His vision swam. The crowd erupted. They smelled blood. Trent tried to throw a second knee.
He never got the chance. The pain didn’t make Clayton panic. It acted like a switch bypassing the weary farmer and tapping directly into a neural pathway forged over a decade of brutal unrelenting close-quarters combat training. Clayton didn’t try to break the clinch.
He didn’t try to wrestle Trent away. Instead, Clayton drove his thumbs directly into the soft, vulnerable notch at the base of Trent’s throat right above the collarbone. He pressed inward and upward hard. Trent choked, his gag reflex firing violently.
His hands instantly unclasped from Clayton’s neck as his brain screamed at him to protect his airway. Freed from the clinch, Clayton didn’t throw a punch. He grabbed the back of Trent’s head with his left hand, tangling his thick, grease-stained fingers into the younger man’s gelled hair. With his right forearm, he slammed a crossface into the side of Trent’s jaw.
It wasn’t a boxing strike. It was a gross motor movement, ugly and mechanically devastating. The sheer torque twisted Trent’s neck forcefully to the side, destroying his balance. Clayton simultaneously kicked Trent’s supporting leg out of the calf.
They crashed to the mat together. Trent scrambled frantically trying to shrimp his hips out, trying to implement the Brazilian jiu-jitsu he taught at his gym. He tried to pull half guard. Clayton simply bypassed the guard entirely.
He didn’t play the sport. He dropped his entire body weight, 210 pounds of dense, farm-hardened muscle, directly onto Trent’s chest, achieving a mount so heavy it felt like a concrete slab had just been dropped from the ceiling. Trent gasped, his lungs instantly compressing. He tried to bench press the older man off him, a rookie mistake born of pure claustrophobic panic.
Clayton easily swam his arms inside Trent’s desperate push. He didn’t rain down blows. He didn’t try to smash Trent’s face into the foam. He just flattened himself out, grinding his stubbled chin into Trent’s eye socket, creating a horrific abrasive friction.
Clayton slid his left arm under Trent’s neck, securing the back of the collar. He walked his right hand across the opposite side of Trent’s throat, grabbing a handful of the heavy board short fabric near the shoulder. It was an Ezekiel choke modified for bare hands and street clothes. Clayton dropped his forehead to the mat next to Trent’s ear and squeezed.
He didn’t yank. He didn’t jerk. He applied the pressure with the slow terrifying inevitability of an industrial vice. Trent’s carotid arteries were pinched shut against his own windpipe.
Underneath him, Trent thrashed like a netted shark. He bucked his hips, kicking his legs wildly into the air. His hands tore at Clayton’s forearms, his manicured fingernails digging deep half-moons into Clayton’s flesh, drawing tiny beads of blood. Clayton didn’t even blink.
