“So what went wrong?” Derwent demanded of Bobby at their first meeting after his loss to Adele.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bobby replied, sitting with his head in his hands.

“Male wrestling is more of a laughing stock than ever now!” Derwent complained. “For a moment I thought you had her, too. Right at the start, when you got in that quick lift and then put her in a backbreaker, I thought she was in real trouble.”

“Didn’t last though, did it?” Bobby added glumly.

“No… Come on, man, think! You must have some idea why you lost.”

“I think it’s the psychology. I’ve talked to other lads who’ve fought her, and they say the same. She has this mental dominance before the physical dominance.”

“Well, as we all know, psychology is an important part of all competition. It matters as much as skill and strength. But how does she manage it? Wait a minute, it wouldn’t be her big tits, would it?” he asked, a little scornfully.

“In a way, yes!” Bobby told him emphatically. “All the time they remind you you’re fighting a woman. It’s distracting.”

“Hence the low-cut leotards she wears,” Derwent added grimly, “They get you thinking about her deep cleavage.”

“Exactly.”

“All right, boy, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll get you a good psychiatrist, and we’ll work on the mental side of this. Meanwhile keep the training going.”

*****

Several months later, Derwent and Bobby judged he was ready to meet Adele in the ring again. A challenge was issued and, in a press release, Derwent concluded grandiosely that “The second Roman Empire is about to come crashing down.”

“Here we go again,” Adele thought to herself, chuckling as she entered the familiar ring.

She felt at ease in her corner, basking in the support and applause of the full-capacity crowd. For his part, Bobby looked relaxed enough in his corner too, very much the new, psycho-analysed man. He refused to look directly at Adele, as she stretched her arms out on the top rope, displaying those mesmerizing breasts of hers. She was wearing her trademark thin brown leotard, low cut, and high-heeled boots. Bobby wore … but who cares what he was wearing?

Silence fell as the combatants approached the middle of the ring, their guards up. They circled, smiling at each other in familiarity. But the crowd were not taken in. They knew that behind the smiles lay intense rivalry, and probably strong personal antipathy, and these were shown soon enough.

Bobby made a sudden move, catching Adele and the crowd by surprise. He grabbed her round the waist and back, and swung her above him while he knelt, his left hand clasping her neck, and his right seizing her bottom through her legs. This way, his face was against her breasts.

“Hmm, nice tits and arse,” he murmured, for her “benefit” alone. “As you love showing them off, I’m going to help myself to them, how about that?”

People in the crowd looked at each other as he turned her round and shoved his face back into her cleavage. (The psychiatrist had told him to acknowledge his vulnerability to Adele’s charms, and to turn it to an advantage.)

He pushed her down onto the canvas and pinned her, staring into her eyes. This was not going the way the crowd had expected and wanted, and a few “boos” rang out. So far, the pin was the only legitimate wrestling move Bobby had made. The rest had been mere brute force and groping, which they agreed ought not to be allowed.

Bobby scooped Adele up in a fireman’s lift over his right shoulder, both his hands groping her bottom, to cries of protest from the crowd. He seemed to relish their hostility, and shouted, “Hasn’t she got a lovely arse?” to them, earning him shouts of anger. Then he slammed her, and many in the crowd were unable to look.

He grabbed her left foot before she had time to recover, and sang softly, “Let’s twist again, like we did last summer – ah, fuck!” One elegant, brightly polished, pointed right toe slapped against his balls, and the crowd gave its first cheer of the fight. True, it was another illegitimate wrestling move, but so what? He had started it, they reasoned.

Adele seized his wrists, pulling him towards her and applied her other foot to his balls, heel up, this time. She pushed hard, and suddenly spun Bobby up and over her, so he landed on his back. But as she approached him, he thrust up and enveloped her in his strong arms, dragging her down on top of him, in a sort of horizontal bearhug. There was some confused grappling and struggling before Adele, by shifting her weight and pushing up with her knee, managed to break free.

