My seat was, as I should have known it would be, right up front, in the second row next to Ray Lampert. “You made it!” he cried. “I’ve been backstage with her, how long have you been here?” he asked.

“Only a minute,” I shouted over the noise of the crowd.

“She’s ready, oh is she ready,” Ray said, rubbing his hands together.

“Yeah?” I said. It seemed disgusting to me, the way that Ray was excited, like we were about to see a sex show instead of a boxing match. Maybe it was just that there was now something lewd about the cranberry-colored bulb of his nose. He could make eating a turkey sandwich seem indecent.

“This is what she loves,” he said. “This is what makes it all worth it. She trains for months, and it kicks her ass, and it’s hard and it’s boring and it’s hard. But then you get this.” He gestured all around us.

On the screens above the ring Bunny’s face was projected in pink pixels. A booming bass began, the hype music, and I could smell the fog machine before I saw the smoke rolling down the aisle, the ramp down into the arena. And then a figure pushed through the white wall of fog, and it was Bunny, but she was wearing a white satiny hooded robe, the hood pulled down low over her face. Her gloves were white, and not being able to see her hands or her face made her even more frightening and beautiful. As she walked to the ring, trailed by her coach and some assistants, she moved with a roiling, liquid power.

The announcer over the loudspeaker: “In one corner we have Bunny Lampert, the Knockout Queen, at one hundred sixty-six pounds, with twelve wins, five by knockout, undefeated.” Bunny swept up into the ring and paced in a tight circle, then threw her hood back and the crowd roared. She ripped the robe off, and underneath she was wearing her pink satins. They were so tawdry. I wished Ray had picked a better color. She was spray-tanned a burnished tangerine that made her muscle definition look insane. It was like a twelve-year-old boy addicted to comic books had drawn her.

A new, different hype music began to play and fog rolled down the other ramp into the arena and then a beefy girl with frizzy brown hair in a ponytail pushed her way through. The moment I saw her, I knew she had no chance. She was jogging in a peppy way, but pep, I could already tell, would be inadequate to the situation.

“She doesn’t have a chance,” I said to Ray.

“I know!” he cried with utter glee.

The announcer: “Weighing in at one hundred sixty-two pounds, we have Courtney O’Day, with an eight-and-oh record.”

“Look at how short her arms are,” Ray said with scorn. I looked at the girl’s arms but I could not detect any shortness in them, until I looked over at Bunny and then I understood. The other girl did not have freakishly short arms, but Bunny had freakishly long ones. The bell rang and the round began, and I worried that Bunny would just pummel her, but what happened was in some ways even worse. Bunny was calm and, most upsetting to me, playful. She would use those long arms to just sort of reach over to the girl and pop her in the face, the way a cat might reach a paw into a fish tank. There was such lazy power in that insane reach of hers, and every time it would surprise the other girl, who just couldn’t seem to keep Bunny’s absurd wingspan in mind.

When O’Day would go on the offensive, Bunny would hunch down behind her gloves and wait a few seconds, letting the girl get close enough to get in her combinations, a good deal closer than she probably usually had to get since she was having to punch up (Bunny was a solid six inches taller). And after a few of these ineffectual punches, Bunny would explode into a counterattack series, blows that landed hard, jerking the other girl’s torso like she was a mannequin. Weirdly, this kept happening over and over again, and every time O’Day would take the bait, get Bunny backed up to the ropes, set about babyishly beating up Bunny’s raised gloves, and then get surprised by devastating counterpunches. In between these little exchanges, Bunny just slowly followed the girl around the ring, reaching out those long arms every now and then to hit her in the face.

The rounds were only two minutes long, but the first round seemed to take forever. I was sweating like a sous chef. When the bell finally rang, I thought I might faint. Ray ran up to go see Bunny in her corner, but I was watching O’Day and her coaches. They were rubbing Vaseline on her face and talking to her the way you would as you put a dog down. The girl looked wild-eyed and slick with sweat, the skin of her chest and arms pale and covered in red blotches. I was so afraid Bunny would kill her that I actually said to Ray Lampert when he came back, “She’s not going to kill that girl, is she?”

Ray laughed. “I hope not!”

The second round went along much like the first, and Bunny was clearly having fun. She loved doing a kind of bait and switch where she would let down a hand and create an opening, and when O’Day would go for it, she would duck the blow, move in close, and then explode into an uppercut. O’Day fell on her ass after one of these uppercuts and the crowd started chanting Bunny’s name. They wanted her to finish it, to end the fight.

The bell rang.

“Three rounds,” Ray said. “She should wrap it up.” Bunny looked tired but radiant. She raised a fist at Ray while her trainer poured water into her mouth.

The third round was entirely different from the first two rounds. From the moment the bell rang, Bunny burst from her corner with a speed she had not displayed the whole match and she began a series of punches, all of them landing, that were so fast and beautifully syncopated that the other girl could not react properly or get away. If anything she looked like a movie being rewound, and then fast-forwarded, over and over. I saw the girl’s nose break and the spray of blood that smeared Bunny’s white gloves. The ref was dancing around them, and when O’Day turned her back to say she had had enough, the ref ended the fight.

I joined Ray as he rushed up to the ring, and we stood around while Bunny gave some brief on-cameras.

“I wanted to knock her out.” Bunny was panting as she spoke into the microphone. “But unfortunately she didn’t want any more.”

“Who’s the greatest?” the reporter asked, which struck me as a bizarre question. Ray let out a pleased laugh, then looked at his shoes, but I could tell he was listening for what she would say. I wondered if he had coached her on what to say. Or did all those hits to the head leave her uncoachable?

Bunny looked at him funny. “Me,” she said. “But I mean, I was the greatest before the fight also.”

“Oh god,” I said, because to me her answer seemed psychotic, evidence of delusions of grandeur, as embarrassing as a turd on the carpet.

“What?” Ray said to me. “You shocked? She’s literally the best in the world.”

“What?”

“She is literally the best female fighter in the world. At least right now. And after the next few fights we have lined up, everyone will know it.”