You’re up next, pal.

The music was deafening. It always was at these fights. The tinny, screeching sound, the distinctly Oriental pipe and drums that wailed out at every traditional Muay Thai fight. The Sarama. Usually the sound reverberated through the arena but not here; here the music echoed through the trees.

He tried to ignore the jarring music. He tried to bring himself back to this little shack in the middle of the jungle, and focus on the menacing Cambodian outside waiting for him. He had to concentrate on survival. Collie had said there was no doctor present. If you were bashed up too bad they’d feck you in the ditch and leave you there. He wasn’t sure if that had been a joke or not.

Brad, from Bradford. 23. Middleweight. 40 fights. Had a world title coming up. Collie, North Dublin, Ranked no.1 welterweight in Ireland. 22 fights. Scott, 12 pro fights. And then himself. 19 years old. No tattoos, no rippling abs or long facial scars. No professional fights.

If you leave the country even for a day, your Thailand visa is renewed for another three months. Plans of a lads trip to Cambodia, taking some bus down with all the chickens and pigs, had been hatched. Out to the jungle to take some magic mushrooms and relax a while.

But another plan had been formed with that first one; one he had agreed to in absentia. They were all fighting in the jungle. They’d all put bets on each other, to cover the weekend. Some sort of off the books, traditional Muay Thai tournament. Bare knuckle.

You’ve got to get in close, Collie had said. For the bare knuckles. You want to get in there and cut him, around the eyes or the nose. That sounded like the last thing he wanted to do. He thought he’d control the fight with teeps, front kicks to keep the fucker at bay. But Collie didn’t want to keep anyone at bay, he was a warrior, and he wanted war.

Sitting outside a 7/11 waiting for the bus, he’d used the free Wi-FI to watch a Youtube video on Cambodian bare knuckle fighting. He wished he hadn’t. It was exactly what he expected. Dirty ring in the middle of the jungle, blood stains on the canvas. A few muscle-bound Cambodians who wouldn’t look out of place in a Van Damme movie kicking the ever loving shit out of each other.

Two minutes, yeah? The command from Collie almost made the young fighter sick. There were no butterflies in his stomach, but dark, oil-soaked eels, twisting and turning, weighing him down.

He squeezed his big toe and winced. He’d broken it, or bruised it badly anyway, trying unsuccessfully to sweep Brad the week before. He’d hoped it would be enough of an excuse to pull out of the fight, an argument not without weight – you can’t kick or knee or even move properly without your big toe. Collie had just laughed at him. Sure, wasn’t Brad fighting with two broken ribs? Right. Well he wasn’t fucking Brad.

Scott hadn’t done well. He’d been on first. First round knockout. Cut across his face like a machete wound. Scott was a way better fighter than he was.

He sat in the back room of this unbearably hot shack, hearing the cheering. He’d seen Collie take all the teeth out of his opponent with seven or eight knees. The Cambodian was unconscious after the first one, but Collie didn’t stop.

A cheer went up. The elongated ‘Ooo Weee’ that is famous in the Muay Thai world. Brad must be doing well. Of course he was, the fucking psycho. If his opponent hadn’t turned up he would have found a tiger in the jungle and fought that.

The young fighter liked Brad, and Collie, and the others, but they weren’t the same. Not really. He didn’t have the same desire to win. That killer instinct. Brad would literally kill to win. When the young fighter hit someone too hard he asked if they were okay. When they looked rocked, he didn’t come in to finish them, he moved back, let them get their breath. He was a Tai Chi teacher for fuck’s sake. West London, yummy mummy students with Chelsea tractors and latte’s after class.

It’s one of the reasons he’d come out to Thailand. Endless evenings holding pads for useless Google Employees sticking stories up on Instagram of them doing their #boxingworkouts. Helping women in Lulu Lemon leggings ease into their lotus pose. He wanted to test himself with real fighters.

This trial by fire was more than he bargained for. The thought of his clean, air conditioned gym in Pimlico, the easy going corporate bros and gym-bunny clients batting their eyelids at him would have made him laugh if he wasn’t so scared. He had swapped that life for this. Whatever anyone said, however badly this went, he was a fighter now.

It’s time.

***

Benedict Pignatelli is a twenty-nine year old writer from Dublin, currently based in Paris, who has written for Chelsea Magazine, the Literary Review, Injection Magazine, New Sounds Press, and Distilled Post (editor). He has had short stories accepted by CafeLit, 10X10, the Corvus Review, Stray Words, InkFish, Neun, and the Bull Magazine, and has been longlisted for the Bridport Prize (2021), the Masters Review Winter Short Story Award (2023-24), and the Fish Short Story Prize (2024). He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Menteur Magazine.