[howardcosell]

I think this may be my last major story here for a good long while and I hope those of you who care enough to read it, like it and appreciate it. It’s been a long ride and I’ve tried to be a good a writer here as I thought I could. So, one more long story for me before a nice break. Peace, prosperity and understanding to all of you, always.

The Last Queen and the First Lady

I took my tape recorder and put it in my car, under the passenger’s seat. Right now, I’m driving angry… I hate everything, you, myself, the world… right now, I’m cursing at every leaf on every tree and every drop of dirt. I curse the sun and the moon and emotions, love, the hate I feel right now. I curse the tears pouring from my eyes as I am driving away from this horrible place. I hope I never come to Mississippi again. I can hear her voice in my mind and everything she said and the knowing… the knowing it all… that’s what hurts. I get back to my hotel and every person who looks at me… I feel their eyes digging into my soul because they know it’s stained now. Stained with a blackness, a black rage and darkness… they wouldn’t understand. I sit on the bed and stare at the tape recorder… I don’t want to know; I don’t want to hear it… but it’s what brought me here… but it’s what’s brought me this. I press down the play button and I hear my voice, then her voice. I turn off the lights in the room and I feel spirits hovering around me, waiting for me to fall asleep so that they can rape my dreams.
******

“State your name for recording purposes. I am Lydia Lane and I will be conducting this interview. But I will need you to identify yourself.”

I am inmate number 0076662911.

“I need you to state your name.”

According to what these people say, that is my name. I used to have a name… I used to have all kinds of names, n****r, d**e, bitch, cxnt, slut, whore… I had all kinds of names, but this is the one I answer to now because it‘s not so complicated. 0076662911.

“Okay, well what was your name?”

My name was Your Majesty Sophia Jackson.

“Okay. When I do interviews, I don’t really ask questions; I let you talk. So… you can start wherever you want and the recorder is running; I’ll only interject when I need you to clarify something.”

You sure you want that, girl?

“That’s the way I’ve always done it.”

Fine, then I’ll start with you. You smell really good… look at you. You must be what? 5’8” maybe about 140 lbs in that black business suit and that buttermilk skin with all the guards looking at you.

“Well… I don’t like to talk about my weight, but--”

You’ve got them nice big titties. I can tell and just enough of a low neckline for a tickle of cleavage, right? And you’ve got your hair long and black and straight and your cheeks all rosy and your eyes a light enough brown to be exotic. You’re so high maintenance, and I don’t blame you. Not everybody can do natural, especially not those light skinned girls like you. I used to have hair like that too, you know?

“Sophia, if I can call you that, we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about--”

If you’re not gonna call me by my number. Then you’re gonna call me Your Majesty Sophia Jackson. That’s my name. At one time, that’s all I had, and I fought hard for it too… a lot harder than you’ve ever had to fight to get your job or your perm or your pretty little buttermilk skin and business suit. You wanna know my story… well like you said, I’m only gonna say what I want to because it’s MY story and it’s starts with me sitting under a tree in Canton, Mississippi writing a poem while Jimmy Cleveland is hanging from it with a noose around his neck and blood dripping on the paper. My story is outside of these walls and stretches all over the world, but it fits in its tiny little space in my mind. You hear my story, girl, it’s gonna dirty you up real good… and it’s not just my story; it’s your story too.

One of my first memories as a was when the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) came through our neighborhood on horses with their white sheets, hoods and torches and burned down my house. I remember my momma and my brothers running through the house and all that screaming and all those hateful words. I remember smiling and laughing because I was always fond of excitement, but I didn’t understand what was going on. I remember my momma holding me in the fields while they surrounded her and taunted her, striking her shoulders and legs with sticks. They burned down several houses, but they didn’t burn ours down because momma gave herself to them that night to make them go away. The fucked up part about it was that we lost the house about two months later when a tornado blew through. Momma was working as a maid for this White woman down the road; we lived in her barn like animals… no… like slaves because we worked there too. This was what it was like in the 1950s in Mississippi; this is what it’s like now… they just traded in their sheets for business suits, like the one you’re wearing right now, Ms. Lane. And what kinda name is that anyway? You go home to Superman or Clark Kent? Ha ha haaaa!! Don’t want to answer, huh? That’s fine. I’ll tell you about my Superman… my Daddy. I ain’t never met him; I ain’t never heard about him; I ain’t never cared to find him. I’ve see him though. Every man my momma brought in that house was Daddy. Every man who hit her or that jackass with the perm who threw her on the steps and she chipped both her front teeth… he was Daddy too. What? I’m not talking sophisticated enough for you? Humph! Well, this is Your’ Majesty’s story.

I learned how to fight wrestling pigs on that farm and wrestling boys in the dirt roads when they tried me. I’d sneak and listen to the fights on the radio. Rocky Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott, Sugar Ray Robinson, Floyd Patterson… I’d listen to the commentators and I’d dream that was me in there. I could visualize there styles, Marciano with his hands real low and his body almost doubled over in his stance, throwing those low hooks and winging rights while Archie Moore the old mongoose was blocking with that classic cross block and bobbing, and boom!! Archie, old as he was, dropped Rocky… but Rocky got up and won. I’d watch the boys spar with cheap boxing gloves so they could know how to fight and I’d see the men holding the mitts up. My mind would race around and I’d see how sometimes, the men with the mitts would swing at the boys and they would duck. It was exciting and I met a guy who was a lot older than I was. He was a gambler and a fighter and we dated in secrecy, but I had no attraction to him; I just wanted to be around fighters and study him. His name was Earl Lattimore.

I remember I had this beautiful yellow dress that I’d wear. It was my only dress and some of the girls in the neighborhood hated me for that and one girl named Heather tried to throw dirt on my dress. She tried to fight me, but she was slapping and what I did was, I remembered those mitts. I held my hands up and put my weight on my back foot, which was my right one and I kind of leaned back, blocking her shots with my open hands like she was working the puncher’s mitts. Then, I threw a right hand and broke her nose. She ran away crying and I was standing there with all these people watching and looking at me with my mocha brown skin and my fat cheeks, round nose and big brown eyes and my hair nice and smooth and jet black… my momma had me done up like Josephine Baker because that’s who everybody said I looked like, especially when I smiled… but there I was, just in this pretty yellow dress breaking this girl’s nose and she’s squirting blood and screaming. Her momma came with her and they found me when I was coming back from the store.

(Josephine Baker)

Her momma was big; she looked like a big fat ass Oprah Winfrey and this was Sunday, so everybody was in their church clothes. Her momma came up to me and slapped my face so hard, I went down and she twisted her hand and cut my face. My momma was there too, but she didn’t do anything. She told me that I shouldn’t have messed with that lady’s daughter. My momma grabbed me by my arm and tried to drag me away, but I broke her grip and I went at that fat bitch. I hit her in the nose, I sent a hook to her liver and a right to her stomach and she folded over. When she fought back, I kept my hands open and a swatted away her shots and hit her in her stomach and her ribs. I didn’t have to dance around her or anything like that; she was big and slow and I was picking her apart. I was 5’9” 140 lbs and they couldn’t believe it, but I tackled her fat ass and we rolled around in the dirt and she ripped off my dress. But I got the best of her old fat ass and everybody saw it.

When I got home, my momma cursed me from A to Z, and that‘s when I realized I didn‘t want to be like my momma. Docile wasn’t a good look for me; my momma was fucking weak and I wasn’t gonna let anybody strip me of what was mine because I was Black or because I was female. I walked around that neighborhood in that ripped dress, after I sewed it back together. Women would look at me with their pretty hair and nails like something was wrong with me, but all I had to do was say “boo” and those bitches would run away. Every once in a while, a girl might get guts and fight me because for whatever the reason, her man or the man she wanted to be with liked me. I was beautiful, but they may have been more attracted to me liking to fight and being a straight shooter and not a prissy ass bitch. Me and Earl would go to his fights and I’d give him pointers on how to throw his jab and he’d look at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about, then he’d lose because he didn’t listen. He’d always try to touch me or kiss me, but I’d always find an excuse. Maybe it was that time of the month; maybe I was remembering what happened when I was younger; maybe I was sick and didn’t want him to catch it. But the truth was, I hated men and while he was the only good man I knew other than my brothers, I couldn’t trust him. Plus, a lot of the girls I had fought couldn’t hit me; my defense was way too good and I would play with them.

I would travel with Earl to his fights and I wouldn’t tell momma where they were. I had been all over the south and we just decided not to come back to Mississippi. We went to see these traveling carnival people who had come to town after integration in Pensacola, Florida and I saw a sign that said “The Magnificent Melinda… Female Wrestler Extraordinaire.” I just had to see what this was all about, so I went in. Melinda was about 5’11” tall, but they claimed she was 6’3”, had big titties, curly shoulder length black hair, big lips, light brown skin, and a violet one piece with a pink stripe around the waist. She had come here from Columbia and was illegal, but joined the circus for protection. We walked in on her slamming some man who was twice her size down on the ground and pinning him. She would wrestle six guys before even breaking a sweat; she put them in all sorts of positions and holds… she’d get them on the ground and get her long strong legs around them and it would be over. So many fat ass bubbas went down to her and I was impressed with what I saw. I went down to meet her and she sized me up with her eyes and tried to intimidate me. I wasn’t used to a woman looking at me like I was a piece of meat, but I kinda liked it, you know? No… you don’t know, do you, Ms. Lane? Or is it Mrs. Lane? Anyway, Earl had a fight that night and he didn’t want me there because as it would turn out, he would take a dive (lose on purpose) because he bet against himself and he was fighting a guy he was supposed to beat easily. I went back and found Melinda boasting that nobody in the audience could beat her, so I stepped forward.

She remembered me from before and we circled and yes, I was wearing that same yellow dress, but I kicked my shoes off. I had on stockings, but I knew I was gonna have to wash my feet again. That’s something that means a lot to me; if a woman can’t take care of her feet, she ain’t shit. And woman with an ugly foot means a woman with a careless personality. We circle each other and she was puzzled by my fighting stance, but when she came in on me, a snapped her head back with a jab and got her with a straight right to her solar plexus. The second punch froze her, but I didn’t move in on her; I let her keep coming to me. She’d come in again, trying to grab me, and I’d give her two jabs, a left hook to her ribs and a right hand to her nose, which was bleeding now. Then, I decided to change the pace. I stepped in and gave her a hook, a left uppercut, but she ducked by right cross and rammed her right fist into my stomach. I had been hit there before, but not that hard and it doesn’t hurt as much when you see it coming, but she knocked the wind out of me and I buckled and I saw her smile when I started to back up. My stomach was fine; I loved my belly because it was smooth and I had a oval deep navel, but she hurt me there. There was this national rumor in the early 1900s that Black people were weak to the stomach, and I would dare girls to hit me in mine, especially that rare White girl who would show up to fight. The blows hurt, but I could see them coming and by then, the girls were beaten and didn’t want to continue. I was just breaking their wills and stealing their confidence.

I thought Melinda was gonna come in and try to punch me out, but she ducked low, got her arms around my waist, picked me up and slammed me down on my back. The air was knocked right out of me and I heard her say, “come on, you cocky bitch,” while she easily got the superior position. She got her legs around my legs and she twisted my arm behind my back and got her other arm around my neck. I couldn’t get free and she moved me all over the ground until my dress was as brown as my skin. But there was something else going on; she was just beating me in a wrestling match; she was taunting me without talking. I remember she took me down again and got me on my back with her breasts dangling in my face the whole time. I would hit her in her sides and I’d get a shot to her face in when it was open, but I was on the ground and I couldn’t do anything and it was a different kind of feeling… not a bad one, but a sexy one. She would keep on asking me if I wanted to quit, but I wouldn’t and she kept taking me down, but only after she had eaten a bunch of punches to her face and body. She was tough; but she underestimated me and every time she pinned me, I’d get up and she’d have to deal with my boxing skills, until she got her hands on me and got me down. I was really working her stomach while protecting my own. She had beat me in twenty-two straight rounds, but I got her with a straight right to the pit of her stomach and she buckled and went down on her hands and knees. She didn’t get up and because of that, I won. That was the thing about me; I never gave up, no matter how bad the beating was… but up to that point, nobody had come close to beating me. But I had to make sure that no one did; I had to learn how to wrestle.

Melinda and the circus stayed over a few more days and now that I had gotten her respect, I got her to teach me how to wrestle. I told her in exchange, I would teach her how to strike and for those five days, we exchanged a lot of information and had a lot of practice sessions that turned into matches. Melinda was difficult to deal with on a personal level because she was just as bossy and outspoken as I was; we couldn’t have worked as a couple. Did I say couple? Yes Ms. Lane, I did. Melinda’s tongue took my body places and my mind even more… it ran all over me like a hot match or an ice cube and set every nerve off. Melinda could beat me on the ground and I could beat her standing up, but with our bodies pressed against each other… we were evenly matched. She wanted me to go with her and be a boxing attraction; she even talked about me being a plant in the audience to come out in different towns and fight her because the men were trying to do more than just wrestle… but I couldn’t leave Earl. At least, not yet. Melinda left with that circus on a cold Saturday in the summer and I did shed a tear, though we parted on really good terms. I would imagine, she had a lot of girls she had fucked throughout her career, if you could call what she did a career. But she nor I had any idea where this fighting thing was going to take me.

