, but charges with two left hooks that miss me as I duck, wrap my arms around her waist, lift her up, carry her around the circle and jump, slamming her on the back on her neck hard.
I go to mount and start raining punches down on her as she covers up and that’s when my vision is blocked by something. It’s a white towel; some dumb fook threw a towel into the circle… oh wait. That’s her people; they threw in the towel on her. I stand up, but Moe gets up too and throws a shot just below the bellybutton that doubles me over with an “Ough!!” then she starts throwing punches at me, but I rise and nail her with a right cross to her round chin and a left hook to her jaw before the ref tries to get between us as I grab Moe by the back of her head with my left hand and send several right uppercuts to her busted bleeding face, but the bitch hurts me with a knee to the stomach and staggers me back with a right cross to my jaw. Olympic committee members jump between us and I’m pissed the fook off. She’s trying to get at me and I’m trying to get at her when I hear the announcer say, “Due to a corner stoppage, the winner of the Gold Medal for Women’s Freestyle Fighting and Wrestling in the 121 lb/55 kg division is ‘Dynamite’ Diana Quinn!!” I realize what I have just done, but that doesn’t stop Moe from still trying to get to me, tears running down her face.
“I AM women’s fighting, you bitch!!” she yells and I’m giving her a ‘come on’ gesture with my hands.
“You shouldn’t’ve stopped the fuckin fight!!” she yells at her people, “I am women’s fuckin fighting!! I can beat that little bitch’s ass!! Come on, bitch!! You ain‘t dynamite; you ain‘t shit!!!”
I want to shake her hand, give her a hug, show some sportsmanship, but the bitch keeps running her head at me and it’s just pissing me the fook off. Girl’s got a lot of hard and a hard style to deal with, but she’s got no ground game and I wasn’t going to lose the Gold Medal in my late parents’ hometown after all those fooks said I wouldn’t be anything or anybody. We stand on the three pedestals and Moe is still running her mouth and cursing at me even as Aubrey receives the bronze medal and Moe gets her silver one. I’m trying to tune her out; I really am.
“I’m going to get you, you fuckin bitch,” she says… whatever, you dumb fooking bitch.
This is my moment and I’ve come from the slums and the jail and the homeless streets of London, Cardiff, and Manchester, to getting a degree from the University of Cincinnati in three years and being one of the top members of Punishment MMA, to now a three time gold medal winner in the UK nationals, and now, a winner of the World Champions in my weight class. I thought I was happy when I got out of jail… I thought I was happy when I marched across the stage in my cap and gown to get my Bachelor’s Degree. I was very happy those times… but nothing fooking compares to this. I get that medal placed around my neck and the hand me the microphone as Moe is being led away. I could be bitter; I remember watching Gemma Rox’s speech when she won The Ultimate Catfighter and how she spent more time trashing her critics than talking about her successes, though she still thanked who she needed to thank. There’s nothing I’d like to do more right now than tell some people to fook off. But will I… my lips move.
“I want to thank all the fans of women’s fighting around the world, especially the fans in the UK. I want to thank Punishment MMA for taking a chance on a little girl like me and to Catherine for training me. I want to thank Sandy who I went to high school with for inspiring me to become a fighter through her never-ending words. I want to thank Moe for being so gracious in defeat (that gets a laugh), and I want to thank the Olympic Committee and the staff here for putting on such an excellent show and giving me this opportunity. Other than that, I’m overcome by the moment.”
Oh fooking well… it wasn’t as long as I’d imagined it would be, and I guess I chickened out on bashing Catherine and Sandy. Maybe that’s better for me. When I get back to Cincinnati, I’m approached at the gym by a tall woman with blue eyes and jet black hair, with pale skin… she looks like fooking Elvira.
“Hi, Dynamite,” she says, “I go by Elvira and I’m with OPW. Have you heard of our television show called ‘Ultimate Catfighter?’”
“Yes, I have,” I say, looking at her kinda funny, “I watched it religiously, and I got to see a bloody fellow woman of the UK win it.”
Yes; Gemma Rox told me to fook off years ago, but I was rooting for her on the show, just like I’d heard Isis Jones was a real egotistical bitch, but when she won that gold medal at the Olympics, I was as happy as I was getting my tattered teddy bear Otis for Christmas. I still have that bear today.
“I’m glad you’re familiar with it; that’s less explaining I have to do. We’d like you to be on it,” is her response, “But this season, they’ll be 18 girls instead of the usual 16.”
“How’d you find out about me?” okay; I knew how she found out about me. I was famous now and mma fighter Cara “The Bitch” Blaze visited Punishment MMA all the time and she’s related to Siena Blaze, the owner of OPW.
“Never mind about that,” I say, “I’ll do it.”
“Wonderful,” she smiles, “Feel like taking a trip back to Los Angeles with me to meet Siena Blaze?”
This is something. I went from being poor, to having my own advertising deals and commercials for energy drinks. Went from sleeping on cot in prison hard as fooking concrete or a bed that was no more than a duffle bag filled with Styrofoam peanuts to sleeping on a pillow mattress with silk sheets in my own house that I bought with my own money in Cincinnati. I’m not rich by any means, but I am wealthy enough to do what I want now, though I keep working and staying in shape. A few months ago, I was watching Ultimate Catfighter and dreaming of how I’d fair against a Gemma Rox or a Seka The Destroyer or a Shinobi or Athena. Hell, I watched Athena’s matches on my trips to Greece. Now, I’m going to be on the show myself, representing the UK and trying to keep the title of the Ultimate Catfighter right in England. I watched Rachel Apache; I studied her fights and I studied Samantha’s fights and her promos. Now, one of them is going to be coaching me. Some of my own fighting style was borrowed and inspired by Siena Blaze and I’ve seen Christina Munoz, her estranged daughter who is now the CEO of OPW, training at Punishment MMA. Now, I’m getting ready to go to Los Angeles to meet them.
Now, I really want to call Catherine or even Gemma and tell them to fook off. I really want to call Moe from Puerto Rico and tell her she can kiss my fooking Egyptian made, but London born ass… I’m not going to. All those people who doubted me, beat me up and bullied me, took advantage of me… would they really give a fook if I called them and told them I’ve got a degree, three national gold medals and one world gold medal? You think they’d even remember me when they’ve probably found more people to fook over? Probably not, and it’s all the bloody better. So, why the hell should I remember them? Well, maybe because you shouldn’t ever forget where you came from. You just got to try to remember that you’re not there anymore so you don’t snap and fook everything up for yourself while dealing with people who are already fooked up and not going anywhere in life. I’ve overcome my struggles, but I’ve still got a long way to go. See you on the show.
THE END?
