As soon as the bell rings, Bodybag barrels toward me, just as I expect him to.
He uses aggression and intimidation as his weapons. He likes to put his opponent on retreat, then he uses his relentless haymakers to smash through their defenses and knock the sense out of them.
True to form, Bodybag throws three full-power punches at me, one after another.
I dance back out of his way, neatly slipping all three.
The crowd boos. They don’t like when you run away. They want to see clashes.
In many ways, underground boxing is more like WWE wrestling than anything else. You have to win over the crowd. You have to be popular, or you won’t get placed in the best matches, and you’ll lose fights that go to a crowd decision.
A lot of fighters get baited into recklessness by the howls and jeers of the crowd.
But the truth is, the crowd will always support a champion.
Win at all costs, that’s the only thing that matters.
They’re booing me now, but they’ll flip on a dime if I take Bodybag down to the canvas.
“Come on, yobanaya suka!” Bodybag taunts me. Come on, you fucking bitch.
I let him get closer. I take a couple shots to the ribs and the gloves, watching his rhythm. Just like he did in his last fight against the Sniper, he’s throwing two left jabs followed by a right cross.
I give him a couple hits back, but only half power. I’m playing possum—making him think that’s how hard I punch. I want him confident and lazy, thinking that’s all it takes to block me.
Bodybag rushes me again. I grab him in a clinch. I plan to lean my weight on him, tiring him out. But Bodybag fires back with a nasty left hook to my liver. It’s an illegal hit. Either the ref doesn’t see it, or he just doesn’t care. He says nothing.
The hit fucking hurts. It gives me a feeling of sick breathlessness. I drop the clinch, letting Bodybag think I’m injured.
There’s about ten seconds left in the first round. If Bodybag was smart, he’d back off, wait to see if I’m actually hurt.
Instead he rushes at me once more, wanting to finish me off while I’m still throbbing from the hit.
Over his left shoulder, I see Anatoly Krupin sitting in the front row. That’s why Bodybag is being so reckless—he wants to impress his boss.
Krupin is watching us intently. He wants to see how his enforcer performs.
Krupin probably already knows that Bodybag isn’t too creative.
As Bodybag barrels toward me, I watch for the pattern.
Left jab, left jab, then a massive right cross.
I duck under the right cross, moving forward and driving upward with the full force of my legs. I send my right fist rocketing upward in an uppercut straight to Bodybag’s chin. One hundred percent power, no fucking possum now.
Bodybag’s head snaps backward. He lifts right off his feet. I hit him so hard that his mouth guard flies out of his mouth. It soars over the ropes, smacking Krupin right in the chest, leaving a smear of blood across his white dress shirt. Krupin’s mouth twists in disgust.
Oops.
Bodybag falls straight back, like an oak tree cut off at the stump.
Timber, motherfucker.
The crash vibrates through the whole ring.
There’s an instant of silence, then the crowd roars.
I can’t even hear the referee counting down. He reaches zero without Bodybag even twitching on the mat. The ref pounds his palm against the canvas, and the bell rings to signal the end of the match. The MC yells into the microphone, “That makes twenty-seven knockouts for your undefeated champion, SNOOOOOOOW!”
I raise one fist over my head.
The crowd starts chanting, “Snow! Snow! Snow!”
I climb under the ropes, Meyer close beside me.
“Good job,” he mutters.
High praise. I’m sure he’ll also have a dozen criticisms for me, once I’m back at the gym tomorrow.
For now, I’m basking in my victory. I don’t feel euphoric, exactly. I’m just calm. All the stress and anticipation flushed away. Pure peace in its place.
I head back to the locker room. Boom Boom yammers in my ear, reenacting the match as if I didn’t just live it.
“And you know who saw, too?” Boom Boom says. “Sitting in the front row. You hit him right in the—“
“I know, I know,” I say, holding up my hand to make Boom Boom shut up.
I sink down on the wobbly locker room bench, glad to rest my legs. I can hear the music starting, introducing the headline fighters: the Serbian national anthem for Gatling, and the chorus of “Thunderstruck” for Lights Out. When I’m a headliner, I’ll have to pick a theme song.
“How’s your back?” Meyer asks me. “I saw that dirty shot.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
Actually, my liver is still throbbing. I can feel it pulsing with each heartbeat. Doesn’t matter, though. If I can walk, then it can’t be that bad.
“Hey, nice job,” the Rowdy Rabbi says, giving me a fist bump. A couple other fighters come over to congratulate me. I don’t see Bodybag anywhere. I’m guessing he got carried over to the medics.
The final match has started. I can hear the roars of the crowd, swelling and abating like wind in a distant storm. Should be a pretty equal match—I wouldn’t want to bet on a winner.