I had been in fights all over the south and Earl didn’t even know it ha ha. They had female boxing and freestyle fighting at some of those local digs and while Earl was drunk asleep or out training, I would go and win my fights and make my money. I could beat anybody; male or female and I didn’t have a problem beating a booker’s ass if he shorted me my pay. And that happened a lot of times. But what I loved to do was taunt the Whites in the audience. These men would show up with wedding rings on and watch me and I’d say, “Why didn’t you bring your wife so you could watch me beat her ass?” I kid you not when I tell you that one man hired me as his maid just to arrange a fight between his wife and I. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I split her lip and broke her eye socket after she called me that name that starts with “n” that I’ve heard over and over again in life. I thought he wanted me to go easy on her and I tried to apologize to him for fucking her up as badly as I did, but he paid me extra for that. That’s how I found out that I had become famous in the south. He showed me my face in the local newspaper; I didn’t pay attention to that shit. I was living day by day and all I knew was that I was Black; people didn’t like me because they didn’t know me and that I knew how to fight well. Integration didn’t mean anything but more trouble and Vietnam was claiming a bunch of our men, but I hated men, so watching all the casualty counts didn’t mean shit to me either.

Earl didn’t like me getting into fights because one night, he took a really bad beating in the ring and some guys were taunting him after the fight at the local bar. I knocked them out, but one guy got me with a bottle to my head and I still have that scar behind my left ear. Earl didn’t do shit; he said I should’ve let him deal with it. I left his ass that night and was all alone. We were in Alabama now and he was letting the world fuck the man right out of him. He wasn’t a fighter; he was a pussy who was pretending to be a fighter and I’d seen him take punches from the hardest hitting men and laugh it off, then go up against some no name bum, take a few jabs and a right cross that grazed his hair or hit his shoulder, and he’d drop like somebody shot him. Anything to make a buck and that’s what I didn’t understand; I thought we were trying to leave that greed… but then again, what the fuck am I talking about anyway? I never loved him; I took care of him… but I never loved him, fucked him or kissed him. I was just a girl who was around to make him look good and if he had listened to me, he might have been in line for a shot at Joe Frazier instead of in line for a shot of Jack Daniels. He was surprised one night when he found himself in the ring staring at me. I kept yelling at him, “hit me, motherfucker!!” but he would only hit me with jabs to my shoulder. He bet against himself that night too, but I busted his eardrum and broke seven of his ribs. He begged me to take him back after the fight, but I took that fucker’s money and I never saw him again.

Female fighting was on the rise now, but it wasn’t organized the way it is now. Girls would travel and fight each other and there wouldn’t be all this pageantry and that other bullshit with girls coming out with gimmicks and shit. That came a little later, but once I started fighting, the bookers and promoters wanted to call me “Angry Black” and I hated that. I wanted to be called “Queen Sophia,” but they wanted to call me “The Angry Black Queen” and I hated that. Everything was about me being Black and nobody would call me by my name. When I was a bit younger, I said that I wanted to be an actress and my favorite actress was Elizabeth Taylor. People would say that I wanted to be the next Dorothy Dandridge… always with me being Black, never about me just being me. And I’m not saying that Elizabeth Taylor was a better actress than Dorothy Dandridge; I’m just saying that when I say I want to be something, I’m categorized according to my skin color. People would call me “Josephine” because like I said, I looked like Josephine Baker; I didn’t have my own identity. And it wasn’t that I hated White people either. I spoke good English and while I didn’t read a lot of newspapers, I was obsessed with westerns and cowboys. And I loved the Beatles, and when I first heard Jimi Hendrix, or Keith Richards or Carlos Santana, I would teach myself the guitar. But you see, that’s what we deal with in life. You’ve got all this shit that you’re supposed to love as an American and as a human, but you’re Black and America rejects you for that in this time. I was confused and all I could do was fight to stop myself from thinking about all that.

You had champions now, and some of them were serious and not some sideshow bullshit that men could beat off to. Chastity Arroway is supposed to be the first nationally recognized female fighting champion, but there were champions long before her… women have been fighting forever ha ha ha ha. Chastity was about my height and a raven haired Elizabeth Taylor looking girl from Boston, Mass.; she had a really good jab and good footwork. She had trainers and had learned karate, which was getting popular in the US. I had seen film of Chastity and by now, I was a fringe contender, but I wasn’t as famous as she was, or any of the other White fighters. I met Chastity when I fought on the undercard for her title defense against a big Black girl named Mable who had just had a baby. In fact, Mable wasn’t even her name; her name was Jessica, but Mable sounded “Black” and that’s what the bookers gave her dumb ass. Chastity said she was all for fighting me, but she wanted me to get some more experience first. I thought she was cool, but as I got more and more experience, Chastity kept on refusing to fight me, even going as far as to say that she would never fight me because I was too bitchy and she wouldn’t address me by my name.

There was another fighter who was even more popular than Chastity named Olivia “Double-O 17” Owens. She was well in her twenties, but she kept the name because she started fighting at age 17… her skin was smooth but very white, as white as snow and she was styled to look like Doris Day with the short hair and friendly smile, but I heard she was a big bitch. She said she’d never fight me because I wasn’t a worthy challenge; I was just a Black girl with a mouth and no skills. And I’d read about this all the time because I started reading the newspaper. These were your champions… two bitches who were afraid to lose and padded their records with fluff. Both Chastity and Olivia didn’t fight Black fighters and if they did, it would be some woman in her 50s or someone who clearly didn’t know anything about fighting. And of course, they’d go for the stomach. Chastity and Olivia are listed as pioneers of the sport… bullshit. That’s like saying Columbus discovered America when you had African fisherman and Vikings already having fucking been there and if he discovered it, it would’ve been unoccupied when he got there. They wiped away so many valiant female fighters’ legacies just like Columbus was a mass murderer of Native Americans… REAL Native Americans.

Then there was Jessa Belle. Jessa knew how to fight, but she used that to be in pornography. She had her own comic books and short films and all kinds of stuff. She was a little taller than I was and she had hair that was long and depending on the light, it would appear black or a really, really dark red. She looked like Judy Garland, except with a dark edge to her and she wore a black leather two piece when she fought and she fought dirty. Olivia and Chastity knew they had competition because they were at least trying to get the sport organized and accepted by the mainstream while Jessa and girls like her were bringing in some really creepy, and cheesy shit. Jessa was extremely popular and she didn’t have to… but she chose to fight me. I had been on the road, taking matches wherever I could get them and I was winning. I still couldn’t get any respect from people and they were calling me “Angry Black” or “Uppity” something else.

You would think that with integration and the Black Power movement and Muhammad Ali or these commercials promoting equality and harmony and the female empowerment movement and all that stuff going on now, I’d get respect… nope. It’s not so much about racism as it is about place-ism. They didn’t like that I didn’t know my place. I conducted business without the “yes sir; yes ma’am” bullshit. I spoke what I felt and if anybody didn’t like it, they could find a bitch who could beat me… but nobody could. My ass is the one that’s going out there and getting in the ring or in one of those ugly ass cages. I’m the one who’s gonna hear racial slurs hurled at me and dodge spit and all kinds of other stuff on my way there and back and I’m the one who’s gonna fill your little halls and fields with people coming to see me get beat because of the very attitude that I’m displaying. I still saw myself in cartoons fighting Jessa and my skin would be black and my mouth and eyes would be exaggerated. It would really piss me off because it reminded me of how I was treated in Mississippi. Everybody was coming to St. Louis to see me lose to this girl and that night, I met two people who would alter my life forever.

There was a fighter on the undercard of my fight with Jessa Belle… her real name was Wanda Smith, but you and everybody else knows her as Destiny Brown, born in New Orleans, grew up in Detroit, lived in Harlem. She got that name because she showed up one night to fight, and whoever Destiny Brown really was, she didn’t show up and the booker needed a last second replacement, so Wanda was sent in as “Destiny Brown.” The first thing I noticed about her that I didn’t like was that she looked like Dorothy Dandridge. Like I said, I idolized Elizabeth Taylor, but because I was Black, people said I wanted to be Dorothy Dandridge. She was biracial, White mother, Black father and she could pass for being White when she was a child. She was about… what are her stats? They’re in every Who’s Who of Female Fighters book out there. She was even with me at 5’9” 140 lbs with the shoulder length dark brown hair and very pretty eyes. She was about as friendly a fighter as I’ve ever met, and it made me sick. I had heard of her and I don’t mind a bitch who can fight. I’ll never take that away from Destiny Brown; she could fight. She fought in tournaments where she would have to beat four or five girls in one night. She fought every other day; she fought hurt, sick, she fought anybody and everybody… but this bitch never had a bad thing to say about anyone and that’s what I didn’t like about her, and nobody I talked to had anything bad to say about her.

(Dorothy Dandridge)

See, if you’ve got enemies, then you’re doing something right. If people are criticizing you, then you’re doing something right. This bitch was either a suck-up wimp or she was putting on an act and was secretly conniving. It didn’t matter to me; she had fought all these fighters and she was smiling in my face wishing me good luck. She fought a girl named Candy Harris, dyed carrot red hair, matching lipstick, classic brawler. Destiny destroyed her and Destiny’s style of fighting was… fucking amazing. Like I said, I don’t have a damn thing against her as a fighter. She danced and moved and stuck her jab in Candy’s face and stomach, got on the inside and hammered her body, and she was hard to hit too. She had what is called the Philly Shell defense. She’d turn her left shoulder towards you, cross her arms so that her left arm protected her stomach while her right hand was right in front of her chin to deflect your punches and so that she could counter. She had the best head movement and the fastest hands I’ve ever seen… and she could wrestle. Her takedowns were fast and her mounts and submissions were… the girl was really fucking good and she had that smile too. She’d knocked Candy out with a right cross and she immediately helped her up and sat her on a stool… soooo fucking humble and I hated it. While I was warming up, I saw her in the back singing and dancing for some of the people who had gathered nearby. I just saw her be a warrior in the ring, and here she was, shucking and jiving like a damn puppet… and not because somebody was paying her to do it, because she wanted to.

I came to the little ring and got in… it was a bull rope ring with hard boards underneath. People were cursing at me and talking a lot of shit. I had on a gold bra and gold bottoms with gold shoes. I told them to call me “Queen Sophia,” but I got “Queen of the Blacks.” That’s okay; I thought about all the people who hated me for being me and all the yelling and cursing and spitting and how I knew that better than I knew myself. I thought about all of it, and something in me clicked… it always did. I was the only brown face in a red ring surrounded by a sea of white under a blue sky… I was alone. She came down to the ring in her black leather with her pale stomach and almond shaped navel. Now, I’m gonna tell you something about me. When I’m in the back, all I’m thinking about is the hate… and on that day, the hate had me. It was burning through my stomach and tingling in my toes. The sweat coming out of my pores was hatred. And I looked at her and she took her eyes off of me for just that second… doubt. That’s all I need; when you’re in there with me, I’m staring at you the whole time and you take your eyes off me for one moment, I know I’ve got you. She looked back at me right before the bell rang and she said, “I’m gonna fuck you when I’m done, Queen Black.” Yeah bitch. Let’s go.

She’s on her way to me before the bell even rings; I’m out of my corner a little bit when she reaches me and she surprises me with a kick at my stomach, but my defense is tight and I swat it down, take some steps to my right, away from her power hand. She’s got to get on the inside of me or kick me to do some damage; I know that. She’s a dirty fighter, but if she can’t hit me, then she can’t hurt me or take me down to try and finger me or anything. She blows a kiss at me, then throws a jab, I swat it with my left and throw a right over the top of it and she’s got a cut in the corner of her mouth. Her eyes tell me she’s surprised and I hear the crowd ooh as I start stepping and keeping my hands up and palms out. She throws another kick; I sidestep it, come forward and crack her jaw with a right hand and down she goes. Now, I could get on her and wrestle her, but that’s her game; she wants me down there so she can do her dirty game… but I’m smarter than that. I let her get up and as soon as she’s up, left hook right under her chin and just above her throat and she’s down again. I knew she was hurt, but I wanted to talk to that bitch; I wanted her to feel it. I let her get up again… she swings, she misses and I smile at her. “Whatcha swinging at?” I’d say. I dodged her punches and kicks for about two minutes and let everybody think I was running from her, but really, I wasn’t moving that much with my feet… it was blocking and moving my head and shoulders. The only times I really moved were when I was countering her or to let her get up after I knocked her silly ass down.

I hit her in the stomach, right above her navel, and she exhaled deep. I knew I had her. She rushed in on me and I dropped a downward right hand to her jaw… the same punch Ali used to knockout Sonny Liston… the same punch Jack Johnson used long before… the anchor punch… and she dropped to that mat and banged her head. She wasn’t moving that much, but I decided to give everybody a show. I got on top of her and hooked my left arm around her head while pressing my right forearm across her face. I told her, “If I fuck your face up, you’re not gonna have much of a career after this, are you?” she didn’t say anything back and the same way Melinda moved me all over the ring, I did that to Jessa. The people in the audience were mad at me because I wasn’t going to lose, but I wasn’t going to finish her off any time soon and it was driving them crazy. I wanted to see how much see could take. She’d take jabs to her face and I’d dear her to hit me. “Hit me in the stomach,” I’d say, “Come on, bitch! I’m supposed to be genetically weak to the stomach; hit me!” but she was way too fucking scared of me to hit me. So, I hit her a few times and instead of finishing her off, I kept her in it until she quit. She said, “No more… get off me please!” And I would say, “What’s my name? Call me by my rightful name.” and when she said “Queen Sophia,” I let her go. That was what they wouldn’t give me; they’d call me everything but my name. I’d hear begrudging bullshit like “great fight, girl” or “the Angry Queen of Blacks wins again, huh?” But nobody would call me by my name. See, if you don’t personalize a compliment, it’s not a compliment. And I had a name.

