Standard Match
Victory attained via Pin-fall, Submission, or knockout
Running the edge of his thumb over the thin brim of his dark gray Trilby Hat as he held it in his other hand by the inner lining, Asher sat on the balls of his feet in a the Gorilla position as he awaited his theme to play, looking at the head-wear with contemplative eyes, pondering the "what ifs" of the match ahead of him. He wasn't quite worried, the opposite actually; Asher was practically spoiling for a fight, having been deprived of one for nearly a month after his move and wanting nothing more than a good old fashioned throw down. What he was doing, however, was a pre-match ritual he adopted in the indie-league, where he thought about and focused on every possibility he could imagine pertaining to the match, until, well, until he was quite sick and tired of focusing on them and just wanted to knock someone into next week. It was a process that had allowed him to enjoy the fights he had, keep his head in the game and his mind on his opponent, which was practically needed when you know absolutely nothing about the person you were about to fight, all except for their name.
Asher seemed to have a nasty habit of stacking the cards against himself as much as possible, and not doing much research on his opponent, this 'Luong Chun' dame, was apart of that. While this probably seemed like a good way to set yourself up for failure, Asher had quite the different disposition towards this tactic, or lack there of; "The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in war." was the motto he attributed to it, something his father nailed into his head as far back as he could remember, and it meant that the harder you push yourself in training, the better you are for the real deal. Granted, this match was as real as it gets, but for Asher it was his first foray into LAW; and It's the perfect time to practice his tactics on a new face whilst also being the perfect opportunity to show what he could do in the big leagues, so win or lose, He'll have let the world of LAW know what he's all about and learned how his strategy held up in this new setting.
Asher's theme
With the speakers on the backstage walls blaring his theme as it echoed through the arena on the other side, Asher stood up; his name called out by the announcer as she worked up the crowd for the next match, signalling him to dawn his gray trilby hat which complimented the likewise gray trench coat he wore to cover his ring attire. Standing up on his feet proper, the man made his way through the Arena Entrance being met by a full stadium with a combination of cheering, jeering, and some booing audience members. Asher hadn't quite gauged how many people actually showed up for LAW shows, but now that he had, it really put into perspective how small the indie shows were, and how unused to large crowds being solely focused on him, he was. Taking a deep breath, Asher did his best to get used to the crowd, flashing them a wide toothy grin, as he started down the ramp.
Climbing up and through the ropes, Asher made his way into the ring and quickly got to removing his his coat and hat, laying both neatly on a ring post opposite of the arena entrance, treating it as if it were a coat rack for his office, and revealing his taut muscular frame to the crowd. Clothed in nothing more than a single set of boxers with Red and Ochre splotches on it, and dark gray boxing tape wrapping his hands up to the forearms, and his feet up to the calves...;
Asher's Attire
Asher jumped up and down on the balls of his feet, getting himself ready for the ready for the fight ahead and trying to get some adrenaline pumping before hand. Getting to a ring post with his coat and hat on it, the man glared at the entrance with hungry green eyes, ready for the fight ahead.
started up, filling the stadium with a frenetic, thumping bass. The crowd rose on their hackles and boos began to come through the din, as many of them recalled Luong’s first foray into LAW, where she’d physically and verbally abused a young wrestler, humiliated him, all with a pompous, uncaring air about her. And her being Korean certainly didn’t help things - old hates, new hates, long traditions of enmity between the two nations still festered.
But Luong wasn’t the one to greet their hate. Not at first, anyway. Before she came out, her servant, Lee Seong-ji rushed out on the stage with a broom in hand, hurriedly sweeping her way down the ramp, making sure it was as pristine as possible for her mistress’ glorious feet. It was necessary, since Asher had chosen to come out with his disgusting soles bare. The idea of her mistress accidently stepping where he stepped and getting some small fragment of his fetid flesh on her pristine feet was unbearable, so out Lee came, eager and willing to be of use.
Luong herself came out only when Lee had made it halfway down the ramp, taking long and proud strides towards the ring while she hurried about her task. With a hand on her hip and her face forward, she walked past the ignorant masses, paying little heed to their vile vexations. An empress such as herself was above such things. Let them hate, let them jeer, let them see hers as the villain in the pathetic tragedy of their lives. It meant nothing. She would still win, she would still conquer, she would still be triumphant over…who was this again?
