THE HOUR
Morning of. Pre-match: Reyes-Montoya.
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The body is accurate this morning. I am pleased. The right shoulder is two degrees short of full extension, which is consistent with the residual from the Static match and the natural rate of recovery. The left hip is within tolerance. The neck is clean. The cervical work I did against The Doctrine in the round of sixteen has fully resolved. The body is reporting honestly. I am listening.
I have been sitting for eleven minutes. The hour requires forty-nine more.
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The meal last night was correct. Rice, three ounces of chicken, the same vegetables. The sleep was within range — I woke once at four-twelve and returned to it within nine minutes, which is acceptable. I did not take anything for the shoulder. I want the body accurate. The body is accurate.
This is the discipline. The discipline is not the technique. The technique is the consequence of the discipline. People misunderstand this with regularity. The discipline is what permits everything else — the precision, the calm, the arrangement with the Quiet that allows me to be useful in this work and functional in the other hours of my life. Without the discipline I would be a different kind of man. I have, on occasion, been that man. I prefer this one.
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The opponent.
Reyes-Montoya. Tomás. Thirty-six. Lucha base, supplemented in Brazil and Japan. Married, two daughters. Three generations behind him. The grandfather performed; the father trained; the son arrived in the gym before he could read. The lineage is not decoration. It is the structure of the man. He fights the way the structure was built.
I have studied him. I have studied him slowly because there has been no reason to rush. The first thing the study produced was a categorization. He is in the first column. He is honest, he has earned his place, he carries himself with the kind of integrity I am able to recognize. He does not deserve the second column of my attention and I will not give it to him. The Code is clear on this. The Code has been clear on this since I first watched him bow toward the announce table on his way into the cage. That gesture is not performance. I know the difference.
What this means, mechanically: I am going to give him my cleanest version. I am going to win the match if I can win the match. I am not going to enjoy any of it in the way the Quiet sometimes asks me to enjoy things. The Quiet has not asked. The Quiet, to be precise, has been silent on this opponent in a way that is itself informative. It is not interested in him. It is, if anything, watching with the kind of polite distance one reserves for matters that are not one's business. I am grateful. I do not always have to negotiate. Today I do not.
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What he is going to do.
He is going to fight the match he has prepared for. The lineage will produce the moves it produces. He will offer me a handshake at the bell because his grandfather offered handshakes and his father offered handshakes and the offering of the hand is the gesture by which men in his line announce that they intend to be honest about the next several minutes. I will accept it. I will accept it and I will mean it.
He is going to come at me with the lucha tradition and the submission supplements and the twenty-seven years of professional preparation, and he is going to be very good. I expect to be made to work. I do not expect to be made to choose. There is a difference. Most opponents make me choose, and I have to set the choice aside before it becomes appetite. He will not require this of me. The match is going to be, in its way, a relief.
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What I am going to do.
I am going to apply technique to a body that has been studied and produce the result the position permits. I will not perform. I will not extend any move past its functional purpose. If the position resolves into a submission, the submission will be sunk cleanly and held for exactly as long as the application requires. If he taps, I release. If he does not tap, I will not punish him for it; I will adjust to a position from which the answer is structural rather than verbal.
If he wins, he wins. I want to be precise about this also. There is a version of this hour in which I tell myself that I cannot lose, or that losing would be unacceptable, or that the streak — three matches now in this federation, none of them lost — is something I have decided to defend. None of these would be true. The streak is incidental. The match is the match. He has prepared as carefully as I have, in his own way, with his own tools, and the cage will produce its result. I do not require the result to be mine. I require the result to be honest. It will be. He will see to that. So will I.
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The Quiet.
A small note. I made an arrangement long ago and the arrangement has held, and the arrangement is the reason I am useful in this work and not something else. The arrangement has rules I have written, and the rules are the relief. Today the rules are simple. The opponent is in the first column. The Quiet has accepted this. We are going to fight a clean match in front of an honest crowd, and afterward I am going to file the data the way I file everything, and tomorrow I am going to wake up in this same body and continue.
I have been sitting for thirty-one minutes. The hour requires twenty-nine more.
I am going to think about the cage now. The corners. The wall. The door. The geography. I am going to do what I always do, which is identify in advance the three positions in which the match is most likely to be decided, and prepare the technique for each of them.
Then I am going to fold the autopsy coat. Then I am going to walk out.
The body is accurate. The Quiet is at rest. The opponent is honest.
This is going to be a good match. I am going to enjoy it within the limits I have set for myself. He is going to fight me with everything his lineage has given him.
We will see.
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— W.