Meyer shuffles off to pick up my earnings. I’ll get 50,000 rubles for tonight’s fight—not a bad haul, even after Meyer takes his twenty percent cut. He only takes his money when I win, unlike most of the trainers. Lucky for him, I always win.
Boom Boom fills up my water bottle fresh, then squirts a little on my head for good measure, rubbing the sweat out of my hair with a towel. He was supposed to be my cutman tonight, but I don’t have any cuts to dress.
While he’s rubbing my head with the towel, a pair of shoes appears in front of me—highly-polished oxfords, with an expensive-looking ombré effect around the toe cap.
Krupin’s lieutenant, Yakov.
“Snow,” he says.
I drop the towel down around my neck, glancing up at him.
“Boss wants to see you,” he says.
When he speaks, I see his gold tooth winking into view between his lips. Plenty of gangsters get gold teeth for show, but I’m sure Yakov has seen enough violence to come by his legitimately. I’ve wanted to knock his teeth out a time or two myself.
“When?” I ask him.
“Right after this fight,” he says.
I nod, pulling my duffle bag out from under the bench so I can get dressed.
“You gonna clean yourself up?” Yakov says.
“Why?” I ask him. “You got a pair of them fancy shoes you want to lend me?”
Boom Boom snickers, then shuts up when Yakov gives him a venomous glare.
“Hurry it up,” Yakov says to me. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
As if he had to tell me that.
I pull on my joggers and then my hoodie, zipping it up to the neck. Krupin won’t give two shits what I’m wearing, but he will care if I don’t get my ass out there as soon as the bell sounds.
I head over to the doorway so I can watch the end of the fight. Meyer joins me, holding a wad of bills. He hands me my cut, so I can slip it in my pocket.
“Where you going?” he asks me.
“Krupin wants to see me.”
Meyer raises an eyebrow. I don’t know if he’s curious or concerned.
“Mind your manners,” he says. “And don’t take Boom Boom with you.”
I wasn’t planning on it.
It’s the end of the third round. Gatling and Lights Out are still circling each other, both looking tired out and bloodied. Gatling makes one final rush, sending out a flurry of punches in a last-ditch bid to win over the crowd. Too little too late—when the bell sounds, the decision goes to Lights Out, by an obvious increase in volume.
The DJ starts up the music once more. The fights may be over, but the crowd isn’t done drinking yet. A few girls climb onto the blood-spattered canvas so they can dance.
I spot Krupin, still sitting ringside. He’s got his entourage around him, including Yakov. Two pretty girls sit on either side of him, one looking bored and the other stoned. Both girls are styled to the nines, wearing tight dresses and no coats, despite the ugly weather outside.
I approach, stopping a little short of the group, waiting for Krupin to beckon me over. He gives me a nod. I come stand in front of him, my hands shoved in my pockets. The bored-looking girl glances up at me. She sits up straighter in her chair, so her breasts push out against the tight spandex of her dress. She looks me up and down, her eyes lingering on my chest and arms. She smiles, fluttering her long, fake lashes at me. I don’t smile back.
Krupin is a big man with narrow dark eyes, black hair, and a craggy face. He’s a Volga Tartar. Like most people with Mongolian ancestry, he claims to be a direct descendent of Genghis Khan. In his case, I can actually believe it. He has the look of a conqueror, of a king gone to seed.
Anatoly Krupin isn’t the top boss in St. Petersburg, but he might have been, if his brother Arkadi hadn’t betrayed him ten years ago, shooting him in the face, and taking the lion’s share of his empire while Anatoly lay in a hospital bed, doped to the gills on morphine.
I can still see the scar where the bullet exited his left cheek. It looks dark, raised, and bubbled, like a burn. His jaw looks slightly crooked, like it never set right.
Once Krupin recovered, he planted a car bomb in his brother’s BMW while it was parked outside of the Trinity Cathedral. Unfortunately, it also killed Arkadi’s wife and two young sons, Anatoly’s own nephews. So Krupin regained his territory but lost the support of the rest of the Bratva families. He was sanctioned by the head table, shunned by many of its highest members, including Ivan Petrov, who now sits at the top of the St. Petersburg mafia.
Cut off from his previous sources of income, Krupin has focused on the underground boxing ring. It’s made him a fuck-ton of money, as far as I can tell. He gets all the take from the door, plus the overpriced drinks. But the real earnings are from betting. Russians will bet on anything—horse racing, football, hockey, even the first snowfall of the season. Nothing inflames them more than a fight.
Russian bare-knuckle boxing goes back to the 13th century. Wealthy Boyars used to put on boxing events for the same reasons rich Romans paid for gladiatorial sports —to win the love of the people.