Luong spared a curious eye his way as she made her way to the ring and walked up the freshly clean steel steps. He was a tall man, perhaps an inch taller than herself, perhaps an inch shorter. More muscular, though she knew that meant little. Scarred about the face, and his choice of trunks were absolutely gaudy, but she supposed he was not altogether unattractive. Though even that was likely to change in the next few minutes.
She regarded him for a few seconds more as she made her way into the ring, then made her way over to the corner, where she leaned against the pads and checked her nails while Lee made her way into the ring. Before they began, certain customs had to be honored.
”You!” Lee stepped to the middle of the ring and pointed towards Asher, as if there was anyone else she could possibly be talking to. ”Before we begin, the glorious Luong Chun bids me to make you a most gracious offer. In order to be spared a humiliating, possibly crippling, defeat, all you need do is drop to your knees and plant a kiss on her feet. After which, she will honor you by accepting your forfeit. Do this, and your honor will remain intact, to say nothing of your body. Do you accept her most benevolent offer?”
Last edited by BlackAkuma on Wed Dec 06, 2023 3:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
A curious look came to Asher, his gaze scanning over the audience in their sudden tonal shift upon his opponents entrance music starting up; what had been a mixed bag of a crowd, filled with both mostly enthusiastic and some antagonistic reactions towards Asher himself, had suddenly turned into a full house of vitriolic hate towards the mere idea of his opponent, this 'Luong' woman, who hadn't even come out yet. The reaction had more than enticed Ashers detail oriented mind which immediately catalogued the sudden tonal change as a subject of high import and a basis in which he could start making a profile on the woman.
"Some one with a rather nasty reputation, and a basement-dwelling level of report with the audience...", Asher thought to himself, placing the first piece of the puzzle down, "So perhaps a Heel, then."
What had likewise caught the man's attention, was his opponents choice of music for her entrance, if Asher was even willing to call it "Music" to begin with. The... compilation of sounds and voices that made Asher quite a bit jealous of the deaf in that moment, had some value in it, as much as the man loathed admitting it, particularly the lyrics. Asher knew it wasn't entirely an uncommon practice for wrestlers to choose songs that they felt related to/ or represented them in some way, and he knew that it wasn't always the case; here, however, he suspected it might have been important enough to note down. Listening to the lyrics of the "song" as it played, Asher came to realize that they heavily alluded to an overtly high sense of self importance, and what seemed to be a belief that the subject of the song had a dominant role overs or even over society, amongst other things. Possibly superfluous from the outside view, a small detail like this meant everything to a detective, and if Luong had used the song out of a sense of representation like he thought, it gave Asher another hint at whom he might be dealing with.
"... With possible narcissistic tendencies, if not full blown narcissism...", Asher continued the thought, placing the second puzzle piece down. A narcissistic heel wasn't exactly uncommon, hell it might have been a constant commonality in the world of wrestling, but it was a solid start at deciphering his opponent.
While he had been putting his profile of his opponent together, Asher had been keeping a keen eye on the happenings of the arena entrance; to say he was befuddled by what he had saw was an understatement. What looked like young woman, with a broom, sweeping the from the Arena, down to the ramp. Asher hoped that wasn't his opponent, if it were, he was sure he'd have to revoke his ability to call himself a detective with how dead wrong he would have been; but as if on que, the moment he began to think he might have been wrong, another woman appeared at the entrance of the arena, just as the one with the broom had made it half way down the ramp. A woman about as tall as, if not a small bit smaller than, Asher, had a slender hourglass figure adorned with a short Korean style dress, if it could even be called that, with no sleeves, an downward triangular cut-out that showed off the center bottom of her breasts all the way down to her midriff. Her "Dress" did nothing to cover her long legs, which she had dealt with by covering them in what Asher could only describe as leggings, which reached from her ankles all the way up to her hips and further. Conventionally, the woman seemed attractive, stunning even, but by the way she held her self as she walked down the ramp, paying little to no mind to the audience, the gait of her walk, and the hand on her hip, he knew she was as ugly as it got.
Watching both of the women get into the ring, Asher kept a analyzing gaze on the tall woman, Luong Chun, watching as she made an unexpected quick glance towards him then went to checking her nails; a set of actions that carried far more information than the woman probably thought it did, but more importantly, it let Asher know his current notes on her were quite on track. Before the man could even start adding more to his notes on her, the smaller woman, 'Broom Dame', he had called her, made her place in the middle of the ring and made him an offer, one he listened to intently.
...
