Day Sixty-Two

DAY SIXTY-TWO A statement. Posted to my own page on the federation's site. For STRIFE Nation. For the locker room. For the office. Read in the order it makes sense to you. ———————————————— My name is Camila Ferreira. I compete under the name Diamante. I am 0-4. I have not written anything since the count ended and I want to explain the delay before I explain anything else, because the delay was not injury and it was not sulking and I would rather say so myself than let the building decide. I was checking my arithmetic. ———————————————— THE RECORD. Pagan DuHast beat me. He beat me in nine minutes and forty-seven seconds by pinfall, in this federation, on the broadcast, in front of everyone. Nobody helped him. Nothing was stolen from me. There was no controversy and I have not manufactured one in the days since and I will not be manufacturing one now. I want that sentence standing on its own before I say anything else, because I am going to say some things that people will want to read as excuses, and I am removing the possibility in advance. He beat me. Completely. It was not close at the end. ———————————————— WHAT I ASKED FOR. I need to be exact about this part, because the office was exact and I intend to match it. I filed three names. I did not demand a match. I did not demand an explanation. I told the office to pick one, and I said the count was a measurement and not a threat, and I meant both of those things when I wrote them. Underneath the three names there was a question, and the question was the only thing I actually cared about, and I never wrote it down. So I will write it down now. Am I out of the bracket because I am not good enough, or am I out of the bracket because of a calculus that has nothing to do with what I can do in a cage? I have been asking a version of that question since I was twenty-two years old on a different continent, and every single time, the answer has been silence, or a press release, or a foreign worker with a quarter of my experience. I asked STRIFE. STRIFE did not answer in writing. STRIFE answered by opening the door and putting the most dangerous thing in this building on the other side of it. ———————————————— WHAT THAT MEANT. The office could have given me McCready. The office could have given me Healy. Both names were on my list, both are men I would have fought hard, and either one would have been a defensible answer that cost the federation nothing. The office gave me Pagan DuHast. I have thought about that for weeks and I have arrived somewhere I did not expect to arrive, so I am going to put it on the record plainly: that was not cruelty and it was not a punishment. It was an answer, and it was an honest one, and it was the only kind I would have accepted. Nobody gives a fighter they consider disposable to that man. You do not hand a woman you have written off the single most destructive competitor on your roster and put it on the broadcast with no stipulation and no protection. That is not how a federation disposes of somebody. That is how a federation finds out. The office was not hiding from my question. The office was answering it in the only language I have ever respected. I asked to be taken seriously. I was taken seriously. I have no complaint and I am not going to invent one to keep the story going, because inventing one would mean the last four months were about attention rather than about the work, and they were not. The count is closed. It closed at day sixty-two. There is no day sixty-three. I am not counting any more. ———————————————— THE THING I WILL BE THINKING ABOUT. There is one moment I want on the record, for me more than for anyone reading this. I gave up seventeen inches and one hundred and sixty-eight pounds. I did not step back once. I put muay thai into his ribs for six minutes and I made him bleed with the studs and I did not care that the studs are against the rules, and then I threw the best single thing I have ever thrown at a human being in my life. The Discus Punch put Pagan DuHast down on one knee. Eight thousand people believed it. I heard them believe it. I went for the Skull Crusher. And he stood up. Not fought up. Not powered out. Stood. The way you stand when you have decided to stop being on the floor. That was the moment I understood the answer the office had given me, and I understood it while it was still happening, which I do not recommend. I am not going to pretend that was a moral victory. It was not. There is no such thing in this building and I would be embarrassed to claim one. It was information, and I paid full price for it, and I would pay it again. ———————————————— THE STUDS. I wrote, in my first statement, that the diamond studs were going into the cage every match regardless of what the rulebook said about jewellery — because the rulebook also said the federation had to give me matches, and the rulebook was not being enforced in either particular. I said we could negotiate which violation got attention first. The federation gave me a match. A real one. The most real one it had. So the negotiation is over and I lost it, and I am going to behave like a person who understands accounting. The studs stay out. Starting now. Permanently. Not because I have been reformed. I have not been reformed and anyone hoping for that should stop reading here. The studs were never cheating. They were an invoice. The invoice has been paid, and leaving it on the table after payment would make me exactly the kind of person who complains for the sound it makes. Anyone who thinks this makes me easier to fight is welcome to find out. ———————————————— WHAT I AM DOING NOW. I am not on the card at Behind Closed Doors 11. I am not asking why. I am noting it, the way I note everything, and then I am moving on, because I have spent four months making the office the subject of my career and the office has now answered me fully and I have nothing further to route through it. I filed three names once and asked the office to choose. I will not be doing that again — not because it went badly, but because it went correctly, and a question that has been answered correctly does not get asked twice. So no list. No names. No count. I am going to the women's division, where my bio has said I belong since the day I signed, and I am going in at 0-4 with nothing owed to me by anybody. I have read the division. Voss has the belt and did not celebrate it. Drummond and Ó'Súilleabháin are fighting for the right to take it from her. Fallon is back. Al-Nasir, Volkov, Adeyemi, Reyes. There are eight women in that division and not one of them has been in a cage with Pagan DuHast. I have. I am 0-4 and I am the only one, and I know something about what it costs to stand in there with a thing that does not stop, and I did not learn it from tape. I will fight any of them. I do not need to be asked nicely and I do not need to be liked, and I would like to state clearly, for the ones who have been polite to me in corridors and cold to me everywhere else, that I have noticed both and I hold neither against you. Bring it in the cage. That is the only place any of this has ever been settled. ———————————————— CLOSING. One more thing, and then I am finished with this subject for good. Mr. Barr — you and I have exchanged exactly one nod, from a distance, and neither of us has ever said a word to the other on camera. I am not going to start now. I would only note, since I have spent four months making your office answer me, that you answered. You did not soften it. I will not forget that you did not soften it. Eu sou Camila Ferreira. Eu compito como Diamante. Eu ainda estou aqui, e agora eu sei exatamente onde eu estou. The Skull Crusher is still my finisher. The Discus Punch is still my signature. It put a monster on one knee and I have the tape. The earrings are in a drawer. Everything else is coming with me. — Diamante — Camila Ferreira