They hated me; they spit at me all the way to the back… but I made it a point to wave and blow kisses and curse right back at them… “Find a bitch who can beat me!” is what I’d say. Destiny was back there being loved for all her little please everybody bullshit ways, but they hated me. I got to the back and there was a White girl… strawberry blonde hair, shiny red lipstick… about all of 5’5” with really short denim shorts on and a red and white striped button up that she tied in the front… small bare feet, dirty on the bottom but clean on the top… toenails shining red like her lips… dangerous smile, Nicole Kidman eyes… she was staring at me, just at me and she was alone. Her name was Fancy… indeed. Sometimes, you just jump right on in; you don’t think about it; you just jump right on in. I had my own car; I had my own money; I had my own life… and I kid you not, she jumped off that table and tackled me. She knocked the win clean out of me and I remember making an “ULF!” sound when her shoulder hit my stomach. She pinned me on the floor and she said, “Now, ah done beat you with one tackle?” That was the first thing she said to me… Fancy. She kissed me and she tasted like strawberries and cream with a little bit of cigarettes and cocaine. That sweetness and that edginess had me, even in the sea of hate. We made love right on the floor without even having a conversation and I carried her to my car like we had just gotten married.

Now, they hated me for being Black and I had my share of female lovers when I was traveling and people hated me for being gay… but now, I was with a White woman and I was traveling through the south, fighting and annoying the hell out of everyone. Fancy told me she was a wrestler who tried to get into the business, but she had to be a whore just to get small parts… so she became a wrestler. She was from Stone Mountain, Georgia; she said her daddy was in the KKK and she always had a thing for Black men and Black women, so she moved away from home to seek out a better life. That’s what a lot of people were doing during the 60s and 70s, just looking for an identity. You’ve found yours in the confines of your suit, huh Ms. Lane? Coming all the way down here to interview me about my life. I’ve never seen a bigger slave than you… well, other than Destiny Brown. A lot of hardcore female fight fans say Destiny’s the greatest female fighter of all time… ha ha ha ha!! But they don’t say that now, do they? You’re gonna learn, girl, everything is forgotten. They’re saying that Persian girl who wears the purple with the Native American last name… Rachel Apache… they say she’s the greatest of all time. But Destiny won twice as many fights in her first year as Rachel Apache has in her first five years fighting… I got more too. Destiny has more recorded wins than anybody. But you ask folks who she is right now, they don’t know. And they don’t know who I am either, but I guess that’s why you’re here, right?

“Well, Sophia, we’re going to stop for now. I’ll be back after lunch.”

My NAME is Your Majesty Sophia Jackson… call me by my rightful name, Ms. Lane… that is, if you’re not gonna call me by the name I have now.

“I’m sorry. When we resume, I want you to tell me about your time with Fancy, and when you finally got a title shot.”

Don’t you want to hear about Destiny too?

“Well, I’m here to talk about you.”

If your gonna talk to me about me, you’re gonna hear about Destiny Brown too. She’s as much a part of this as I am or Fancy, or Dina Majors… or you. Come on back, Ms. Lane. I’ll be waiting.
************************

The tape recorder fizzles to a stop and I find myself covered in sweat… the same kind of burning sweat she talked about. I want to punch holes in society; I want to rip its tongue out and choke the life out of the world for what it’s done to her. And then… I feel myself dozing off…

To Be Continued…

[howardcosell]

Wow... thanks so much for that, Anna. I have a ways to go with this story and I hope I can maintain that pace with Sophia and continue to give nods to some of my favorite fighters and their own struggles while trying to imply meaning.

[chrisstevens]

absolutely brilliant howard, can't wait for the next part

[howardcosell]

Thanks, Chris! I'll be working on it and an update to the "Rivals" story soon. It has been such an honor to be among a great cast of writers and readers. It truly means a lot to me that people enjoy my work; I cannot say that enough.

[howardcosell]

Thanks y'all

When I take my long delayed break, I'll be able to honestly say that I've earned it. The good thing about all this is that I don't rush anything. I do Marissa's series "Rivals" once a month (uh oh... it's a new month lol) and writing stories about her is so much fun; then I can work on darker stories like this one and throw out some OPW stuff and some solo stories. But I've been here almost seven years... wow. I got to collaborate with some really talent men and women. It's been a lot of fun and this story may be completely different than "Rivals" or "Triumph," but even the darker ones are fun to write. Thanks again, you guys!

[ntd1918]

I am always amazed by your ability to adopt different personae, to speak in different voices.  You certainly set the bar high for my literary efforts.   Tom

[JackCatFan]

That was a great story. Well done to the author.

[harpua13]

good lord man, that was just magnificently written. I absofuckinglutely loved it. got a lot of Ralph Ellison overtones.
you just flat out know how to tell a good story.
you gonna be checking in during your writing absence?

[Kayla]

Excellent start to this story!

Hugs
Kayla

[howardcosell]

I am beyond honored that you guys read and appreciate this story. I still have some ways to go with it, as it is meant to honor a lot of figures I admire. I am about 14 pages into the next part, but it's storming here, and the connection isn't working. I am texting this reply lol. The Ralph Ellison point is great; I've done presentations on Invisible Man and my Masters thesis was originally about Invisible Man. Thank each of you for being so supportive. 

[harpua13]

Invisible Man is one of my all time favorite and most influential books. one of the few things I got out of all those lit classes that was worth a damn 20 years later.
I consider it a high compliment to pay to note I get some of the same tones.

keep up the great work in general and I can't wait for more of this story arc.
and stay dry mang.

[howardcosell]

I want to be a woman… a real woman… not the type of woman who lives in a house and makes dinner for her husband while he’s out sleeping with somebody else… not the type of woman who teaches her daughters to eat after the men are finished and to fix them meals that they are capable of fixing for themselves… not the woman I am now. I want to be a real woman… the type of woman who travels and sees what lives outside of the box I’ve spent so much of my life inside. I want to be a Queen who lives outside of her castle… in my brief career, I’ve traveled the country and I’ve been to other countries and I’ve never really known who I am as a woman. My life has been about getting to know someone else’s interests, personality… what makes him or her crazy. But never me… and because I’m in my own skin, I wonder if not knowing myself makes me crazy… I sit in the bathtub of my hotel, trying to wash the filth off of me that is this horrible façade I where of makeup and lipstick. My hands rub the soap with the small towel and it travels my body… my buttermilk face… my neck… my breasts… around my nipples and down the middle of my firm stomach… circling the definition I do have… not much, but enough to make me blush… around and in my small round innie navel as I tighten my muscles from the sensitivity… could I have been a fighter? Could a girl like me, who won beauty pageants and got straight A’s… a teacher’s pet… a suck-up to my bosses and a condescending stereotypical sorority girl to my peers… could I have made it in her world? Being a fair skinned African American hasn’t been easy for me… but can I even say that now… knowing what she’s been through? The tape recorder is playing as I rub another sudsy towel between my pedicured soft toes as I stare at the ceiling.
*****

“So… you would say that people suck?”

Not all people and not all the time. It’s just… you want to be left the fuck alone, you know? You want people to just leave you the fuck alone, treat you fairly, don’t judge you by your skin color or what you got between your legs or who you want to love. But most people don’t have shit to do because they don’t have shit they want to believe in to make them do anything… and they sit there criticizing you and labeling and libeling you. I’m not gonna sit here and act like the shit has changed. Yeah, a lot of progress has been made, but you’ve got the same people doing the same things. Look at all these clowns walking the streets. Dr. King got killed so they could rap about their money and jewels and shit, walk around with their pants sagging off their asses like a bunch of fucked up ass bitches, listening to music that called Black women “bitches” and “hoes” and try to act all hard when they wouldn‘t last twenty seconds in the real hood. President Kennedy died so some boy could sniff spraypaint through a sock and bang his head against a wall, jump in a mosh pit and throw punches at a bunch of angry motherfuckers who don‘t even know what the fuck they angry about. And if you’re gonna be angry… be angry enough to change your life and know what the fuck you’re angry about. Otherwise, you’re just wasting energy.

When I get in that ring back then, or in that cage… I think I’m angry… but I’m not. I’m happy, because that’s the only place where anything makes sense. I know I’m better than you because I beat you or you beat me and you know. But they hadn’t found a bitch to beat me, and I’d drive around with Fancy and we’d just go from town to town, fight to fight… nobody could stop me and I got more famous and more famous… but some stuff started changing.

“What was your relationship with Fancy like? It seems like you two just clicked and ran away together, but there has to be more than that, right?”

No… not really. Maybe it was love at first sight. Maybe it was me being rejected and her being rejected and just us saying “fuck the world.” When White people would see us holding hands, I would laugh at them. This was my way of saying to them that I claim this world and this woman as mine. I claim what I am owed for being treated the way I’m treated. But before, a lot of Black people would root for me and cheer me on… now, I wasn’t getting that. A lot of them were saying that I had sold out by associating with a White girl, and nobody was all that accepting of us as gays. That really bothered me because I was saying that I was fighting for them and against all those people who didn‘t believe in us as a people. But they hated me too now… they would taunt me and I remember going to Texas… Fort Worth… and despite segregation being long gone, this old White man wouldn’t let me eat in his diner. He cursed at my Fancy and we got into a fight with a bunch of guys who came in and she had to pull me to the car because more of them were coming and I kept swinging and swinging, but we were way outnumbered. I wanted to die trying that day. It was like I was looking up at the sun and there was a cloud blocking it, but it was shining so bright, that the whole cloud looked like it was on fire and the light was spilling into the other clouds below and I thought about that Stevie Ray Vaughn song, “The Sky Is Crying,” but I realized that I had blood in my eyes and that I was crying when I was on the ground and they were kicking me. I remember this guy had chains wrapped around his boot and I got them off and I swung one and took this man’s eye.

Anyway, we wound up at a Black owned diner… they wanted to serve me, but they wouldn’t serve Fancy. Here I was, the popular Black female fighter, all bruised and bleeding, capable of pissing off half the fucking country, but I couldn’t get my White girlfriend a meal in a diner that was supposed to serve me. I felt really powerless, but when I got in that ring about two days later to fight “Lady Caesar” Cassandra Roman, I felt the power… she dropped me with a forearm to my jaw in the first minute of the fight. Cassandra was a native Texan, but she had an Italian background and dyed her hair, cut it short and put it in bags like Julius Caesar. She was a big butch lesbian, but she had a baby face, a nice body, and big titties, so she couldn’t do much to make herself look manly, other than the hair. In the ring, she wore a short white gown and was barefoot, but she’d be in flannel and boots when it was over, chugging a beer or changing somebody’s flat tire or spitting tobacco. She was a straight up wrestler, with some striking and she was really strong. I wasn’t all that focused and I had beer bottles thrown at me on my way to the ring, but I caught her coming in with a right to her solar plexus and I gave her a kick to her stomach and she went over, but she took me down on my back.

Fancy had been working with me on my ground defense and I learned a few things from her to help with what Melinda had already taught me and what I learned just by fighting so many wrestlers. I got my legs around her waist and hooked her head… they call that a body scissors guillotine choke and everybody knows how to do it now, but I got her in that and she didn’t know how to get out. I punished her ribs with lefts and I hit her liver and I heard her sigh… I felt her whole body go soft and I rolled her on her back and punched the fuck out of her. They had to pull me off that bitch and everybody was booing me. I stood up and I booed them right back; I was egging them on and waving my arms… let me have it, motherfuckers. I read an article that said “The Savage Queen Gets Lucky Against Lady Caesar.” Lucky? They had to reprint the paper and send out another copy that evening so that they could remove Cassandra’s comments where she admitted that I beat her fair and square and said that I should get a shot at Chastity or Olivia. They wouldn’t give me any credit, said Cassandra didn’t train for the fight… they didn’t give me credit for my win in that paper, but I know it happened, the records folks know it happened because you can look it up, and Cassandra knew too. Fuck them.

Fancy and I had been living a life of going from town to town, city to city… I was thinking about what I really wanted out of life and if I had really found it with her. Sometimes, you reach that point where you want to just give up. I was fighting to shove it up people’s asses… I’m Black; I’m good; I’m here; deal with it. But I found somebody who accepted me for who I was and I had money, so I started thinking whether or not I really needed to keep on doing this. I figured Olivia and Chastity weren’t gonna fight me any time soon; they kept on saying I hadn’t proven myself and they kept on saying that I wasn’t gonna be on their level. But the truth is that they were waiting for me to lose. I was still young, but I was starting to realize, since we had been traveling all over the south and the Midwest… there’s more to life than a fight in a ring. Plus, I really wasn’t feeling all that challenged now… and when you stop feeling challenged, you leave yourself open to getting caught by some bitch who has nothing to lose against you. You don’t think it could happen, but it will and you’ve got to experience it to be ready if it happens again. Fancy would count the money while I was laying down resting. We’d fuck on beds of twenty and fifty dollar bills… I remember we would even burn money after fights because that’s how fly I wanted those idiots in the audience to know I was. And something occurred to me… I didn’t own a house. I had been living in hotels and all that; could I just buy a house and settle down, travel when I needed to?