Asher could feel the beginnings of a vicious smile stretch across his lips, the woman, Broom Dame, had done the one thing he wanted Luong to do, the one thing you should never do in front of a detective, talk. She talked, a small statement to be sure, but every bit of it was filled with information she probably shouldn't have let out infront of him. By the way the message was being delivered, that being via what he assumed was Luong's servant, Asher began to think this exchange was about power for the tall woman, she wanted Asher to think she had the power over the situation and could display it, though to the former detective, the impersonal message Conveyed anything but. Unfortunately for Luong, part of his former field, interrogation and suspect profiling specifically, was all about power, and it was a game he knew how to play well. Holding back his smile, Asher held a stern gaze at the messenger before him, unwavering, and denying any would-be satisfaction from Luong. "Is that so...?", Asher replied to Broom Dame, his voice deep, raspy, but holding a tinge of youth from his young age, talking in a slow, calculated tone. Looking around the ring, Asher acted as if he couldn't see the person she was talking about. "You speak as if it were an empress you work for, yet I see no empress here... just that creature in the corner...", Asher flicked his head in Luong's direction to inform the smaller woman that it was Luong that he considered the creature. He had a feeling he was right on the money with his opponent, but he had to be sure, so the only way he could was poking the proverbial hornets nest, verbally attack Luong where he thought she held most of her pride at, her perceived elevation amongst others, her reaction would tell him everything. "Tell your "glorious" Luong Chun, that I intend to kiss no-ones feet, especially not that of a Self-Righteous Swine."
Luong didn’t expect Asher to take the offer - fools like him never did, and she could tell from the onset that he was, in fact, a fool. A fool for coming out here against her in the first place, for not knowing the immeasurable challenge before him. A fool, with that silly sly smile on his face, as if he was privy to some knowledge that eluded the rest of the world. While she held disdain for most of her opponents by default, she was developing more for him straight away.
But then he spoke, and that amount grew significantly.
Luong knew that he would refuse the offer, and she knew it was likely for him to make a mockery of her title, but when he called her a ‘creature’, a spark flared up in the recesses of her mind. Her external response was slight - she paused in the inspect of her nails and her eyes widened ever-so-slightly, though she still didn’t deign to look his way. But he had unwittingly made this entire affair far more painful than it had to be, from that comment alone.
Lee stood there, gobsmacked, lips ajar, gasping, as she tried to process what she had heard. ”Creature? Creature?” She looked to the hapless referee, almost as if she expected his words to immediately disqualify him. When that didn’t happen, she turned back. ”You…do you have any idea who you are speaking, you ungrateful gutter trash? Luong Chun is one of the most respected martial artists in all of South Korea, if not the world, and I will not-”
[“Enough.”] Luong spoke in her native tongue as she moved out of the corner, not caring enough to waste her energy speaking English any more than necessary. She strolled towards the center of the ring, her [“He needs to be reeducated. Leave him to me.”]
Lee looked to protest, as if she had more to say, but a stern look from Luong was enough to put her in retreat. She bowed her way, sneered at Asher, then humbly made her way out of the ring, slipping to the outside while the referee stepped between them. She looked from wrestler to wrestler, nodded, them gave the signal for the bell, which promptly rang out and started the match proper.
For her part, Luong barely moved. She kept one hand on her hip while the other lazily hung by the side, but she did raise her foot off the ground, only by a few inches, a much more dangerous position than he might have realized. She kept her eyes locked on him, curious to see what Asher’s opening play would be.
Last edited by BlackAkuma on Fri Dec 08, 2023 3:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
So, Asher was wrong, at least from his initial hypothesis of where Luong might have been effected by an insult; but, he did strike a nerve, and not where he was expecting. It was the word "Creature", that had touched a nerve in the tall woman, not him calling her to a self-righteous swine, and he knew, as he had been watching her after he had gave his insult to gauge a reaction. Luong was quite good at hiding her feelings, a rare sight amongst a good population, let alone amongst wrestlers, but there was something; a slight twinge in the tall woman's eyes, a reaction that could have easily been disregarded as a her body reacting to dust particulates or even a wayward gust from from an AC unit in the facility, that was, until Luong's servant spoke up.