The boxing matches took place over the holidays, often on sheets of solid ice. Keeping your footing was as crucial as the blows themselves. Children fought each other in the opening rounds, progressing to the best fighters at the end, much like the early card and headliner fights today—though Krupin doesn’t use children. Not yet, anyway.
Knowing all this, I’m well aware of the importance of Knockdown to Krupin. I know how seriously he takes these fights. So I know he’s brought me here for a reason, not just to congratulate me.
Krupin looks at me for a long time.
I wait for him to speak.
“You caused me a bit of trouble tonight,” he says at last.
“Sorry about that,” I say, looking at the smear of blood drying on the pristine placket of his shirt.
“Not the shirt,” he says. “You deprived me of my enforcer. You broke Bodybag’s jaw. He won’t be back at work for weeks.”
He may have lost a bet putting up money on Bodybag as well. Bodybag was the favorite, by a decent margin.
I give a noncommittal sort of grunt. I’m not going to apologize for winning the match.
“Where did you learn to fight?” Krupin says.
“I train with Meyer at Golden Gloves,” I say.
“You come from a family of fighters?” Krupin asks.
I come from a family of druggies. My uncle took me in for a time, but after he died, I was taken to the orphanage by a neighbor. Back then, Russia had no foster care system. At eight years old, I was past the age where anyone would be interested in adopting me. I lived sometimes in the orphanage, sometimes on the streets when I got tired of being bullied by the other children and abused by the administrators.
Meyer found me in the alleyway behind Golden Gloves when I was twelve, being beaten within an inch of my life by a gang of teenagers. He made short work of the lot of them. He was still in decent fighting form then—at least, decent enough to handle a gang of untrained hooligans.
When he drove them off, he brought me inside and gave me the rest of the sandwich he’d been eating. He asked me if I wanted to learn to defend myself.
The first few training sessions, I thought I might be better off with the teenagers. Meyer was rough, demanding, completely unsympathetic. But the first time I made it through a drill correctly, and he gave me his terse compliment of “Good,” I felt a flush of pride. I knew I had done well. I had found something I could succeed at.
I’m not going to tell any of that to Krupin. So I say, “No. It’s just me.”
“Who is your family?” Krupin persists. “What’s your real name?”
“Filip Rybakov,” I say. “But I like Snow.”
Krupin nods. He understands. Plenty of Bratva have nicknames as well: Tick-Tock. Ice Pick. The Wizard of Odds. In the underground world, your nickname is truer than your given name. What parents call a baby means nothing. What your friends call you to describe what you’ve done, that’s a name worth knowing.
“You got a wife? Kids?” he says.
I shake my head.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
I never know how to respond to that. So I just shrug.
Krupin laughs. “That’s good,” he says. “I like peace and quiet. Maybe I’ll have you take Bodybag’s place while he’s out.”
I never looked for a position with the Bratva. There’s only so far you can go, with no family name.
More than that, when you work for the mafia, they own you.
I don’t want to be owned by anybody.
“I prefer boxing,” I say.
Krupin scowls. He doesn’t like being turned down.
“The crowd likes you,” he says grudgingly.
“They like anyone who wins,” I say.
He gives a short laugh like a bark.
“That’s right,” he says sourly. “Everybody’s your best friend when you’re on top. But see who sticks around when you get knocked down.”
Or when you take a bullet to the face.
“Alright,” he says, as if making a decision. “I’m starting a tournament next week. You can fight in it.”
“What’s the purse?” I ask.
He narrows his eyes at me, annoyed again.
“The dog wants to know how big the bone is,” he says to Yakov. Yakov gives a derisive snort.
I don’t rise to the bait. I’ve heard every kind of taunt there is inside the ring. I’m not going to lose my temper on a Bratva boss just because he calls me a dog.
“Tournament is thirty-two fighters,” he says. “You last the first round, you get 30,000 rubles. Round two, 70,000. Round three, 150,000. Round four, 400,000. Champion takes home an Escalade. Does that put some fire in your veins, Mr. Snow?”
Actually, it does.
I thought it might take me another year or two to get a shot at a purse like that. All I have to do is win five fights, and I could have what I’ve been dreaming about since I was twelve years old. A chance to get out of here, once and for all.
“Sounds good,” I say.
Krupin chuckles softly.
“I’m sure it does,” he says.
A prize like that is going to attract some heavy competition.
Meyer might not like it. But I think I’m ready.
I wait a minute longer, to see if Krupin wants anything else.
He turns away from me, muttering something in Yakov’s ear.
As I start to walk away, Krupin calls after me, “See you next week.”
