"Standing In the red corner, weighing in at two hundred and twelve pounds, from Rotterdam Zuid... Marcus 'Iron Jaw' Dorsey!"
The announcer's voice crackles through speakers older than most of the fighters. His tone carries the weight of a thousand forgotten nights in venues like this one. Marcus stands motionless in the red corner, sweat already beading on his forehead under the harsh fluorescent lights. The tape around his gloves feels loose. Too loose. He'd wrapped his own hands tonight, Gert arrived late, smelling like gin and making excuses about traffic.
The concrete walls of the community center absorb sound like a hungry mouth. Yellow paint peels in long strips near the ceiling where water creeks in. The ring canvas sags in one corner where the boards underneath have warped. This place hosts bingo on Tuesdays and amateur boxing on Fridays. Nothing else matters enough to fill the calendar.
In the sparse crowd, old Willem sits in his usual spot, third row left, clutching a crumpled betting slip. His arthritis makes him wince when he claps, but he never misses a fight. Two rows behind him, a woman in her sixties holds a square green cardboard with "BRIAN" scrawled across it in black marker. Her voice cuts through the stale air when she cheers.
The smell hits Marcus in waves. Stale beer from the concession stand. Industrial disinfectant someone mopped the floors with earlier. Ointment and sweat mixing into something that tastes metallic when he breathes too deep. His mouth guard sits heavy on his molars.
A drunk man near the back corner shouts something about easy money. His words slur together, but the meaning lands clear enough. Marcus has heard variations of the same joke for three years now. The crowd expects him to lose. They're usually right.
"And standing in the blue corner, weighing in at two hundred and eighteen pounds, Rotterdam's own... Brian 'The Ox' Wilmer!"
Brian raises both gloves above his head. The crowd, all forty-three people, roars like it's a sold-out arena. Someone whistles through their teeth. A child claps out of rhythm with everyone else. Brian grins wide enough to show his mouth guard, bouncing on his toes. His shoulders roll under his skin like machinery built for destruction.
Marcus glances toward his corner. Coach Gert leans against the ropes, chewing on a toothpick that's already been gnawed to splinters. Gert's gray hair sticks to his scalp in uneven patches. His training jacket hangs loose on his frame, too loose, like everything else about this setup. Behind Gert, Tommy sits alone in the second row. Tommy's been Marcus's only consistent spectator for eight months now, ever since the others stopped coming.
Tommy works nights at the port loading containers. He should be sleeping right now, but he's here instead, holding a paper cup of coffee that's probably cold. His eyes meet Marcus's for a second. Tommy nods once. It's not much, but it's something.
Brian's corner buzzes with activity. Three men in matching tracksuits cluster around their fighter. One holds a water bottle. Another adjusts the stool. The third—his main trainer—points across the ring and says something that makes Brian laugh. They move with the confidence of people who know how this ends.
The ref calls both fighters to the center. Marcus walks forward, his legs heavy but steady. His record flashes through his mind like a neon sign: 3 wins, 21 losses. Three wins. One against a guy who quit boxing the next week. One against someone who spent the whole fight protecting a rib injury. One real win, fair and square, against a kid who'd only been training for six months.
Twenty-one losses. Each one a lesson in exactly how much punches a human body can absorb before it starts breaking down in ways that don't heal right. His left shoulder clicks when he rotates it. His right knee swells up after long training sessions. His vision gets blurry sometimes when he's hit too many times in the same spot.
But this is all he knows how to do. This is the only place where his name gets announced to a crowd, even if that crowd consists of retirees and people who wandered in to escape the rain.
The ref goes through the motions. Protect yourself at all times. Break when I say break. Good luck to both fighters. Brian extends his gloves. Marcus taps them with his own. Brian's eyes stay locked on Marcus's face, reading him like a map of every fight that's ever gone wrong.
"You ready for this, old man?" Brian's voice carries just loud enough for the ref to hear. He's twenty-four. Marcus is twenty-seven. In boxing years, that makes Marcus more experienced.
The ref steps back. Both fighters return to their corners. Marcus turns away from Brian's grin and faces his corner. Gert spits his toothpick into a plastic cup.
"Keep your hands up," Gert says. His voice sounds like sandpaper on wood. "Move your feet. Don't let him pin you against the ropes."
The same advice Gert gives before every fight. The same advice that's failed to change anything for months now. Marcus nods anyway because what else is there to do?
The ring announcer climbs through the ropes and exits through a small gap in the barrier. Someone in the crowd shouts for Brian to "finish it quick." Someone else laughs. A betting slip crinkles as hands exchange money in the back row.
Marcus looks up at the ceiling. Water stains create abstract patterns in the ceiling. Somewhere in those stains, he sees a face he recognises, his mother's profile, the way she looked when she was proud of something he'd done. She used to say he had good hands. Fast hands. Hands that could do more than just get hit.
She's been gone for two years now. Heart attack while he was training for what turned out to be loss number eighteen. He'd promised her after his last real win, the fair one, that he'd make something of himself. That he'd climb out of the hole they'd been living in since his father left. That boxing would be the thing that saved them both.
The bell rings.
Marcus pushes off his stool and steps toward the center of the ring. His lungs burn already, just from nerves. His mouth feels dry despite the water Gert squeezed between his lips thirty seconds ago. Time slows down and speeds up at the same time, the way it always does when the violence is about to start.
Brian moves forward like he's got somewhere important to be.