That’s when I got the call… this Black promoter, guy named Jeremy Jones… he was out of Philadelphia and he wanted me to fly up to Memphis and meet with him. He said it was gonna pay a pretty big amount of money, but he couldn’t tell me what it was about over the phone because he thought his line was tapped ha ha ha ha!! So, Fancy and I went, but she wasn’t too happy about it. When we got there, I had guys in bowties who looked like Nation of Islam members escorting me, and Fancy was terrified of them and they were giving her intimidating looks too. I get there and I see a lot of people I recognized from when I’d travel and some girls I had only read about. We were all meeting down the street from where Dr. King had been assassinated and Jeremy was talking me up to everyone else and saying that I was soldier for the cause… I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. He was saying that I had taken Fancy as my White slave and that really struck a nerve with me. I had never been in love, and I probably wouldn’t know what love feels like because of how I came up, but I think I was in love with Fancy… but I heard him out.

There were Black Panthers or a group who resembled them there and they had a girl, Pantera… she was from Nigeria and she had defined cheekbones and she looked a lot like Grace Jones… she had that Mohawk Flattop thing and that sexy “I’ll rip you in half and fuck your corpse” way about her. And she purred when she talked like Eartha Kitt would when she was playing Catwoman on that campy ass Batman show. Pantera was at least 6’2” and she had come from Nigeria and had gotten arrested at a bunch of protests after she hooked up with them. They had this girl named Regina with them too and I could tell she had some authority. She was tall; she had really light fair skin with freckles, and a red Afro and greenish or hazelish eyes. She was in full uniform; she spoke with command over everything and with so much confidence, and she could fucking sing… and she had a body that just… I’m gonna say it like this; I would’ve been honored to take an ass-kicking from her. We were talking and she was so intelligent and had a fire for the spirit of feminism. See, feminism in its true sense, or as you educated types say, its utopian sense, is just women and men being treated equally. It’s not that chop a dick off bullshit. Regina knew that and when I think of how this turned out, I look back on this and wonder what the fuck she was even doing there. Then there was Ana Silva, but they called her “Anaconda.” This girl was a Black Brazilian and she had this nice, nice shining golden brown skin and long braided hair with all these beads in it and she had green eyes. She had learned Helio Gracie style Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, not that I knew what that was at the time, but the girl could put you in knots once she got you on the ground and she could get the back of your neck and interlock her fingers, then she’d fire knees and knees and knees.

Trinity Love, another one of the Who’s Who of female fighters was there too, but she was pretty young and pretty green. 5’3” 120 lbs, long wavy black hair, smooth medium brown skin, big pretty blue eyes… how she got them or if they were contacts, I don’t know. She was really, really bubbly and she came up to me running her mouth and kissing my ass. She just talked way too much for me; there was a seriousness about this meeting and she went on and on and on about how honored she was to meet everybody and kept asking why we were there. Well, if you’d shut the fuck up, you would know. The girl knew my fights better than I did and I was annoyed with her, but I tried so hard to hide it. I was used to people booing me and treating me like shit, Black or White, everybody had something to hate about me… except Fancy. In fact, I was happy Fancy chose not to come to this because I could only imagine that I would’ve walked out by then. I don’t know how they would’ve treated her, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been good and I was interested in seeing what this was about.

Destiny Brown was there and this was the first time I had seen her in person since the Jessa Belle fight… she didn’t look all that comfortable, but she hid it well. She was happy to see me and she told me that Chastity Arroway was interested in fighting me. I asked her how she knew, and she said they had talked. See… that cracked me up back then because it didn’t mean shit to me. The bitch had been saying she was gonna fight me to every Black face who asked her about me, but then she’d get in front of those cameras or in the paper and say that I wasn’t worthy. Now, what really happened was that Chastity wanted to fight me and was gonna go against her promoters because she was tired of sending mixed signals. Her promoters brought in Destiny as a sparring partner and that was kinda stupid because Destiny’s not the same style of fighter that I was; they just brought her in because she was Black and we’re Black and we couldn’t possibly fight any way other than the Black way… whatever the fuck way that is. Destiny got fired after one day because she completely dominated the sparring session, but didn’t hurt Chastity; she just made a fool of her because Destiny’s defense and counters were too much. It wasn’t as bad as when she was brought in to work with Olivia. Olivia juiced Destiny for all kinds of knowledge, but Olivia wouldn’t talked directed to her, even if they were two feet apart. She’d talk through somebody else and when they had lunch, Destiny couldn’t eat in the same room as Olivia.

“That’s really sad. Destiny seemed like she was a very nice person to put up with all of that.”

Really, Ms. Lane? Nice… or gullible? Nice… or naïve? Nice… or a pushover for racist fucktards and poptart champions? I remember reading about World War II and how the German prisoners of war could sit at the same table and eat with the White American soldiers and officers, but the Black American soldiers had to eat separately. In this country, even the Native Americans on the reservations owned slaves, and other freed Blacks owned them as well. People want to ignore that shit and try to dress it up and make it all one way… well, fuck that. Tell it like it is and tell it all the way it really went down. Destiny let that shit happen to her and even as she was talking to me, I could hear how sad she was. “Why are you a fighter?” is what I asked her, because I really didn’t know. I didn’t wait for an answer; I didn’t care what she had to say. If you’re a fighter, then you’re supposed to be trying to win and Destiny was the best fighter out there and here she was, helping those girls because they told her they would fight her after they beat me, and if she just had some common fucking sense, she would know they were lying to her, just like Chastity lied to me when I met her. So, Jeremy Jones and all these representatives who claimed they were from big Black civil rights organizations… they want us to have a tournament to crown a Black female champion.

“But that would go against their principles, wouldn’t it?”

Now, you’re on to something there, Ms. Lane. If they were who they said they were, and we’ve got all this Black is Beautiful and let’s love one another and all that other stuff… okay, why the hell do you want me to beat up my Black sisters and make you a whole bunch of money? See, I picked up on that, but I kept quiet because I told you, I hated men, and the men were the ones doing all the talking and arguing about who was gonna get what share of what and this and that and they kept pushing this “us against them” bullshit… as far as I was concerned, they were no better than any White promoter I ever worked for who wouldn’t call me by my name. I knew from my own experiences, that there’s a thick line between what an organization’s mission statement says, and what its mission actually is. People not ideals, are what makes up the organization and you can have a group that stands for soooo much, but corruption will find its way in and splits and stereotypes will happen.

“I certainly can understand that. I’m in a sorority and I joined because of the principles and the tradition of high moral standards and service to the community. Now, a lot of the my new sorors are just pledging it to get ahead because of the connections, and because it looks good on their resumes. They don‘t help anyone.”

It doesn’t surprise me that you’re in one of those chickenshit Greek organizations. Did you get hazed?

“I… well I… I wouldn‘t calling it hazing. There are traditions--”

You got hazed. So, you let somebody haze you, abuse you, so that you could join a group because the group has a high moral standards? Do you have any idea what that sounds like? Do you see the hypocrisy in that very statement, Ms. Lane? You should’ve just joined a street gang; it’s the same thing. If you wanted some fucking friends, join a gang.

“(deep sigh) Let’s get back to you. Continue about the meeting, please.”

Still don’t want to call me by my name, huh? No problem. They said that if I agreed, I would fight Pantera for the title and Trinity and Destiny would fight for the number one contender spot. They even had a venue in Washington D.C. for this because they wanted to “stick it to the man” ha ha ha ha. Well, I had my own plan on sticking it to the man, so I signed a contract to face Pantera in Washington. It’s funny how one thing can alter the course of an entire sport’s history because they didn’t have any contracts saying that the winners would face each other. It was a general agreement that at a later date, the champion, whether that have been me or Pantera, would face whoever won out of Destiny and Trinity. When I got back to the hotel, Fancy was gone. I didn’t see her for two weeks, but she called and told me that she had flown to California to talk to Olivia’s promoter about a fight. Olivia would only fight White fighters, or Black fighters who couldn’t fight and Fancy still considered herself a fighter. Olivia wanted to fight my girlfriend and not me. By the time that had really gotten under my skin, Fancy returned.

We flew to D.C., Fancy and I, and I was noticing that she was becoming more and more paranoid. I had discovered a bunch of opium that she had bought with my fight money and we had a big argument about that. She was a free spirit, but that brought her into such a depression about me fighting and me with my bumps and bruises and just, the hatred that she was subjected to everywhere we went. Sometimes when we were traveling, we’d fight our way into a club or restaurant, and we’d have to fight our way out. It was the same way when I was fighting, ha ha haha… I’d fight through this obstacle course of spit and debris thrown at me, fight the bitch in the ring and the paid off judges and bias ass referee, then fight my way to the back and out of there. She was so mistreated when she’d sit front row or work my corner. When I met her, she was flying high and full of life, but I was realizing that the business was draining that life from her and I really wanted to think it all over. I mean, before I got the call from Jeremy, I was considering retiring and buying a house, but now, I was sitting in the locker room looking at my toes and thinking about all of this… I remember they gave me a brown bikini that looked like it was knitted and had all these gold tassels hanging from it. My body had been slammed and punched and kicked, but it was still looking good. Fancy was so nervous in the back and she didn’t make eye contact with anyone but me. She said she saw Chastity and Olivia’s promoters in the audience and my heart sunk a bit because she said they were talking to her about a fight with Olivia really soon and Chastity‘s promoter was trying to offer Fancy more money to fight Chastity... I thought she was nervous for me.

Trinity Love and Destiny Brown put on a show that would be the first of the many fights they would have against each other. Trinity’s speed was giving Destiny fits; Trinity was a different kind of fighter too… she would do all sorts of cartwheels, sit on your shoulders and twist and throw you, bounce off the ropes and do dropkicks and the girl never got tired. She was more of a professional wrestler type in the Mexican lucha libre style with some Japanese shoot fighting in there, but she had some lethal kicks and submissions. I don’t know if Destiny had every faced anything like that and for a while, it looked like Trinity was gonna win this running away, but Destiny started using her height and her reach and landing these hard ass hooks to the body. See, with those short speedy girls, you get them in the ribs, stomach, liver… you take their wind… you’ve got them. Those shots slowed Trinity down and they were taking away her speed and her confidence because she couldn’t stop sighing and dropping her arms.

Destiny would lean on her in the corner and slam a knee to her gut or an uppercut. At the thirty minute mark, Trinity wasn’t bouncing around anymore; she was looking like she was waiting to get knocked out. Once Trinity couldn’t do all her high flying moves because she didn’t have the breath or legs to pull them off, she tried sticking and moving, and she just got timed with counters. Now, she was playing Destiny’s game and Destiny was out striking her and doing it backing up to make her use even more energy when she’d miss her punches and kicks. Destiny caught her in the corner with a left hook to her stomach that dropped her, then Destiny got on top of her and put her in a rear naked choke and Trinity verbally submitted… I think she said, “You got me; I give up.” Trinity, as you know if you know anything about female fighting, went on to have a hall of fame career. She was young and she was fighting the best that night.

They asked me what music I wanted. I had never walked to the ring to any music, but I had a song in my head that said how I felt, despite everything I that was said to me or about me… it was “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone. Fancy came out with me because she didn’t want to be in the back and she damn sure didn’t want to sit ringside, but funny enough, there were just as many White people there as there were Black people and there were Latinos and Asians, and Middle Eastern folks… it was a pretty diverse crowd. But it didn’t help me from being booed by some of the Whites and Blacks there or getting dirty looks from people because Fancy and I were holding hands. In a few months, the country was gonna be turning 200 years old, and there was just as much bigotry and injustice as there was when it was founded. The Isley Brothers had released a single not too long before our fight and it was called “Fight The Power.” That’s what Pantera walked to the ring with and she was in a black two piece with black shoes. She was fine, but she was toned; her stomach was defined and she had a navel that looked like an oval button. It stuck out and she was looking at me, licking her lips. Maybe she was taller than 6’2” because the bitch towered over me.

She looked at me during instructions and said, “You’re nothing but a sellout to our people, you dumb d*** carpet-licking cxnt.” Before the ref could finish, I punched Pantera right on her navel and she screamed “OWW!!” doubled over and went down in a fetal position. The crowd didn’t like me because of my reputation coming in or me being gay or whatever the fucking reason was, but I let her have it and they really started getting upset. I didn’t care though; I didn’t even acknowledge them this time; I kept my eyes on her as she got up and got ready. I made a silent decision that on this night, I was gonna fight differently and she came out and I charged out too. The moment I ran into that first jab, I realized I had made a mistake; my head snapped back and I stumbled and she was on me. She shoved me into the corner and she fired three hooks into my stomach and an uppercut that got me under the chin. She hit so hard and I was completely caught off guard by her power, but I landed a left hook to her ribs and she took a step back, but then she hurt me with a right cross and I was on the ropes until that front kick to the stomach doubled me over and knocked me through the ropes and out of the ring.

