On the playground, Traurig staring at the man before him who is 2 grades younger, not wanting to make any rash moves. The former raised his hands into a boxing guard, leading with his left. The latter stood with left foot forward and right foot backward. His left foot was in a bow stance, and his right knee was touching the ground behind.
A southpaw stance, Traurig thought.
The two circled around a fixed point, always keeping a distance about 150 cm between them. Traurig threw some jabs, in which the opponent dodged by retreating. Seeing this doesn't work, due to his non-familiarness to wrestling, Traurig stopped jabbing.
Let me try this out, Traurig thought.
He took two steps back, meanwhile, the man followed right after him.
While the opponent was going forward, Traurig suddenly stopped, and surged in and snapped out a darting jab. Opponent's forward force was not that strong; with a slight brake he came to a stop. Traurig raise his guard a little with both hands; At the same time, lifted his right knee, leaning his upper body at the same time, and fixed his eyes on the wrestler who was a bit shorter than him. He shifted his hips somewhat forward, driving a straight front kick directly toward the wrestler's lower abdomen.
Since Chu Ren had just readjusted his center of gravity, he didn't have time to retreat or anything. He immediately swung his guarded hands up to block Traurig's front kick but was still kicked to the ground. Traurig stepped forward quickly and unleashed a low sweep, which stopped just ten cm from the wrestler's temple.
"Let's call it an end, Chu Ren."
Traurig helped Chu Ren up and said.
Traurig Eyre, with black hair that's either too long or too short, or in other words, saying it as a medium length. A few strands of bangs stuck to his fair forehead from sweat. He was an 11th-grade high school student in the WA (Not WA D.C.), U.S. 1.79 m tall and weighing 94 kg, though he looked about 10 kg lighter when he wore those clothes with drab and simple colors and pants which were always sweatpants. Because when he was wearing clothes, he didn't show a lot of muscles, just a large frame in other people eyes; he was fit but didn't appear overlweight. Chu Ren was a 9th-grader, 1.71 m tall, weighing 76 kg, with long, black hair. He had darker, brownish skin. He was a Junior Varsity member in the school's wrestling club. Due to their weight difference, Traurig had agreed to only use stand-up techniques only, instead of using wrestling.
At that moment, Traurig wore loose white casual pants and a gray T-shirt with black letters reading "What Can I Say," the knees of the pants already going black from contact with the floor. Chu Ren wore gray athletic shorts and a white T-shirt.
No one knew Traurig's fighting style.
"Rather than being unsteady, it looks more like you just gave up thinking about it and use your intuition instead. That is good—but yours doesn't really work in MMA. You could've sidestepped. You land on your butt, did you feel the pain?"
"No, we wrestlers are used to slamming into the floor every day, so that doesn't matter My arm got a bit scraped, though."
The memory of being lifted and slammed to his side by Chu Ren last time was still unforgettable, and Traurig marveled at how different wrestlers were. They chatted as they walked slowly off the playground.
This was an American high school with mostly Asian students in Washington State. By Traurig's account, competition was intense academically, yet athletics weren't bad —— though forget about football or similar sports. Traurig himself was academically advanced; he had even started learning linear algebra, though his grades were inconsistent. Maintaining a high GPA seemed unnecessary to him —— fighting was far more interesting than studying.
For now, it was time to go home. Surrounded by mountains, the school lay above Traurig's house at the foot of the hills. After parting with Chu Ren, he walked down toward the house.
His parents were in China for work, so Traurig lived with his grandparents. In this large house, nobody was present except for him.
He took off his shoes and went down to the basement. He pulled out his laptop from his backpack, intending to do his homework —— but watching some martial arts videos first seemed like a good idea to him. Today he decided to study a style known for its kicks.
He opened YouTube and typed:
Capoeira
In fact, Traurig was always about to try it. But he never thought that can be a good idea: He weighed 93 kg, mimicking it with such weight might slam himself into the basement floor. Not gonna hurt the house, but could left an injured person.
And he finally decided to do his classic mma combination:
left jab, right cross, left uppercut, right hook, left hook, backstep, high right sweep, low right sweep transitioning into the high sweep, spinning backward to strike an imaginary opponent with a left whip punch.
Realizing the whip punch didn't flow naturally into the next move, he stepped back a bit while resetting his boxing guard, keeping his eyes on his imaginary opponent.
Suddenly, the shadow opponent planted a left hand on the floor, launched the right leg, and did a 360-degree side flip. Seeing the distance close rapidly, Traurig stepped back, without realizing that the first flip was a feint. After landing, the shadow performed another side flip aimed at Traurig's neck. Unable to evade completely, Traurig crossed his arms above his looking-up face to block and, with whatever speed he can get to as possible as he can, trapped the opponent's ankle with a tiger-like grip, stabilizing his stance while preparing to pull and strike the other leg to tear at the opponent's ligaments. The imaginary opponent spun in midair, left foot kicking Traurig's chest. Traurig quickly twisted away from the ankle and stepped back, avoiding the kick. When he looked again, the shadow had vanished. He couldn't imagine more moves: the Brazilian martial art was still unfamiliar to him.
Sweat dripped from his hair, sometimes blurring his vision, but it didn't matter. Traurig was thoroughly and truly enjoying the moments. Every attempt is a moment of becoming more familiar with the technique. Even if he may never fly to in Brazil and have no so-called talent, even a fool —— after doing ten imaginary drills a day for thirty years —— can still defeat a champion.
In retrospect, he had done these drills a lot.
Afterward, he practiced alone for a while more, but progress was minimal. Finally understanding that he would not go any big forward to his goal, he returned to his homework. His taken-off jacket lay to the side, and the fluffy carpet was damp from his sweat.