Chapter 182: Sparring With The Boys
That was quite an eventful morning for Adam.
He is about to become a partners with Ellie and will be one of the most successful names in the hotel and restaurant business in the future.
He also finally managed to get his hands on Emily, and with what he did to her, he knows for a fact that she won't ever be able to get him out of her mind.
A few more times with her, and she will be as deeply addicted to him as Ruth.
Now with Emily in his bag, he needs to pick the right time to show Joe what he has been up to. There will be nothing more satisfying than seeing the look on Joe's face when he sees what Adam is doing to his sister and mother.
With a satisfied smile on his face, he drives to his gym to train for the day. Rangsan might be a little too overenthusiastic about his future as a world champion, but Adam won't have it any other way.
He will let the old man continue to dream big because he knows the old man will put everything into making Adam a championship-level fighter, and with all of Adam's physical gifts, it is a hundred percent possible.
Half an hour drive later, Adam arrives at his gym. He parks his car and enters. The gym is almost empty, with only a few people around. Two hitting the bags, one running drills, and two lightly sparring in the ring.
Everything looks as usual. An afternoon crowd. Just the way Adam likes it.
He looks around and doesn't see either Rangsan or Lamai anywhere. He walks up to the office and finds it empty as well.
'Where might they be?' He wonders, but doesn't think too hard about it; instead, he makes his way to the locker room to change into his training gear.
As he enters the training room, he sees two familiar faces. Crill and Zydan.
"Hey, Adam, what's up?" Crill, the talkative one of the two, asks. "Nothing, just the usual, what about you two?" Adam asks.
"Nothing going on with us as well, hey, I heard that you will be having your debut in the upcoming local event, is that true?" Crill asks.
"Yes, coach said I am ready," Adam answers.
"I have you tell you, man, when I heard you were already debuting, I was surprised. I was even more surprised to hear that Mr. Rangsan himself is coaching you. I thought he only trained Darrel," Crill says.
"Got lucky, I guess," Adam says.
"Hehe, no need to be humble, man. Everyone in the gym knows who you are by now. The rumor about the coach finding another prospect has passed through everyone's ear by now," Crill says.
Adam is surprised to hear this. As he doesn't spend much time here at the gym, he didn't expect the people who go here are gossip about him.
"That's surprising..." Adam says.
"Don't worry, soon people will stop giving a shit," Crill says.
"Doesn't matter anyway, I only come here to train. Speaking of training, I don't see Coach Rangsan or Lamai anywhere. Where are they?" Adam asks.
"No idea, when we arrived, they were right outside. Something else must have gotten their attention. One of them will be back soon enough," Crill says.
Adam nods his head and changes into his training clothes, and walks back to the training room. Most of it is still empty, luckily, Crill and Zydan join him to keep Adam company.
"Hey, why don't you join us in a light spar until the coaches arrive?" Crill asks, seeing that the coaches are still not here.
Adam looks at them and gives it some thought before nodding his head.
"So what's your speciality, striking or grappling?" Crill asks as they walk up to an unoccupied ring.
"Anything will do," Adam says.
"Great, let's warm up and get in the ring, let's see how good you really are," Crill says, grinning.
Adam smiles back and joins them in their light warmup session. He just follows what they do as they have been doing this for quite some time.
During the whole warmup session, Crill is the only one who opens his mouth; Zydan has kept his mouth shut the entire time, only answering Crill with grunts or nods.
Adam finds this amusing, but also isn't bothered by it. Zydan clearly is a guy who likes to speak very little or not speak at all, and even though he looks a little scary with his short buzz cut, grumpy resting face, and strong, short, but wide built, Adam can tell he is a good guy.
Crill isn't bad either; he is a little bit chatty, but Adam's sixth sense can attest to that.
Done with warm up, Crill and Adam put on their protective headgears and mouthpieces as none of them wants to get hurt during sparring, even though it's a light one, people can still get hurt.
"Zydan's going to be the mediator," Crill says as he punches his fists together, ready to spar. Adam nods his head.
Seeing that both are ready, Zydan signals them to start the spar.
Adam immediately takes the center to control Crill; they both seem to have the same idea, but Adam's much faster.
Seeing that Adam has taken control over the center, Crill is a little annoyed, especially since Adam is a heavyweight. He should have been much faster, as he is much lighter than Adam, but that doesn't mean he feels threatened in any way. He has done this dance too many times; he knows how to behave and act in such a scenario.
With light steps, he circles Adam, trying to see if Adam has any opening. Too bad, he can't find any. Rangsan made sure, Adam's defense is air-tight.
Crill realizes that he has to close in and break down Adam's defense if he wants to get an upper hand on Adam.
He starts off with light jabs, just measuring the distance and figuring out his range. He also tries to provoke Adam into throwing a few punches to figure out his range as well.
Adam notices that Crill's arms are very long. His reach is insane; it's even longer than Adam's, giving Crill a clear advantage. He realizes he was smart to take control of the center, or else Crill would have made him run around the ring.
Adam keeps his defenses up and just checks away Crill's jab. He doesn't bother doing any fancy head movement dodges and opens up his defense, inviting Crill to attack him.
Though Adam can easily tank any of Crill's punches because of his better physique, he decides to stick to his training and improve on what he has learnt.
This goes on for a few seconds, Crill tries to find holes in Adam's defense while Adam continues to check his punches away. Seeing that jabs won't work, Crill decides to up the ante by throwing in harder punches. He gets his dominant hand involved and starts throwing stronger, faster punches, something Adam can't just check away.
This does make it harder for Adam as he is trying to focus on technique rather than his brute strength.
But he is not in trouble yet, his eyes watch Crill's movement like a hawk, and as Crill in the midst of throwing a right hand, Adam sees his opening, his hand shoots for Crill's head as his frame is wide open for a punch.
But to Adam's surprise, one of Crill's legs shoots up, and he lands a kick on Adam's abdomen, pushing himself away from Adam.
That front kick didn't have much power or sting to it as it's only a spar, but it should have still been enough to push Adam away. Crill just didn't expect Adam's feet to be so planted to the floor that it would be him taking a step back.
But when he looks down at Adam's legs, he sees how light Adam is on his feet.
'He just tanked that...' Crill thought. He did see Adam's hand miss his chin. He frowned a little. Adam was about to catch him with a punch. This surprised him.
Adam defeating an amateur like Kevin, who just started a few months ago, was one thing, but for Adam to almost catch him on his very first punch is something else.
Crill realizes why Coach Rangsan took Adam under him to coach him personally.
"That was close, you almost got me," Crill says.
"And you did," Adam says, brushing his abs. "That I did, but you didn't even flinch," Crill says.
Adam just smiles, and they continue with their spar.
As the spar continues, Crill finds himself getting almost tagged by Adam over and over again. Adam is literally pushing him back, even though he is a much experienced fighter.
Adam, too, is amazed by how fast and quick Crill is. He should have landed so many punches on Crill by now, but he dodges them at the very last second.
So Adam starts improvising. He locks in. He has never locked in like this before. Crill feels as if he just saw a glint in Adam's eyes, and he can sense the change in Adam's demeanor.
'He is getting serious,' Crill thinks, and decides to take it up a notch as well.
He can see that just light sparing is not going to work with Adam. He is leagues above any amateur fighter that just started his career.
Both start throwing hands, catching each other with punches that didn't land before.
Crill's punches are so much faster; he tries to overwhelm Adam by throwing a lot of punches and creating gaps in Adam's defense to strike, while Adam becomes even more technical.