Everybody and their momma was so happy when Pantera did this. I’m sure even those people down south who were watching it on closed circuit were happy to see me go down, but I got back up and got back in the ring. I saw her face and she was surprised and charged in again, but I blocked her shots in my usual stance, countering by giving her a double hook to her jab and liver, a right cross to her chin that snapped her head back, then I moved away. She kept coming forward; the bitch was tough as a three dollar steak and she didn’t bleed easy and that was troubling me because I’d hit this bitch with three hard shots, and she would shake the shit off and keep at me, sticking her jab in my face or a shot to my stomach that would bend me. Then, she was so fast that when I would try to circle her or back up to throw another combo, she would get her arms around me and ram me to the corner or to the ropes, hammering my ribs with punches, kneeing me in the stomach, or stepping on my feet… she was wearing me out fast. And if I’d try to come in on her, she would push me right in her range and nail me again, or she’d throw lefts to my side that were so hard, they’d move me into her right crosses. The ring was pretty small, so that favored her, and every time she hit me in the stomach, I’d swallow… I couldn’t get away from her jab. It was busting me up and taking the fight out of me.

I didn’t know how much time had passed in the fight or how badly hurt I was; I could barely see her between my eyes swelling up and my arms protecting my face. By the time I decided to stop trying to slug it out with her and went back to swatting and countering, I couldn’t really see her punches and kicks coming. She hurt me bad with a right cross to my jaw; I went “Unnnhhh!!!” and I fell and grabbed her to stop myself from going down; I felt one of those feelings like I was dozing off and tried to force myself to wake back up and she shoved me and doubled me over with a submarine hook to my stomach, just above my navel… that punch got me because I don’t know how I stayed on my feet, but I couldn’t breathe and I looked at Fancy when that shot dug in me and she knew I was in trouble. I saw people behind her taunting her; I saw Chastity and Olivia’s promoters laughing at her, laughing at me; I heard the crowd in one loud buzz… but those individual taunts were coming through like “Knock that d*** out!” or “Let her go back to her blonde haired cave bitch.” I was staring at Fancy and she put her face in my hands and I looked up at the ceiling while I held on to this bitch. I drove a knee into her stomach as hard as I could and despite her abs being so strong, I felt some give and I heard her exhale. I put my hand behind her head and sent right uppercuts into her face and submarine shots to her navel when she covered up. I was hurting her and I could hear all these funny sounds she was making. She shot her head forward and busted my nose, making me lose my grip, then she got me with a left hook to my temple just as I was nailing her with a short right cross to the point of her chin, staggering her.

I knew it… I was tired; I was beaten; I was… afraid. I knew that this was gonna be a night of me standing toe to toe with this bitch because I couldn’t do anything else. I was beginning to think again and I realized that she needed me in range to hit me. I started slipping her pushes and getting inside of her reach, tagging her with short hard punches and knees, but staying there and concentrating on blocking her pushes and grab attempts. I was eating her body up; I was turning that toned tummy into jelly with my shots and her little “oohs” and “oofs” were getting louder and louder. This was a new tactic for me, but it was working and I hooked both her arms and fired six knees to her stomach. And the most important thing was… I was breathing. She’d try to head butt me and I’d make her eat an elbow or a forearm. She was getting frustrated and she had abandoned her jab after I slammed three straight rights into her left set of ribs and she lowered her jabbing left arm there to protect them. With that side hurting, she couldn’t hardly push me in her range either and she relied so much on her jab, which didn’t have that much on it when she did throw it. I would sidestep that weak shit and nail her with a left hook to her jab and a straight right to her stomach.

I heard she was the type of girl who broke her opponents down with that jab and striking, then she’d take them down and wrestle them into a submission. I knew she was gonna stop chasing me and start to take me down, but I was pot-shotting her and bull-rushing her now. Her face and her lowered arms were telling me that the body shots were taking the measure of her and that she was hurting and lacking confidence. I would send it a random overhand right to her left eye or her left ear, back up, then charge in with hooks to her stomach and she would backpedal away or stumble… but she had a lot of heart, a LOT of heart. That bitch kept coming and every time she hit me, I would almost go down, especially if her strike was to the body. I was started to get winded and slow down again and her shots were getting through; she was getting her second wind and jabbing my face and stomach.

The crowd was behind her and I was running on fumes, but I caught her with a kick to the stomach and she groaned loudly and I charged in, got my arms around her, picked her up and slammed her to the mat. She was known for her big slams, but she had to really soften you up to do them, that or she just liked to play with her food before she ate it… so for me to slam her… that was big. I heard the air go out of her and I dropped seven forearms to her face and saw her blood for the first time. I was looking at that blood and I wanted more; I could hear the boos and see her proud face… even now, that bitch wasn’t gonna quit. I punched her until she was unconscious and enjoyed every moment of it. I guess looking back on it now, I wish I had been a bit more humble about that. It wasn’t really her; it was what she said… but it was the crowd and all the shit I had been through, you know? No… you don’t know, do you, Ms. Lane?

“You’d be surprised how much I can relate to what you’re saying.”

How? What have you ever stood for, in your pretty little business suits and with your shiny lips and buttermilk skin? Tell me about your struggles, Ms. Lane.

“(squirming in my seat) I think that on some level, we can all relate to one another. We all know what it’s like to be betrayed or to love someone… or to be afraid. There have been times when I’ve wanted to punch someone.”

But would you?

“I’ve… I’ve been in a few fights.”

Really? You were probably still in elementary school when you had them, huh?

“I took tae kwon do when I was younger; I took self defense.”

Do you think you could take me? Right now… with me being much older than you are and well passed my fighting years… do you think you could beat me if we fought right now?

“I… I don’t know how to answer that… I think I’d try my best and--”

Girl, I would fucking kill you. The way your eyes darted around when you said that, and the way your voice lowered… don’t try to find the inner tough girl just to impress me or make me think you can relate to me.

“I’m sorry if you think I’m trying to patronize you, Sophia.”

Your Majesty Sophia!! Call me by my rightful name or just keep trying to avoid it in your questions. You got a little confidence; you looked me over when I asked you if you could beat me, like you really were considering if you could. We fight, right? You come at me or I come at you… I hit your right in your stomach and we’re looking at each other just like we are now. And I wouldn’t hit you in the upper part; I’d try to get your navel or just below it because I know from being hit there myself that it’s a very sensitive spot and I’m pretty sure you’ve never been hit there before, and if you have, you haven’t been it there by me. You’re hurt from the punch and you know that I know that you’re hurt and I might smile or wink or something to rub it in. And you get mad, but unfocused and afraid because you know that I’ll hurt you there again. And I might jab it a few times just to annoy you and laugh when you moan… I might not even punch you in the face, and then I get inside, pick you up and put you on this table and make you my new girlfriend. Are you blushing, Ms. Lane, or are you getting upset? Do you spray perfume on your panties?

“That’s none of your business.”

Oh, aren’t we getting testy… I like that.

“And for your information, I did get into a fight a year ago and I got punched in the stomach.”

So?

“I went down and I didn’t get back up because the girl I was fighting was better than I was at fighting.”

If you knew she was better, why’d you fight her in the first place?

“I didn’t know she was better until she hit me.”

Who was she?

“(sounding like I’m about to cry because I was) She was a girl who my husband was cheating on me with… and she was White. I came home from work early, and he was in bed with her. I tried to fight her and she punched me in the stomach and I went down; she stood over me and she asked if I wanted more, and I shook my head ’no’ and she let me walk out. When I came back, she was gone. That happened a year ago and my husband and I worked it out.”

Ahahahahaha ha ha haaaa!!!! And they say I’m fucked up. This White girl fucks your husband; you come home; she hits you and you go down… then the bitch asks if you want more like she caught you with her husband and she kicked you out of your own house?

“I didn’t want to be there.”

But you came back though. But I get it now; you travel all over the country and the world talking to people so that your husband can fuck whoever he wants and you don’t have to see it. You are so submissive.

“How would you have wanted me to handle it, huh? Fight her until one of us dies?”

Well, when you get married, they do say “until ’til death do us part.” You’re not a fighter, Ms. Lane. You don’t like fighting and when you were tested, you didn’t fight for what you had and you didn’t kick it to the curb either. To be a teacher, you’ve gotta love teaching to put up with being underpaid and unappreciated. Same thing with being a doctor… you’ve got to love it to be responsible for saving somebody’s life or ending it. And to be a fighter, you’ve got to love to fight… whether or not you want to. Mike Tyson said in this interview I was watching… “if you can’t wake up every day and do something you hate, yet do it like you love it, then you’re nothing.”

“I do this.”

Do you hate it?

“Sometimes.”

I guess you’d rather be with your husband then, huh Lois? He’s such a ’super man.’

“My name is Lydia.”

You’re gonna tell me about me calling you out your name?

“Let’s talk about you and not me.”

But I like seeing what kinda woman is interviewing me. All the men, they too busy trying to touch on me ha ha ha ha. Well, I won the Black Female Fighter title and they hated me for it because I brought Fancy in the ring with me and celebrated. She was terrified, but I wasn’t. They booed us and cursed and all that other shit, but I had that belt and they could all kiss my ass. I went to the back with Fancy and I got a surprise. Olivia’s manager wanted to make a fight… with me. But he wanted me to do it on one condition… he wanted me to denounce the Black Female Fighter’s title on national television on The Night Show with Jimmy Carlyle. I had to think about it, but Olivia’s belt was the belt I had been chasing for a while and Olivia had repeatedly said she wasn’t gonna fight me… now, they were willing. She was everything that I hated about growing up in Mississippi; she had called me all kinds of names and slurs and said that I wasn’t pure enough to be in the same ring with her. They had seen me take a beating and I guess they thought I was ripe for the picking. I left Washington with the belt and without signing the contract to fight Destiny Brown… all I wanted was Olivia and to stick it to those fucking racists shitheads. I went on Jimmy Carlyle and stood face to face with Olivia. She had let her hair grow long and she was smiling. She was around 5’6” tall and I stared down at her, and I was smiling too… then, she stopped smiling. When I was asked about winning the Black Female Fighter belt, I ripped them as being a male controlled organization that was exploiting women and I took their title and threw it in a trash can on national television.

“I remember reading about that. Do you regret it now?”

I don’t know; I honestly try not to think about it that much, but I could’ve handled it better, I guess. I ripped the parasites in charge; I didn’t rip the fighters and I guess if I had to do it all over again, I would’ve said something about the fighters and how good they were. But after that… there was no turning back. People looked at me like I had thrown my Blackness in the trash can. That was my first trip to New York and every other Black person I saw looked at me like he or she wanted to strangle me. I had a hotel in Manhattan, but when Fancy and I walked through Harlem or rode that subway train, it was just like traveling through the south. They were calling me a coward because I didn’t fight Destiny Brown and I had thrown the title in the trash. They said I was afraid of Destiny Brown, who fought and beat Anaconda Silva to win the new version of the Black Female Fighter’s title… now, they were calling it the Freedom Belt. But Destiny was very much a slave to wear something like that. My fight with Olivia would be in Atlanta and that would mean that Fancy was coming back to her home state. I bought a house just outside of Atlanta and trained my ass off. Fancy would watch me and I could tell she wasn’t happy to be back in Georgia, but I wasn’t really worrying about that. I knew that if she had gotten this fight, it would’ve been in Atlanta and she would’ve been happy to come home and fight for a nationally recognized title. Plus, I only had two weeks to prepare; they wanted to take advantage of me being so worn out from my fight with Pantera. Fancy would stand there and stare out the window, watching me doing my drills. I really wish she could’ve been proud for me, but she just had this air of jealousy and hid it in being worried about me.

Olivia and I met in the heat with everybody booing me. The sun was beaming down on me and I was staring at her and she was avoiding eye contact. I think I may have been in the best shape of my career to that point for that fight… but I don’t know why. She came out in a green leaf two piece bikini and she had a flat but soft stomach with a small round navel about the size of a dime. This was billed as “The Evil Wicked Black Queen vs. The Pure Sweet White as Snow Savior.” I remember a little more than a year earlier, a Black baseball player for the Atlanta Braves named Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth‘s, who may have been biracial or more diverse than was implied, home run record. Aaron had all sorts of death threats and so many people who hated him, but he played on and he broke that record. I wasn’t as classy as Hank Aaron and I wasn’t nearly as famous, but I knew how he felt. Everywhere Fancy and I would go, she kept looking over her shoulder. Me? I still felt invincible; I was at my best when people were booing me and hating me because that’s what I was used to. So, when that bell rang and Olivia came out of her corner, I knew I had already won. She was sunburned and sweating in the heat and the fans were cheering her on as she swung at my stomach and I smiled at her, swatting her fist down.

She was looking all mean at me… didn’t matter. She kept swinging and swinging and swinging and I kept swatting and blocking her shots. The first five minutes, I let her chase me around the ring and all I did was block and laugh at her. Now, the crowd was getting more and more pissed off at me by the second, then I bullrushed her and she turned completely around, ran to her corner, and stuck her head out of the ring to force a break. I thought that was odd for a fighter to do, especially one who kept saying that I wasn’t worthy to face her. I started taunting her, putting both my hands behind my back and daring her to hit me; she’d swing at my head and miss and miss and miss. I started begging her to hit me in the stomach because I knew she loved to go there on the inexperienced Black girls she’d fought. She hit me about a good five times and I laughed at her, telling her she wasn’t even turning me on.

I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t even realize Fancy wasn’t enjoying herself. I could see her out of the corner of my eye looking at me with so much sadness. I let Olivia take one more swing at me; she missed, and I dropped the left hook on her nose and felt it break… her blood sprayed the mat and her green leaf bra. I drove a straight right into her stomach, right on her navel and twisted my fist. I felt her raise up on her toes and heard her moan; I saw this girl who said I wasn’t a worthy opponent cum right in her leafy bottoms and drop to the mat. She wasn’t moving, but she sure as hell was crying. That federation had a tradition that when a champion loses, that champion straps the belt around the waist of the new champion. With Olivia and I, that never happened. I strapped the belt around my own waist because she bolted out of that ring and I stood there, bowing while they were throwing paper and beer bottles at me, and whatever else they could find. I was a champion.

