EMTT, does Vance know you told me about him the first day? Force recon all of it. EMTT looked at him. He knows I know things. He knows I sometimes say things.
He paused. He's never asked me to keep anything secret. He's just never volunteered it. That's a different thing. Dawson nodded.
He pushed through the door into the night air of Tucson. Two weeks out from the Vegas fight, Knox Decker was running a hard sparring round in cage 2 on a Wednesday afternoon. His partner threw a combination that caught Knox at an angle. Knox went back into the fence and the fence buckled wrong and he came down awkward on his left arm. The sound was not a good sound.
The whole gym heard it. It was a fracture, a clean fracture of the radius 6 weeks minimum, and Knox's next fight, which had been scheduled for December, was postponed. Dawson had ridden to the hospital in EMTT's truck. They sat in the ER waiting room. Knox came out with his arm in a brace in the specific expression of a man who has done the math on 6 weeks and has not found a number he likes.
He sat down next to Dawson. December's out, he said. I know. I'm sorry. Knock stretched his legs out, leaned his head back.
The stuff you've been doing with Vance in the morning, he said. I've been watching when I can. You look different. Not dramatically different. Just like something settled.
Is that not right? Dawson asked. That's exactly right. Knock said. EMTT drove them back to the gym.
They rode mostly in silence. Tucson in the evening. The streets lit orange from the street lights. In the last week before Vegas, Dawson had his final session on the back mat with Vance. They worked for 90 minutes longer than usual.
At the end, they sat on opposite ends of the mat, both catching their breath, the gym around them, winding down from the late afternoon session. Vance said, "Tell me what you're thinking about when you think about cross. " Dawson had been thinking about this question. The right hand, he said. He loads it. There's a pattern.
His left shoulder drops about four degrees before he throws it. It's subtle, but it's there. Vance nodded. And the clinch. He's strong there.
Stronger than his record suggests because he uses it for setup, not for the win. He drags guys into the clinch to tire them and then lets them out and hits them when they're trying to reset. And Dawson thought about the rest of what he had been thinking about Cross. He's never been hurt, he said finally. Not really.
In 25 fights, he's been dropped once, and he got up immediately and won the round. He's never been in a position where he had to question himself. He doesn't know what that's like. Vance looked at him. And you do.
I do now. There was a silence. Last week of camp, Vance said. Rest Wednesday. Don't watch any more tape.
You know what you know. He paused. The tape is for understanding the man. At some point, you have to stop understanding him and just fight him. " Dawson nodded. "You know what?
I've never told a fighter before a fight. " Vance said, "No. Good luck," he looked at Dawson. "Not because I don't wish it. Because luck is the wrong word. Luck is what you wish for when you don't have what you need.
You have what you need. " He stood up. You're going to fight a good fighter and it's going to be hard. And at some point in there, it's going to be harder than you expected. When that happens, you're going to feel something. He paused.
Don't analyze it. Don't label it. Let your body do what your body knows. He walked off the mat. Vance, Dawson said.
Vance turned. Dawson did not have a speech. He said what he had. I didn't come here to find a teacher. I came here to break bags and get ready for a fight.
And I ended up He stopped. I just want you to know that what happened on that mat and what happened after it matters. It's going to matter after this fight too for a long time. Vance looked at him. I know, he said, not flatly, not dismissively, with the quality of a man who is allowing something to be true.
Get some sleep. He walked out. Dawson stood on the empty mat for a moment. He looked up at the lights, the industrial lights in their metal housings, perfectly indifferent, perfectly present. Then he got his bag and went home to pack for Vegas.
The night before he flew, his phone rang at 2:00 in the morning. He was not asleep. He had been lying in the dark of his apartment, trying to be asleep and not succeeding. His mind was doing the thing it did before major fights running the tape, not of his opponent, just the general tape of his career. From the backyard at 12 to the regional titles to the gym and the bench and the man on it.