She instantly grabbed his right wrist and left shoulder, pinning him in turn. But it was too passive for her, and she wanted to take the initiative more forcefully. She flipped her legs either side of his neck, ensnaring it and his right arm, while grabbing and hauling away at his left arm. An “armlock” is too bland a term to use for the way she had him trapped and at her mercy. He was stuck in her fearsome legs, with which she exerted growing pressure, tightening their grip on his neck, so it was as if she had him in a scissor or choke hold. Meanwhile she twisted away on his left arm.

Muffled noises came from Bobby, but that’s all he could manage, because it was difficult to breathe properly. The pain gauge was steadily rising towards the psychological barrier when it could no longer be borne. Adele sensed this, so she suddenly released him, pushed her legs under him and raised him on them. At the same time, she grabbed his neck in her left hand and his right heel in her right hand, locking his other leg under his right thigh with her right leg. She pushed up with her legs and pulled down with her hands, in a bow and arrow. It had the effect of a backbreaker on Bobby, and the crowd shouted their appreciation. Derwent, in the front row, shook his head and lamented all the money spent on futile psychiatric treatment.

Bobby’s bones, muscles and tendons were stretched to dangerous extremes, and he feared his spine would snap. His stomach muscles, too, were as taut as they would go, and pain seared its way from them up to his neck and down to his thighs. But once again Adele seemed to know when to relinquish the hold. The crowd had paid good money to see the match, and it wouldn’t do to end it so soon, though she knew she could have done, easily.

Instead, she treated them to another masterful display of wrestling. She pushed him down onto his front, planted her feet astride his legs and, facing upwards, took his chin in her hands and heaved. It was a classic bridge (or as she had once described it, “a show-off’s camel clutch”.) But then, that’s what the audience had paid to see and expected: an elaborate display of wrestling at its best. The more she showed off, the more they loved it – and the more Bobby suffered.

This time it was his chest and ribs that bore the brunt of the pain and pressure, as his head and neck were forced upwards by his chin, but the rest of his body was stuck under Adele’s shoulders. His muscles were being torn under the pressure. Adele was like a human version of a medieval torture contraption, and just as effective.

Maintaining the momentum, she swapped that hold for a choke, twisting his left arm into the bargain. She had his neck hooked in her left arm, while she worked away at his arm with her right. As she sat on his left side, his right arm was useless. Anyway, he was paralysed through fear of what she would do if he did attempt anything. His face seemed to be scorching as he struggled to breathe for a second time.

Then she knelt, maintaining the choke but swapping his arms, and dragging him up with her. She was playing with him, now increasing the grip of her linked arms round his neck and right arm, now easing off, like a cat with a mouse.

Once on her feet, she scooped him up, resting him on her left shoulder for a moment. “She’s going to throw me,” he thought. But no; she carried him for a moment like this, facing away from her. Her left arm was around his waist, and she held him by the top of his right thigh with her right hand. This now snaked inwards.

“She can’t do that,” complained Derwent to his wife.

“He started it, she replied truculently.

Her fingers brushed the front of his shorts, teasing. Then she tore them off him and dropped him on the canvas on his back at the same time. The crowd laughed, viewing his erection. Adele’s strong right hand grasped his left wrist, while one spiked heel and shiny sole ensured his other arm couldn’t move. Her left hand slipped to his balls and cupped, and she softly sang:

“Let’s twist again, like we did last summer …”

“Aaaaaggggghhhhh!” shouted Bobby, to the delight of the crowd.

At last she withdrew her hand, but she cupped it again, gazing at the prone Bobby. She cupped it further into a fist, smiling down at him. This time there was no mistake about what was coming next, and he instinctively put his hands in front of his face to try to ward off the coming punch. She contemptuously pulled one of them away and menaced him with her fist, toying with him again, keeping him guessing, and the crowd in suspense.

Then it came, a fearful hook to the jaw, thrusting his head to the side. The hefty blow stunned him momentarily, so that he was oblivious to her next move until it was a fait accompli. By then, his head and neck were being forced upwards once more, while he was wedged on the canvas from the small of his back. Adele was lying across and to the side of him, wrenching his head towards her, with both hands linked around his mouth in a crossface. Further still she dragged his unwilling body, at hideous angles beyond any natural position, stretching his endurance (and his willingness to continue).