'Broom Dame', as Asher had been and might forever refer to the woman as, seemed to play the part of Luong's hype-man, someone who heavily gave into the hype of their chosen master, knew them far better than anyone else, and sung their praises as high as they could, or as Asher's former field had called them, Useful-Idiots. Granted, it wasn't at all improbably that she and Luong were playing Asher up as much as he was them, but that couldn't make sense what did they have to gain from playing him as much as he played them? They most likely had no reason to, nor the training, or experience he did to use that in their arsenal, and with how they held themselves, and their confidence; plus the the fact that they had not even prodded him into giving some sort of info about himself, lead Asher believe that weren't quite capable, or willing, to analyze him at all. Broom Dame bit back at Asher, predictably answering his previous hunch about the creature comment creating a reaction, and giving him more information than she probably should have.
For a supposed "Most respected Martial Artist in South Korea", Asher had never heard of her until now, something he wondered might have had another effect on the two, or perhaps consider him even less than 'Gutter-Trash'. "So, a heel with a piss-poor reputation, is hated by her audience, has possible narcissism or tendencies of such, views herself as above others, and "Creatures" to a terribly high degree, and is afflicted by some rather damn potent delusions of grandeur...", Asher thought to himself as he watched the tall woman walk up behind Broom Dame, placing more pieces of this puzzle together while he had the time, "Quite the nasty list this is, someone's not getting a visit from Santa Claus...".
Asher's attention was grabbed by the way Luong had talked to her servant, he hadn't a lick of knowledge about the Korean language, but he knew a dressing down when he heard one. Watching the two give their exchanges, then Broom Dame looked between him and luong, nodded to the tall woman, and trotted off out of the ring; then the bell Rang, most likely from Broom Dame's imput. "About damn time..." Asher thought to himself, taking a readied stance, his feet far enough apart with one behind the other, his fists raised in a position where he could easily raise or lower them to block. Having kept an eye on Luong, though, Asher realized she was standing in the middle of the ring, one hand on her hip, one lazily slack to her side, and one leg hovering ever so slightly off the mat; she was trying to bait him in, which reminded Asher of what her lackey had called her, "The most respected Martial Artist in South Korea, if not the world.". Asher had forgotten in his willingness for the fight that titles of that kind, even from hype-men, rarely came about without evidence. "Okay then, treat her like she can most likely beat me, treat her like she's faster, possibly even stronger..." Asher thought himself as he readied up with a plan of attack, "That's fine, I'll just have to test those theories myself.".
With a readied foot, Asher launched from his corner, speeding towards his target, his arms raised in a boxing block, his body hunched to make himself a smaller target as he moved in. Counting the distance in his head as he moved closer, Asher raised a fist back as if her were readying up a faux premature strike, hoping the sight would catch the woman's attention as he set up his feint. Keeping in mind how far he thought her kick might have gotten him, as that was what seemed to be the more readied weapon of hers, he attempted to duck to the opposite side of the woman's cocked leg, and feint her out with the fake strike that would never come, as he moved to her side and readied a hook with the other arm aimed at her ribs.
Though it would’ve been impossible to tell with the unenthused face she wore, Luong was studying Asher intently as they prepared to fight. While she was confident in her abilities, she wasn’t so high on herself that she didn’t realize her own weaknesses, fully realized that hers wasn’t a body meant for taking punishment. Street trash that he was, there was no arguing that this man was in good shape, and could likely do mischief on her if given half a chance. Not that she had any intention of letting that happen, but it meant she would have to take him somewhat seriously. Somewhat.
She took note of his stance - orthodox, basic, but serviceable. Nothing too exaggerated, and she couldn't identify his style off it alone, but if she had to guess? A boxer of some sort. More trained in striking than the average wrestler, and it seemed like he already had some idea of what he was dealing with, for all the good that it would do him. She tipped her head to the side, the slightest tilt, as she got a better angle on him. Would he be starting this off?
Why, yes. Yes, he was. The man came rushing forward, looking for all the world as if he was going to take her head on. Not the worst idea against most opponents, but Luong was far too quick for such a tactic to bear fruit. He was pulling back, readying for a strike, looking to take her with an obvious straight.
Too obvious, in fact.
Tempting as it was to lash out as he came head on, she chose to backpedal, instead, and her patience was rewarded as he moved to her flanks after a feint. Her eyes tracked him all the way, keeping track as he shifted to the side, and her body swung about to keep track of him as the real attack came.
Luong leaped back, avoiding the strike by moving out of his range, just barely - but not out of her own. Her other foot came around as she flew, arcing through the air with a roundhouse kick aimed at his face, looking to punish him for his impertinence.