I remember when I got back home, Fancy and I made love and she told me she was proud of me. She was depressed most of the time, but she was capable of those moments of throwback, where she was the same girl I met who traveled the south with me and stood with me through all the hate. I was content now; I had defeated the racist bitch who said I wasn’t worthy and pissed off even more people. But I was being viewed as the death of the sport while Destiny Brown and Chastity Arroway were being viewed as its saviors. This was really getting on my fucking nerves because Chastity only cared about her damn self with her shitty ass lying ways and Destiny was too naïve to understand. Destiny wasn’t trying to challenge Chastity; Destiny was comfortable with her Freedom Belt, which she defended against anyone and everyone and beat them all, no matter what skin color they were. Destiny had fought Kim Choi, a Japanese fighter who was exiled from the country and had moved to the US looking to get into the sport. She was an accomplished martial artist and high flier and she and Destiny had a long match. But Destiny’s heart was too big and her ground wrestling was too great for Kim. She made Kim submit.

Now that I was champion, they were doing everything they could to get that belt off of me. They were sending White girl fighter after White girl fighter against me, but none of those girls could beat me. I felt more like Jack Johnson now, with all the Great White Hopes and with my White girlfriend… in fact, the papers back home in Mississippi were calling me The Black Plague. I had gone there a few times and I was shown a lot of love, believe it or not, from the people in my hometown and from a lot of Blacks and Whites in the state. But it was still, just like every little place I’d been to in the US, full of hate. And that’s the thing. You’ll find a bigoted asshole or a racist bitch wherever you go, and it don’t have anything to do with skin color; it has to do with being angry about nothing and just pretending that there’s nothing better you can be doing with your life. Olivia had decided to retire from fighting after she lost to me and her promoter was now my promoter and he hated it. His name was John Adams, just like the President and his President son and he was an asshole… there ain’t no other way to say that. He found female bodybuilders, wrestlers, ex convicts… if they were White, I’d fight them and beat them and I had no problem doing that at all. I remember saying that Destiny Brown was the Black champion so that made me the White champion… that pissed off a lot of people, especially since I was back in the south. Finally, John struck a deal with Chastity Arroway’s promoter and agreed to have a unification match between Chastity and I. It would be held in Washington D.C. on July 4, 1976, the day the US would be turning 200 years old. I was thirty and I was feeling more like forty five; I looked twenty, but I was still hungry for this.

There was all kind of stuff going on with this fight. There were rumors that I was gonna get killed because of what I did with the Black Female Fighter belt, since I was going back to D.C. where I had won it. There was this stuff about Chastity being tied in with the mob and that she had refused to lose in Las Vegas when they wanted her to drop the belt to some young girl named Martha Maples… you’ve heard of her, but that was the first time I had heard of her. Whoever was backing Chastity was supposed to be even mad at her because she was supposed to fight Olivia and unify the titles, but she didn’t do it because Olivia’s people wanted to pick the venue and wanted seventy percent of the royalties. Then, there already was me being the most hated female fighter on the planet. Fancy was so scared; I had to hold her in the back and she wouldn’t stop shaking. I remember seeing these random assholes walking by making smart ass comments about us hugging and kissing.

I remember that first right cross she hit me with… I remember thinking, “Oooh!” or maybe I was saying it out loud. Now, you get hit with a punch… it feels a certain way. When Chastity hit me… it felt different. She came out firing on all cylinders, swinging like a woman possessed on me and her punches really hurt. I mean, they really fucking hurt and they were numbing shots; that’s what was bothering me. She hit me in the stomach and doubled me over and she was smiling at me because she knew she had hurt me. She pushed me in the corner and started throwing hooks into my belly on my navel and below and she was taking her time because her shots were so hard… she was toying with me. She had a great jab and I had prepared for that, but I knew something was definitely wrong when the first jab she hit me with broke my nose. She got me with a right hand under my heart that almost dropped me… and then, that uppercut that is on all those films I’ve seen of my career. That uppercut… she had me coming out of the corner and I took a jab to the stomach and folded over. I went to try and grab her and she rolled her shoulder, got low and slammed that uppercut right below my chin… my tongue smacked the roof of my mouth and I felt myself about to go out. I went down and my head was spinning.

She may have been able to finish me off right then and there, but she was yelling for me to get up. I could see her black curls and her blue eyes; she was screaming for me to get back up. So, I did, but I didn’t have my legs under me and that’s when she got right in position. I hit her with a jab, then a straight right and she went down. I saw her reach into her mouth and pull out her mouthpiece, then I saw her close her eyes. They awarded me her belt and I was now the undisputed champion. But that did nothing for me… you see, there’s a lot of controversy with this fight. Did Chastity take a dive? They said the fight was fixed and that she was paid to take a dive. Then, they took her gloves off and found blocks in them… you know; she had some hardening substance in her gloves, which wasn’t unusual. Jack Dempsey supposedly put metal in his gloves… and what the fuck is so great about him, anyway? They say he’s one of the greatest boxers of all time, but he ducked Harry Greb, the great Black fighter… and hell, Jack Dempsey didn’t defend his title against Black fighters. Some people in a sport or discipline just have talent, no matter what their skin color is. Larry Bird and Jerry West… they had talent. They could play basketball with anybody. Jack Dempsey… he was just a creation of the media. Greatness doesn’t have a skin color, but neither does foolishness.

Every month I had a fight; every month my opponent was White and I won. I got challenged by a lot of talented Black female fighters and Latinos and Asians and everybody else, but the promoter wanted me to lose to a White girl and that was fine by me because I knew I wasn’t going to. Destiny Brown continued to dominate her opponents and we had lunch one time in New Orleans. She asked me for a fight and I promised I’d give her one. She didn’t believe that I was ducking her and she felt like we could put an end to all this controversy and bring about some good if we just fought and go it over with. I told her that I’d fight her, but I was lying. I didn’t have anything against her and I damn sure wasn’t afraid of her. It’s just that my fight wasn’t with her; there was nothing to motivate me when it came to fighting Destiny because the girl was too fucking nice. She was the greatest fighter I’ve ever known, but she was just too friendly to me to rearrange her pretty face. I felt sorry for the girl, seriously. She was so naïve and she went in there and fought and beat everybody and was happy, but she didn’t acknowledge the greatest struggles and all the bullshit around us. I had been fighting for my name and for my identity. I had been fighting racists and sexists or homophobes of all colors and classes and I was hated universally for it, but Destiny Brown could waltz her pretty self in and deliberately ignore all the things I fought against, make no mention of them, and be loved. Shit, that pissed me off. And speaking of my name, I had it changed. I was tired of people refusing to call me “Queen Sophia,” so I decided to change my name to “Your Majesty Sophia Jackson.” I had it changed and they laughed at me at city hall in Canton when I did it, but they did it. That’s why when you address me, you have to say “Your Majesty” because that’s my name just like Marvelous Marvin Hagler is his real name. Having a name is what’s most important to me at this time, other than Fancy’s love.

“Tell me about the fire. Tell me about Fancy and the fire.”

I don’t want to talk about the fire… not yet. You know… Ms. Lane… you want to do me a favor?

“If I can.”

(standing up and putting her hands behind her back) Hit me. Hit me as hard as you can because you brought up the fire and now, I can’t think about nothing but that fire and that night.

“I’m sorry.”

Bitch, HIT ME!! Stand up.

(standing up) “I’m not going to hit you.”

(poking me in the stomach, almost on my navel, if not for the jacket) C’mon! You wanna see what it’s like? You wanna see what it’s like to be me? Bitch… hit me with all your might; there ain’t nothing between us except air and opportunity. All you gotta do is hit me.

(pokes me hard in the stomach)

“Guuhhh…”

(I’m intimidated and afraid of her. I double over on purpose, wrapping my arms around her waist and looking at the floor between our feet. I surrender because that is what I am, I guess. I feel her lean over me, wrap her arms around my waist, yanking up my shirt and rubbing my stomach, and she whispers in my ear as I shudder)

What are you doing, huh? Why’re you panting and breathing hard. You shouldn’t give up so easy, Ms. Lane. You’re alone in here with me and I could pick you up and piledrive you to the ground. I could rape you in here, and you gave yourself up so easily.

“I don’t think I could stop you if I tried.”

And that’s the problem… every girl I fought had a chance to beat me, kill me, piss and shit on me… whatever. You’re no different. Is this how your husband’s mistress had you? Is this how she beat you? You gotta get over that fear and stand up for yourself and be the woman you’re supposed to be, not the woman everybody makes you. You hear me, girl?

“Yes.”

Your stomach is fit, but it’s smooth and it’s kinda soft too. Every time I stick my finger in your navel, your muscles tighten.

“It’s my navel… what do you expect. It’s sensitive.”

It’s a pressure point… and so is your anus, but it took me being put in this prison to find that out. I’m not even holding you that tightly; I’m not holding you tight at all and you’re still doubled over listening to me talk because you’re so afraid… or are you? Don’t tell me you’re getting sweet on me? Don’t tell me you want to cross over to--- UNNNHHHH!!!!

(two male guards with batons hit her across the back and she goes down as I stand up and stagger back, trying to gather myself. They beat her… she’s sixty-five years old and they’re beating her like she’s nothing)

“Stop it!!!! Stop it!!!”

Tell them I didn’t do you nothing!! AHHHH!!!! Tell them I didn’t do you nothing!!! UNNNHHHH!!!! I was trying to help you!!! FUUUUCK!!!!

“Stop it or else you’ll be on the news tonight!!!!”
**********************************

I stand and look in the mirror at my beautiful body, that I put so much into… a body that has gotten me far in life, a body that will one day change and what will I have left, but a mind full of what could have been. I look at the inside of my navel where she touched and see the small scratch… it will heal. But I feel so useless. I wish I could’ve been with her when the fire came. I wish I could’ve helped her and traveled with her… maybe she would be different… maybe I would be different. And it occurs to me that perhaps, I can help her… but would I even be worthy of it… would she even want my help.

To be continued…

[howardcosell]

Oh another thing... when trying to think of a "mental model" for Lydia Lane, I went with former Ms. Washington and current Headline News anchor, Natasha Curry. I know people reading the story probably have their own visual with her, but this is mine. Hope you guys will enjoy this new chapter. Peace and all that other wonderful stuff.

[howardcosell]

just wanted to say, while I've got a break Happy f'n Mardis Gras y'all!! Laissez le bon temps rouler!! Keep the stories rolling and the positivity flowing...

[howardcosell]

First, Happy Birthday and RIP to the real Howard Cosell
------------------------
God loves; man kills… that’s what the saying is. We’re taught to believe in something, taught to believe that if we do good and live according to the Word that when we die, they’ll be a place for us called Heaven. But isn’t death and an ending a part of the circle of life? Everything I’ve been taught, I’m beginning to doubt. I’m beginning to wonder what kind of woman I am now. I was told and learned through observation that sucking up was how you got somewhere in life, that pretending to like someone who was above you… that’s how you get what you want. I learned that the way to be a woman is to watch a man cheat on your mother, then convince yourself that it’ll never happen to you, then lie to yourself, even as it’s happening. I was taught that a fake attitude in me is a strong woman’s trait. I always lied to myself and told myself that I was strong for staying with him. Every fight I’ve walked away from, every argument, all of it, I convinced myself that being a snob or a suck up made me strong. But I’ve realized something that has buried itself deep inside of me… I’m weak. I’m so pathetically weak in mind and heart. I stare in the mirror and watch the tears run from my eyes, taking some of my makeup with them. I get a hot towel and wipe it all off and realize that it doesn’t make that much of a difference in my appearance. I get up and take my robe off, laying on my bed in my pink and green bra and panties set as the tape recorder plays and I hear my voice followed by hers.
--------------------------

“What do you mean?”

Don’t let the sadness kill you… that’s what I said and that’s what I mean. I can look at you and see how sad you are inside, Ms. Lane. It don’t make a difference if you’ve got on makeup or if you’re smiling or any of that. Sadness shines from within; it sets you on fire in a hot blue flame, then it goes dull and dark as the night… I can see that in you.

“I’m sad because I failed to protect you the last time I was here.”

You didn’t fail to protect me. You failed to protect yourself. If everything we’ve both done in life has led us to this point… then we are only responsible for ourselves, right? Unless, somebody gives us responsibility or we have kids. You’re not responsible for me.

“I feel bad that they just beat on you like that and I’m going to do something--”

Shhh!! Don’t talk too loud about that, Ms. Lane. This is a prison; you don’t have to leave here. You don’t have control over your fate once you come in here; if you knew the shit that goes on in here and how it’s covered up, you’d watch your tone. Me? I don’t care; they can beat on me; they can kill me… it doesn’t matter. But you’ve got to go back to whatever fake life you’ve been living.

“Are you ready to talk about the fire?”

