His name was Styles Drakott. He was the commission's chief inspector, 61 years old, and he had been doing this since before Braxton was born. He asked for the fighter's amateur licenses. Sherman handed his across the table. Current issued out of another state four years earlier with a physical attached.
Truett Lomax said Braxton's was in process. Dracott wrote three words on a legal pad and did not look up. Sheldon Winthrop laughed and said it was a charity exhibition, and Dracott said that a sanctioned bout is a sanctioned bout and that he would need the young man's complete amateur record by Monday. Sheldon stopped laughing about 4 seconds later than a man normally would. Friday night, the parking lot was full by 6.
There were people from three counties. There were men in Winthrop Bridge, polo shirts, handing out foam fingers. Celeste sat in the second row with Maybel Kitridge on one side of her because Maybel had knocked on the door two days earlier and asked with her hands shaking whether there was a spare seat. Dwey Broadnax stood at the rail with his phone up. He was streaming again.
400 people were also filming and Payton had booked four cameras and every single one of those angles would matter inside of a month. Braxton came out to music with the belt on his shoulder and the hood up and he did the thing where he shrugged the hood back at the last second and the building came apart. Sherman walked out in a plain gray shirt with no music at all. He was the only person in the building who did not seem to be at an event. They touched gloves.
Braxton held on a beat too long and said something into his ear. And on two of the four camera angles, you can read it. And what he said was, "I am going to make her watch. " The bell went. Braxton came out fast and threw a right hand at a man's head with everything he had, and it did not land. And that was the first strange thing.
It did not land because Sherman was no longer where the head had been. He had moved 8 in. Not a duck, not a slip, nothing that looked like anything. He simply was not there. And then he was inside.
And then Braxton was on the mat. The room laughed because the room thought he had slipped. The second one. Nobody left. Braxton came up swinging and Sherman took two shots on the shoulder and one on the forearm and stepped through the middle of him.