She hauled him to his knees from behind, clamped his neck inside her right arm and his left arm in hers, and straddled him in a dragon lock. This way she kept up, and intensified, the strain on his neck, chest and ribs, while dishing out further pain to his stomach and thighs. His head protruded absurdly, comically, behind her while she pushed the small of his back forwards. The crowd began to question how much more he could endure, and some of the more sensitive members were wincing in imagined pain.

Then she released him, and he flopped helplessly onto his back. Straight away, though, she was at him again, fastening those versatile legs of hers around his neck from behind in a scissor, and gripping his left arm. She proceeded to twist it, while choking him by compressing her thighs around his neck.

It gave Bobby momentarily relief when Adele changed holds, before she unleashed the next horror on him. This time it was a leg arm lock. She lay over him and to his left, with his now useless left arm between her legs, and her trusty arms linked over it and his left leg. This she now dragged further and further towards that pain barrier, until it was at a right angle to his body.

Deciding to concentrate on that alone, Adele swung away from him, lying in the opposite direction, and sandwiched it between her thighs in a leg lock. It was at the mercy of her hands, and she proceeded to manipulate it into agonising, grotesque, positions.

It was almost – almost – a relief when she suddenly heaved him onto his feet and put him into a choke from behind. Then she moved to the side of him and began marching him around the ring, with his head still trapped, to cheers from her supporters. She was parading her victim.

Round they went, until they arrived near a particular corner. Adele placed him into a headlock, dragged him any old how until his back was against the post, kept her hands on his head, and sent her left knee smashing up into his balls. To compound his disarray, she rammed her left elbow down hard on his shoulders. Then she raised him up off his feet, dallied with him playfully in the air for a few moments, before banging him down hard on his front.

Bobby’s upper body was outside the ropes, facing down, and Adele now grasped his shoulders and wrenched them upwards, back towards her, with her feet planted either side of him to gain leverage. The fact that the bottom rope chaffed and grazed the small of his back with the friction of her womanhandling of him was the least of his problems. She was reinforcing the injuries she had already meted out to his neck, chest, ribs, stomach and thighs.

Next, Adele thumped his shoulders down on the canvas, with his head still outside the ropes. Using these, she treated the crowd to her own version of a Boston crab. She crouched above him and pulled him up, so that she was sitting on his rear. Then she forced his legs outside the bottom rope, before dragging them back towards her from the ankles. This way she used the rope to do part of her work for her.

All of a sudden Bobby’s shoulders were now taking the greatest strain. The rest of his body was just about done in by now, so she set to work to break him entirely. Once again, her powerful arms notched up the pressure, inflicting increasing agony on him. Adele was so confident by this stage that she could look down at the front rows of the audience and exchange smiles with them (except Derwent), while she further punished the hapless man.

Keeping a hold of his left ankle inside the ropes, she let the rest of him dangle outside. At point blank range, she now punched him in the balls. Bobby wretched, and the audience below wondered if they should remain in their seats. Then she twisted.

“Hasn’t he got a lovely cock?” she asked the audience, imitating him in his earlier hubris.

“No!” they replied.

“No? Well, perhaps you’re right,” she conceded, to laughter, before squeezing and earning herself yelps from Bobby.

He was beaten, routed; and she now just played with him. She tormented him, standing with her heel to the side of his face, and the sole of her boot resting on it, while he was still half-in, half-out of the ropes. She twined his legs this way and that, using the ropes to hold them where she wanted them.

The audience cheered again as, with the strength of pythons, her legs folded around his neck in a standing headscissor. Then she let them both drop to the canvas, so he was in a reverse headscissor. But what did it matter what it was now? He was done in. Couldn’t take any more. He slumped.

The crowd roared and stamped, chanting “Adele Roman! Adele Roman!” as she stood over him in victory. Would male wrestling ever recover?