The fire… you know, some things that happen, you don’t know the truth, no matter how hard you look. I had been undisputed champion, or at least, I was the undisputed champ as far as I was concerned. I had beaten all these pitiful ass fighters who thought they could beat me. I had gone all over the country and had been accused of being a savage by Whites and a coward and a sellout by Blacks because I wouldn’t fight fellow Black fighters and I had a White lover. No matter where Fancy and I went, we were mistreated. Other promoters had popped up and got their own champions with their own belts and those girls were taking up space. In fact, after I won the OVF title from Eva Morris, the company went “bankrupt” and closed, then reopened with a new title, completely ignoring my reign. Not too many people wanted anything to do with me. You had Troy Daniels (Troy’s story is covered in my story “Indifference”) in San Francisco with Ms. Flex and all these wannabe fighters who were just porn stars or cage fighters; he wasn’t getting too far with his promotion because I had gone out there and met him about doing some business. The guy couldn’t stop complaining about the legitimization movement and how it was fucking everything up for him because other female fight promoters were shitting all over him in magazines and there was a fight going on to get the sport cleaned up… that meant that bigmouths like me and egotistical won’t play by the rules types like him had to go.

“I thought the legitimization movement was good for women’s fight sports. Isn’t that why the sport is so popular today?”

Didn’t you read Dina Majors’ book? Did you even read Siena Blaze’s book?

“Yes, I did. But--”

Okay, then you should know that there was all kind of shit going on with that movement. People got killed; women were beaten up and raped, and even sold into slavery during that time, and that was right here in America in the 1980s, but it was going on in the 70s. You could call it a war between the good elitists and the bad realists… all kinds of ugliness and stuff came out of it. And it’s just a bunch of people wanting power and to get rich quick; that’s all. Yeah, there were people who really wanted the sport to succeed, like Missy. I met Missy in Detroit and she was talking to me about how they were trying to get the sport legitimized and I told her that it already was. I was the champion and that’s all that should’ve mattered; all these other promotions and organizations were what was killing the sport because they all had different champions and if somebody tried to unify all the belts, then the promotion would split, form another promotion and get another champion. It’s all about control. You look at the state of boxing right now; you’ve got all these different sanctioning committees, just alphabet soup everywhere you turn and at least four belts per division. People want shit simple; one champion per weight class is enough, not four… and then when someone wants to unify the titles, you’ve got promoters and negotiations and all that other bullshit went all the fans want is a fight to see who’s the best.

Missy was a good woman and she was had an honest promotion with good talent. But the fact that people were starting to pretend like I had never won my titles and like I wasn’t a champion was bothering me. Now, there were territories; now, there were champions in other countries trying to get on television. It was really pissing me off. I worked hard to get the little I had; I was still fighting and defending my title, but now, they were saying that I was only fighting bums. Destiny Brown was going all over the world, fighting as a good will ambassador for the US and beating champions from other countries… she was just a fucking Uncle Tom, smiling and shucking and jiving and with so many kind things to say about America. I didn’t understand how somebody with her skill could be so afraid of what other people thought of her. If I was out and somebody was going to kill me… so be it. But that had changed to… other than some promoters who’s belts I was wearing, people weren’t hating me that much anymore… they were doing something a lot worse… they weren’t caring.

Mary Maples, who looked like that actress Demi Moore, she was the hot commodity now and with her fourth degree black belt in tae kwon do that she didn’t work very hard to get, and her desire to clean up the sport while refusing to fight Black fighters, really put her over with the audiences that used to hate me. I called Mary out like never before; I really wanted to beat this bitch… but she never bothered to fight me. And she was really a great fighter, but like Chastity before her, I think she was a puppet. You can’t call yourself the best and not fight all the best fighters, using some “oh they’re too dirty for me to waste my time fighting them” or “I would never put my title in jeopardy of being held by someone like her” bullshit. Come to think of it, I think Mary was running her own ship. Everything I heard about Mary was that she was her own woman and made her own decisions, very dominating… she didn’t want to fight me or Destiny or Trinity because she was afraid to lose or because she didn’t see where it benefited her. In the past, it was “get the belt off that Black b****,” now, it was “we have our champion and she doesn’t have to defend against anyone she doesn’t want to.” They even said that I was too angry and all about revenge and they said they were about competition. I remember meeting Troy Daniels again in San Francisco and he would always say “life is pimping.” I didn’t understand what the hell that meant back then, but I do now.

So… I got back from California, working about five dates for Troy, and taking time out to fight his wife, Marie Flex and beat her easily because she was so coked up and ‘roided up that she couldn’t hang with me… and I thought that was strange because Troy wasn’t there for that fight and it wasn’t even under his promotion. I wasn’t aware of the problems they were having in their marriage back then or that Troy had kicked Flex out of his house and eventually moved two of his lovers in. But when I got back to my Atlanta house, it had burned to the ground. Fancy was nowhere to be found and because we were really all we had, nobody had contacted me about it. I went to the hospital and I saw her with…

“Take your time.”

About 80% of her body was covered in burns. The police didn’t have any leads on who started the fire, but they said it was arson. Somebody did it; sometimes, they said she did; sometimes, they said an outside party did it. I knew they were giving me the run-around, but I was so overcome with grief that I didn’t give a shit. In fact, I didn’t give a shit about any of it anymore. I had forgotten or maybe I never really knew… but love and living and being happy… that’s what I should’ve been about… and I wasn’t. I watched her on that respiratory machine for weeks and the promoters called me up, saying they were gonna strip me of my title and give it to Mary Maples, so I decided to fight Mary, but that wasn’t what they wanted.

“I don’t get it. If you agreed to fight Mary, wouldn’t the fight happen?”

No. Mary didn’t want to fight any Black fighters; there were all these videos out with Black girls dominating White girls in matches and all this other stuff. Destiny, Trinity, and I were the three best fighters in the US and after the shit in the 60s, there was more fear than ever. I had a lot to do with that because of my “anger.” She was a good enough fighter to hang with all three of us, but if you don’t believe you can win, you could be in a tank and fighting a bitch armed with a toothpick and still lose. So, Mary said “no” and kept fighting other “lighter skinned” fighters.

“That makes me angry. I’d read so many things about Mary; she’s considered one of the greatest fighters of all time, a pioneer for women’s fight sports in the 70s and early eighties.”

They say history is written by the winners, right? Mary was beautiful; she had a raspy voice and she was a tall strong woman to contrast the blonde bimbos. Her selling point was that she was a real fighter, no gimmicks, no costumes, just a real fighter and a straight shooter… but she was the fakest of them all because for all her talk of being about female empowerment and competition, she ducked more fighters out of fear than Chastity and Olivia combined.

“What happened with Fancy?”

I did something really stupid… that’s what happened. I was staying in hotels and promoters were tracking me down and putting word out that I was afraid to defend my title against the fighters they’d picked out, when truthfully, I would agree and they would pull out. But I didn’t feel like having a war with my own promotions, especially when I was going through so much. I wasn’t training; I wasn’t eating; I was with Fancy and she was going day to day and I didn’t know if she’d make it or not. Then, that stupid thing happened… her family came and they started trying to get the police to question me about the fire. I wasn’t even in the state when it happened, but they were starting to think that I set my own house on fire because I wasn’t making enough money to keep it. That was bullshit; but when I went into my savings, Fancy had spent most of it and I didn’t even know.

I ran away from them and I abandoned Fancy, as much as I didn’t want to. I got on a plane and flew to London, leaving all of that behind. Barbara Pound, who was the undefeated champion out of Newport, Wales, had contacted me through her promoters and wanted to fight me. When I actually met her, I was surprised. The girl was 4’11” 98 lbs with big brown eyes and really curly brown hair and she was in a one piece and shorts getting ready to fight some 6’ tall blonde girl named Phyllis Braxton who looked like Farah Fawcett with the fluffy hair and all. Babs was a talker; she was happy to meet me and thought that the way I was being treated in the US was bullshit and she had wanted to fight me since she was a kid. She was undefeated and had beaten the best fighters in the UK and had done a few tours in the US too, but she didn’t like it… or rather, once she started doing cocaine, she liked the US too much and her promoters brought her back to the UK. She was more than happy to share all these tapes of her fights; she was really, really fast… the cocaine made her that way.

“Are you sure she wasn’t just a good fighter. I never read anything about cocaine use from Barbara Pound until after her career was over.”

She offered me some, Ms. Lane. Remember, I lived through this shit; you just read about it. I could tell when somebody’s on cocaine and Barbara offered me some and I turned it down. And then, she decided not to use it. She was saying stuff like, “this shit really fooked me up; I gotta stop using this fooking shit.” But you know what? She should’ve used the cocaine because she got in that ring and that blonde knocked her right on her ass, broke her ribs and punched her in the stomach over and over again. Phyllis shocked everybody by beating Barbara, but she didn’t shock me. It was a one sided beat down; Barbara had become to dependent on the coke, and once she decided to give it up, she got her ass handed to her. I remember how busted up she was after the fight and how she apologized to me for ruining any chance we had of making a ton of cash off our own fight. But that was fine. I broke Phyllis’ jaw with the first hook I hit her with, knocking her out and winning Babara’s belt. Then I vacated it and gave it back to Barbara.

“Why’d you do that?”

Because even if Babs was on drugs and Phyllis beat her fair and square, I didn’t feel like I had really won the belt.

“So, when did you return to the US?”

Remember how I told you I reminded a lot of people of Jack Johnson? My promoters had something worked out with the police, who were already sick of me from when I was more popular and holding the country hostage with my evil Black ways, ha ha. They decided not to accuse me of arson; they had a strong case against me even if I wasn’t in the country because they got some loser who was already in jail when the fire happened to say that I paid him to do it. They just wanted the one thing they’d never gotten out of me. It was October 31, 1979... almost three weeks after the birth of Rachel Apache, who all these newbees say is the greatest female fighter of all time. I was 33 years old and the fight would be against a 6’1” 160 lb blonde done up to look like Morgan Fairchild named Lillian White… Lilly White, and the promoters laughed in my face when I said that name. That’s who they wanted me to fight, and Lilly was young; she was strong; she was what sold, but she was green and inexperienced like most of the girls who were being marketed now. I was still just as beautiful as I was when my career started; I was only 33, but I had been fighting for more than 15 years and had been putting up with racist, sexist bullshit for a lot longer. They wouldn’t let me see Fancy unless I took this fight and they ensured me that she was still alive. When I saw her, she had aged; I could see that, despite the scars. She was a vegetable, hardly any brain activity at all and when I talked to her, she squeezed my hand and I saw one lone tear come from out of her right eye. She was on life support and I guess she had been on life support from the moment she was born. All her hair was gone and her family was yelling and cursing at me… I just got five minutes alone with her the day of the fight and I would get five minutes alone after it… but that’s all I would need.

I tell you something… pain hurts and life is pain… but sometimes, you want it to hurt you so bad, and it just won’t. I was in Jackson, Mississippi, back in my home state, in the corner with my arms up in the heat, punch after punch after punch to my stomach and I couldn’t feel a thing. I wanted her punches to hurt so bad; I wanted her to kill me in there, but she was so afraid every time I would flinch. She would even move back when I would groan from one of her punches. I could hear the promoters mocking me when her stomach shots really did start hurting, “Hit her in the stomach, ha ha!” they say or “Fuck her up for what she did to Olivia”… they still remembered the way I’d mock my opponents and they wanted me to pay for it. She got me right on my navel and I threw up blood all over my bikini (they insisted we fight in bikinis and mine had to be leopard print) and staggered back. I would look at them and they would laugh at me while I just covered up; it was sooooo hot out there and she kept on going for the stomach. She beat on me for almost an hour in that heat and every time I hit her, she almost went down. I was saving myself, but that big right hand came and hit me just below my navel and I went down and curled up. She pried me apart and stomped on my stomach over and over again and when I covered up, she started hitting me in the face, but I rolled myself on top of her and even though my eyes were closing from all the shots I had taken… and that her gloves were probably loaded, I just couldn’t pin her… and maybe I didn’t want to. I got up and I didn’t have any wind and she caught me with an uppercut on my navel that knocked me off my feet and I went down. She pinned me for a 1,2,3 and for the first time ever in more than 15 years of fighting, I lost… to Lilly White.

“Did you really lose that fight?”

That’s what the records say.

“No. I mean did you really lose to her? Did she beat you, or did you cut a deal with the promoters to give them their belts back in exchange for seeing Fancy?”

What difference does it make? The ring filled up with people and they picked up Lilly White and carried her around. The say that I wasn’t as popular as I used to be as the evil Black champion, I sure as hell was popular when I lost. Is was like Lilly had done the unthinkable by winning. But we all know that Lilly didn’t beat me; I beat myself. I had to roll out of the ring to stop them from trampling on me and a couple of those promoters got stomps in on me while I was down. They fired me as soon as I got to the back and I saw pictures of myself crying during the fight and how Lilly’s power was the reason… but that was not true.

“You were thinking about Fancy.”

Yup. I was thinking about everything that had led me to this point and how winning and being the best and respect and having a name and all that shit was all I cared about and how I gave that shit up just to see the woman I loved and she hardly knew who I was. I came into that room late that night and confessed everything to her… everything that I had done and how I had neglected her for all this stuff that should never have been as important… then, I pulled the plug and watched her die….

“Are you serious?”

I don’t sound serious, Ms. Lane? I was tired of seeing her suffer; I was tired of--

“Did you do that because you felt guilty?”

Maybe.

“Did you think she could’ve gotten off life support?”

And if she could’ve, what kind of world would she have awakened to? Fancy loved her looks and she loved being a free spirit; she would’ve killed herself having to live on breathing machines and not being able to do anything without assistance.

“How do you know that? You didn’t give her a chance.”

She didn’t need one.

