By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
The fight was, predictably, pretty unfulfilling. There was no way Punchface and Warbell would be able to square off in a traditional boxing ring. Warbell would have filled the entire ring. And the old lizard would not have been able to return to his corner after each round. If he turned around, he would probably hit Punchface with his tail, which might be enough in itself to KO him. What they did to ameliorate this problem was to use ropes to mark off a square-shaped section of land several times larger than a traditional boxing ring for the two to carry out their shenanigans within. There were also huge banners set up with images of Punchface and Warbell in full battle regalia. Punchface was trying to look intimidating in the image on his banner, but Warbell just had on a cheesy grin in his image. And let me just say that I never expected nor wanted to see a dinosaur in boxing shorts.
And of course there were crowds, incredible crowds. It appeared hundreds, thousands had come from miles around to watch the match. People were cheering and hooting and hollering until they were hoarse.
But the actual fight… well, it was pretty boring after all the fanfare. Warbell would lower his head so that Punchface could punch him (Warbell never bothered to block, and couldn’t have blocked if he wanted to really). Thus Punchface would make like his nickname and just sock, jab, and uppercut again and again as Warbell placidly stood and took the blows. Then, when Punchface got tired, Warbell would start trying to move forward and get some hits in. But Warbell rarely actually hit Punchface at all, let alone landing a solid strike. For one thing, Punchface was good at dodging since he’d been boxing professionally for years, and Warbell had only taken up the gloves part-time for a few weeks. For another thing, it was incredibly difficult for Warbell to see where he was punching. He kept twisting and turning his head and wobbling around swinging wildly while Punchface danced away.
It was rather comical for a while—until it got profoundly dull. Each round would proceed in the same fashion. Punchface, though visibly tiring, was too proud to give up. Warbell, meanwhile, was completely unphased by Punchface’s assaults, and just as clearly bored stiff.
At some point in the eighth round, Warbell frowned and spoke what everyone was thinking.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “You are landing a lot more hits, so you are scoring more points, but only because I am allowing you to hit me. I could just raise my head and you wouldn’t be able to sock me in the noggin even once. You’d have some difficulty hitting above my belt, and if you hit below it, I’d just step on you. Of course, I can’t hit you, either. What did you expect from this fight?”
“No backing down now,” Punchface mumbled through his mouth guard. “You can’t run out on me before I make you a tyrannosaurus wreck.”
His pronunciation of “tyrannosaurus” sounded like “die lan o tho luss” because of the mouth guard. I could barely understand what he said. The referee (who was just as bored as everyone else) signaled for them to start back up with the punching, and they went all ten rounds without a moment of excitement. The judges then announced (whilst yawning) that technically Punchface won, but that they were going to declare the fight a tie because of… I don’t know, I didn’t catch the reason. I think I had fallen asleep.
But after that, as the post-match interviews started, I jerked up and I slapped my cheeks and pried my eyes open. The next part was what I was really interested in.