O Barulho

O BARULHO --- I said I wanted the noise. I got it. I am writing down what it was, because since Behind Closed Doors 13 I have been asked about it by eleven different people, and I have given eleven different answers, and none of them were accurate. I do not like having inaccurate things attributed to me, even when I am the one who said them. --- THE TWO-AND-NINE Skull Crusher. Centre of the cage. Drummond's shoulders down, the referee's hand on the mat once, twice — And then half a second where the building did not breathe. And then all of it, at once. Eight thousand people who had not expected anything of me, discovering in the same half-second that they had been wrong, and saying so with their whole bodies. I want to put one thing on the record about it, and it is the only thing about that moment I am proud of. I did not look up. In the dream I wrote down before Behind Closed Doors 13, I stood in the middle of the cage after it was over and looked for one person who was surprised. When it happened for real, I did not need to look. I could hear it on my skin. I got up off her and I went again, because the match was not finished, and I knew it was not finished, and the noise was not the result. Less than a minute later it was finished, and not by me. --- WHAT I LOOKED BACK AT Halfway up the ramp I stopped and turned round and looked at the centre of the cage for a long time. I have never done that before. I have walked out of six losses in this building and I have not once looked back at any of them. Reginald Graves said on the broadcast that I was looking to see where the noise came from. He is wrong, slightly. I knew where it came from. It came from the room. I was looking at the place I was standing when it happened. There is nothing there. It is a floor. It is the same canvas as every other part of the canvas. I looked at it anyway, for a long time, because it was the first place in this building I have ever stood that was worth looking back at, and I wanted to know what it looked like from a distance. It looked like a floor. I am noting that I was not disappointed. --- WHAT DRUMMOND SAID She stood four feet away from me after it and said: You wanted the noise. That was it. You got it off me. Fair's fair. And then she said she was not saying she had read my document, which means she read my document. I want to correct one word, and I want to do it in writing, because she said it out loud and out loud is where words count in this company now. I did not get it off her. Nobody gives you the noise by being hit. She did not hand it to me. She took the match back from me less than a minute later — fine. That is hers. She earned it and she changed how she fights to do it, and I have watched the tape, and she has never changed for anybody in this building before. I am aware of what that means and I am not going to pretend I am not. But the two-and-nine is mine. Nobody built it for me. Nobody trained me for it, nobody designed it, nobody brought it into the cage finished. I went, the way I always go, and for half a second I went somewhere this building did not know I could reach. That is the only thing I have made in STRIFE out of nothing, and I am not accepting it as a gift from anybody, including a woman I respect. I am not asking. I am noting. --- THE COST The scar through my left eyebrow is from a glass in a street when I was nineteen. Drummond opened it at Behind Closed Doors 13 in the first minutes, and I did not touch it. It has been stitched. It will open again on Saturday. I have known that since the plane. Nought and six. --- VOLKOV Kira Volkov is the third name on the list of eight. Reyes and Drummond have come off it already, though not the way I intended. I am aware of that. She is nought and four. I am nought and six. Between us, two women have walked into this cage ten times and walked out ten times without being the one whose hand goes up. On Saturday one of us stops. The other one does not. I have read her filings. All of them, in both languages, the way I now read everything. Here is the difference between us, and I am not sure yet whether it is important or whether it is nothing. Every time she loses, she writes down why. Four losses, four reasons. She shows the work. She numbers it. I have never once written down why I lost. I have written down what I am. I have written down what I want. I have never written down the reason, because the reason has always been the same, and it is the thing I am, and I was not going to apologise for it on paper. She will be looking for the point where I stop. That is her whole method — she says so — she finds the place where the structure fails and she goes and stands on it. I will save her the work. It is not hidden. I tapped to Reyes three times, hard, on purpose, because I am proud and I am not stupid. That is my point. It is the exact place where my pride stops being useful to me. Anybody can find it on the tape. Everywhere before that point, I go towards it. Reyes had my arm at the wall and I turned into it. That is what I do. Everybody else in this division moves away from the pain, because that is what a body is supposed to do, and that is why her holds work. I am not like everybody else in this division. That has been the problem for six matches. On Saturday I would like it to be the answer. --- THE ROOM Here is what I did not expect, and it is the opposite of the dream. The room has heard it now. It knows I can make it. On Saturday, for the first time since I walked into this building, there will be eight thousand people who expect something from me — not a result, but a moment. They will be listening for it. In the dream nobody was surprised, and I hated it. I have not yet decided what it is when nobody is surprised that you might surprise them. I am noting that I have not decided. --- PROOF If I win on Saturday I will not be asking anyone for anything at PROOF. I want that understood as a decision and not as an absence. One win is not a claim. It is one. When I say a name out loud in that building, it will be because I have something to say it with. --- LAST Six losses. Doctrine, Ó'Súilleabháin, Fallon, DuHast, Reyes, Drummond. Nobody in this company has beaten me twice. That is still true. It will still be true on Sunday, whatever happens, because she has never beaten me once. --- Ouvi o barulho. Agora quero o resultado. I heard the noise. Now I want the result. CAMILA FERREIRA DIAMANTE