“What you did was selfish. You didn’t have the right to take away her right to live. If you had stayed in Europe, you may never have had to go before the courts. All those court cases that were overturned and all those people who were mistreated… I can’t believe a woman so smart would be so gullible when it comes to her chances against a judge.”

I wasn’t thinking about that; I was thinking about Fancy.

“You were thinking about yourself, Your Majesty. You came back to the US to see the woman you love one more time so that you didn‘t have to see her anymore.”

Let’s move on.

“No.”

You’re interviewing me and I’ve said all I have to say about that.

“You didn’t give her a chance.”

Why is that so important to you, Ms. Lane? What? You have a heart buried beneath that makeup and buttermilk skin?

“I have more heart than you could ever imagine. My grandmother was on life support after a car accident and she got off of it.”

And where is she now?

“She died, but she lived another ten years after the accident, with her injuries. And she didn‘t complain and she didn‘t feel bad.”

Oh, she did. She was your grandmother; she wasn’t gonna let you see her that way.

“You act like you knew her. So, Your Majesty, since you don’t want to go on about Fancy, what do you want to talk about?”

Destiny Brown.

“Ah yes, her again… the woman who, because she was nice and friendly to people and didn‘t make any waves, she was a sellout. You are so obviously jealous of her.”

What makes you think that? In order to be jealous of somebody, that person has to have something you want. Destiny didn’t have anything I wanted.

“Yes and no. She had love; people liked and respected her and she’s considered one of the greatest female fighters of all time. You could’ve had love, but you rejected it and fought for it at the same time.”

Oh, now all of a sudden, you’re my psychiatrist. If something is given to you, you appreciate it more, if it’s something good, but if you’ve got to fight for it… it’s just as important, if not more. I’ve had to fight for my respect; Destiny kissed ass for it.

“But you said it yourself; she is the greatest female fighter of all time. If you really believe that, then she earned her reputation. You always needed something to fight for, whether it was to learn the art, or because all those racists hated you, or because people rejected your relationship with Fancy, or because people were ignoring you accomplishments. But you never really stopped to live. Destiny had a life outside of the ring; struggles, politics, all that stuff, she knew that it went with the territory of being an African American, a woman, a human being. She knew that racism and sexism were a part of life and she lived and lived at peace with that… and you hated that about her. You thought she was a sellout when all she was doing was living the way every believer in passive resistance would‘ve wanted her to. She loved her enemies.”

Look at you, coming out of your shell on me and trying to tell me what I think and don’t think. You look like you might have even turned a shade darker, ha ha ha. Did you ever talk to Destiny Brown? I know you didn’t, but I did. You can read all the interviews and view all the tapes, but you would’ve had to speak to the actual person to get a feel for who she was.

“You’ve made her seem like the nicest person on the planet.”

Yes, but she was the nicest person on the planet when she needed to say fuck the world.

“Okay, so let’s talk about what happens afterward. You ‘lost’ to Lillian White.”

Lilly White.

“Whatever you want to call her. You’re fired from those promotions. You have no titles; you pulled the plug on Fancy and she died… what happens next?”

Lilly White loses to Mary Maples and Mary Maples becomes the face of the sport for a while, only defending the titles against White fighters while Destiny Brown does something that solidifies her in the sport’s history, but something that also wrecks her chances of ever fighting Mary Maples.

“I was talking about you. What happens with you?”

I fly to St. Louis and meet with Missy and I get on some of her shows. I wasn’t the fighter I used to be; well, I was just as talented, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Missy had this girl, 59” 140 lbs, long flowing brown hair and blue eyes and just a great personality… she had just turned 19 when we met New Year’s Day, 1980... She looked like Lynda Carter from the “Wonder Woman” tv show, but her name… and I know you know her name… was Dina Majors… (crying)

“Why does Dina Majors make you sad?”

I just… she was a… she and Missy and all those people who worked in Amazon Women’s Wrestling were good people and the way things turned out for them in the end was just wrong (see my story “Dina Majors’ Story”). If I hadn’t left them when I did, none of that shit would’ve happened because I wouldn’t have let Missy get involved with the people she did. But anyway… I met her and she was really cool and I started out fighting for AWW, but I started booking matches after a while. Dina was becoming a big star, but Avalon Professional Wrestling with Ebert Holloway in charge was really taking off when they got a television deal. They weren’t what I was into because they were what GLOW was, except not scripted. All those girls in Ebert’s fed had a gimmick, and a lot of the AWW girls had gimmicks too, but not like APW’s stereotypes and cardboard blondes. That’s what I liked about Dina; she was the same person behind a microphone that she was behind the scenes. She stood for doing the right thing and for helping others and making the sport the best it could be. She actually made me believe in her, and for a person to do that, especially after Fancy died, that was a hell of an achievement.

Once APW hit big and Alicia Christmas, this young 5’10” 150 lb Christie Brinkley looking blonde spouting out Ronald Reagan’s bullshit through a squeaky clean image and a Cinderella do no wrong voice, got on all the television sets, all the other promotions started to drop and the money wasn’t there. Men’s wrestling and fighting was more popular and I hated that a female run, all female promotion like AWW had to have matches on the under cards of men’s wrestling, but Missy and I did what we could. Then, some of my old promoters came to us with the idea of Mary Maples vs. Dina Majors. They didn’t have any choice but to team up with us. They still had ideas of going national and other than APW, women’s wrestling had to be fake to get on tv. They thought Mary would beat Dina and that would be it. But as you know, Dina Majors beat “the great shoot fighter” Mary Maples because Dina was an all around kind of wrestler. She could punch and kick; she could mat wrestle; she could do all kinds of high flying shit and she knew how to use the ropes and corners. Mary was a shoot fighter; she would’ve been better off in an octagon or in PRIDE or UFC when that came around, but Dina gave her a great match and beat her doing what she did best… everything.

“But what about you and Fancy’s death? What happened with that?”

I cut a deal with those people and like you said, they knew that had screwed over me and they couldn’t pin pulling the plug on me, even if I had done it. AWW signed Destiny Brown to do some dates and I got to see her again. She was just as happy as ever; she had been married, had some kids and taken some time off, but she was back and not missing a beat. She was going to retire back then after her second child, but she got what she called “the opportunity of a lifetime.” The Soviet Union had a wrestling champion named Tatiana Titan, big redheaded flattop girl who was beating everyone she faced. Titan’s people wanted a match between their girl and Alicia Christmas, since Alicia talked so much shit about the Soviets and communism in her promos. But Ebert wasn’t gonna send his girl over there to get killed by Titan. One thing I can say for Alicia Christmas; she learned how to fight later on in her career and she’s become one of the best technical wrestlers in the sport, but back then, she was cardboard with mediocre skills in the ring. Chastity and some of the other girls I fought earlier in my career would’ve destroyed Alicia Christmas and had she fought in that era, she wouldn’t have been in the top 100.

But they needed someone to go and face Tatiana Titan, and Dina Majors and Destiny Brown fought each other for the right to do that. They were both undefeated and Destiny was still getting back into shape after pregnancy. The match was a real classic; Dina used her mat wrestling and classic wrestling maneuvers to wear Destiny down and Dina kept getting near pinfalls on Destiny. I honestly had a feeling that Destiny was done for when Dina put her in that Boston Crab in the middle of the ring and kept working on her back. Dina was young and she wasn’t getting tired, but Destiny started making Dina come to her and she was countering Dina with hard left hooks and straight rights to her stomach and ribs. That’s the thing about Destiny; she knew how to fight hurt and she knew how to wear her opponent down. Dina had never lost before, but she started to back up from all those shots to her body and she started to pull back on her own punches because she couldn’t break Destiny’s Philly Shell defense. When she’d try to grab Destiny, Destiny would counter her and move away, or duck low, pick her up and slam her; Destiny was calm and was trying to break Dina’s confidence, but Dina was just as calm and the match seemed like it would go on forever.

Destiny took Dina down and started leaning on her and they were down on the mat for almost twenty minutes while Destiny tried to pin Dina down. But Dina had a heart as big as Alaska, as big as Antarctica and she wasn’t gonna let Destiny beat her. She was able to get out from under Destiny and roll Destiny into a pinfall… but Destiny kicked out. Once they were back on their feet, Dina looked tired; they both did, but Dina looked tired and worn out. She looked really determined, but you could tell she wasn’t used to that yet. It’s hard when you’re on your back for that long trying to fight off somebody as deceptively strong as Destiny Brown, even if they were both about what and what in height and weight. Destiny hurt Dina with a shot to the liver and a right hand to the stomach; Dina went down on both knees and the match was stopped because Dina couldn’t get back up and couldn’t defend herself on the ground. She said she couldn’t breathe.  If you look at the tape of that fight, when Destiny lands that gut shot, Dina pauses and then, she drops and Destiny looks out of the ring at something… she’s looking at me. She told me she learned that combo from me, but she had been using it before we met. She said that she watched the way I fought and how I’d go to the body to steal the wind from younger girls. There’s a nice photo of Destiny and Dina after they beat the hell out of each other; they became great friends. But I was really upset with the result.

“Why? Destiny beat Dina fair and square; why would it upset you if Dina wasn’t seriously hurt and Destiny didn’t cheat?”

Destiny had learned some of her techniques by watching me. Maybe Dina would’ve beaten Destiny and Dina would’ve been over there fighting for America.

“I think you wish it was you.”

After everything that this fucked up ass country put me through in life, you honestly think I’d represent them in some chickenshit fight against somebody who didn’t do anything to me just because of some ideological bullshit? That was right up Destiny’s alley. She went to Paris and I watched her fight Tatiana Titan at a packed house. It was a grand spectacle to see all those leaders and emissaries and all those people there to watch Destiny Brown fight for democracy against Tatiana the Soviet Communist Warrior woman. But just like Joe Louis and Max Schmelling decades before, it was just two people fighting; symbolism didn’t mean shit. I remember how we had all the food we could eat and there was a huge party in Paris for this fight. They billed as an epic clash… the fight lasted almost two minutes. Destiny came out, landed some hooks on the much taller Tatiana, picked her up and slammed her and started hammering her like nothing out of this world. I had seen some brutal displays, but I’d never seen that much blood that fast; Destiny was in a fury and didn’t stop punching Tatiana until the ref stopped it, even after Tatiana had quit. Destiny Brown was America’s hero now and Alicia Christmas greeted her and posed with her for all these pictures, but Ebert and Alicia never fought Destiny or Trinity Love, who they had signed and who had been cleaning out all of Alicia’s potential contenders. Alicia sold a lot of tickets and Ebert wasn’t gonna get his girl beat. If only he had seen Siena Blaze coming, ha ha ha…

By the time of that fight, I had left AWW and I liked Paris so much, I decided to buy a house there. The fact that the Atlanta PD had reopened the case with Fancy, for some reason after I turned down some of those old promoters when they wanted me to work some dates for them on the undercard of Mary Maples helped that decision and AWW and APW were starting to do business. Mary Maples had been in several brutal fights and still wasn’t fighting Black fighters, but had been completely demolished by Gabrielle Chavez, the Mexican champion with her never-ending body shots and bulldog coming forward and taking punishment to give more punishment style. I knew all about Gabrielle and her attacks because a month before Destiny and Tatiana fought, I had gone to Mexico City and fought Gabrielle and I can honestly tell you that I’d never taken so much punishment in my career to that point; the woman had a chin or granite and she kept coming forward and kept hitting me. I wasn’t as fast as I used to be, but I was smarter than ever and I could blind her with my jab, just flick flick flick it in her face and tease her with it, but throw my right hand behind it and I busted her up. I couldn’t believe the way she bled all over the place, but kept on coming and how the Mexican fans loved her so much for the beating I gave her.

She beat my stomach, ribs, chest, kidneys; wherever I was open, she hit me. I kept hurting her to the body and I knew the ref wasn’t gonna stop the fight, no matter how badly I cut her up. I got her on the mat, put her in a scissored cobra clutch and when she didn’t quit, I choked her out. After that match was over, I passed out in that heat while the ref was trying to raise my hand. I knew I was probably passed my prime and on that hot ass day, I was feeling it. But I gave Gabrielle Chavez her first loss; when I was younger, it probably wouldn’t have lasted that long because I was faster and she was tailor made for me with her style, but I had taken a lot of punishment for a woman in my early 30s and I was slowing down… not to mention, I was doubting myself and it just wasn’t fun anymore without Fancy around. I stayed in Paris and that’s when I met another woman who would alter my life… Portia Paris.

“A fitting name.”

She was a Creole girl from New Orleans. That wasn’t her real last name; her last name was Glapion, but in the gimmick world of women‘s wrestling, she was a Creole maid. But she could really fight and she had a lot of heart; it’s just that everything was a gimmick in the 80s. She had bronze hair, bronze skin and green eyes; she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen and she spoke with an accent that was so sexy… you just wouldn’t believe it. The things we did once we really got to know each other; I mean she was a lot younger than I was, but still… she may have been the second woman I loved.

“We’re going to stop there. When I return, I want you to tell me more about Portia and I want to get to the bottom of all this animosity you have for Destiny Brown. And please… take care of yourself in here.”
-----------------------

I don’t know who I am as a woman anymore… the tape hisses to a stop. I’m so afraid of sleeping because I’m worried that my dreams will be inhabited by the ghosts of the women she mentioned, each one asking me why I don’t live up to who they were. I fear my own reflection… I fear myself, but most of all, I fear what I could become. I always have.

To be continued…