The crowd had gone completely silent. The cheers, the laughter, the confident shouts, everything cut off at once as every pair of eyes locked onto Ryan's unmoving body. He lay flat on the ground, arms sprawled out, legs heavy and limp.
It had all happened so quickly. Too quickly. There had been no dramatic exchange, no dramatic back-and-forth between the fighters, just one boy dodging, moving with a calmness that didn't match his nervous expression, and then landing a few clean strikes. At least, that's all the crowd had been able to see.
What they didn't understand was that every single one of Joe's hits had been perfect. Clean. Direct. Measured. He hadn't thrown wild punches, and he hadn't wasted energy.
And more importantly, he had hit Ryan with his bare hands, unwrapped, unprotected. Most people, if they punched someone like that without wraps or gloves, would break their wrist or knuckles instantly. But Joe wasn't like most people.
