Adele Roman. Not since Joan of Arc had the male-dominated world of combat been so shaken by the arrival of a woman. She represented a crisis. Firstly, ticket sales were drastically down for traditional all-male matches. They simply didn’t generate the excitement they once did. The crowds wanted Adele, especially the women.

There were other reasons for the crisis too. Male wrestlers weren’t taken seriously anymore if a woman could beat them. Once a wrestler had lost to her, his career was pretty much over. It reportedly affected marriages too. Wives usually accepted a loss to a male opponent, but they viewed defeat by a woman as unmanning – as indeed it was. One or two even took up wrestling themselves if they especially wanted to humiliate their husbands.

So a secret, emergency, meeting was held. There was no publicity and no press. After all the usual speeches about the smaller arenas closing because of plummeting ticket sales (unless Adele happened to be appearing), and the lamentations of the wrestlers “who knew” people whose marriages had been affected, the chairman, Ron Derwent, summed up the mood of the gathering:

“I think we’re all agreed, she has to be beaten.”

“Next question, who by?” asked someone.

Derwent put up his hand in explanation, while he sent a text on his phone. A few moments later, in walked a man in his late twenties familiar to all of them there: Bobby Sullivan.

There were cries of “Where’ve you been?” from the members gathered, and Derwent again put up his hand before he spoke.

“As soon as Adele became a threat, we quietly ‘pulled’ Bobby from competitive wrestling. You may remember the press made much of him doing stunts for charity, and things like that. We wanted to keep him as a secret weapon, and to bide our time. We now feel that the time has come.

“Adele is growing soft. All the publicity is going to her head. Every time she opens a hospital wing, or hands out prizes, there’s a dinner afterwards, and we hear that she likes the comfort and luxury of the high life. Bobby here, meanwhile, has been taking cold showers and training – seriously training – every day. Haven’t you, Bobby?”

“That’s right, Ron, and I’m the one to show this bint where she gets off.”

I’m the one to show this bint where she gets off. The press may not have been there, but somehow they got hold of that sentence, declaring it to be a challenge. Adele retorted that no one called her a ‘bint’, and unless Bobby had become a bus driver during his absence from wrestling, he wasn’t going to show her where she got off either. Wrestling’s largest arena was booked, and tickets sold out in record time.

*****

Speculation about the match was intense. Derwent managed to get pictures in the papers of Adele “living it up”, and “cashing in” on her celebratory status, while Bobby was pictured in a gym, or mountaineering. Adele’s fans reacted furiously, and many an unofficial bout was fought before the match between opposing supporters. The papers appealed for calm (after having stirred it all up in the first place) and urged people to judge the contestants on the merits of the match.

Luckily this took place soon after the challenge. Perhaps because of the negative press publicity Adele got before the match, when she appeared in the ring the crowd shouted their support. She was dressed in her trademark high-heeled boots and tight-fitting leotard, and the spectators roared their approval. People like Derwent judged it best to keep quiet, as her opponents probably wouldn’t have filled a single row of seats. Bobby entered the ring to chants of “Where have you been?” and a little light applause. The referee “did his stuff” then sensibly withdrew, and the combatants faced off.

They circled, and probed the other for reactions, until Adele fired the first shot. She high kicked with her right foot, but Bobby darted underneath it, swivelled away from her, and back kicked. Adele leant back out of harm’s way. He lunged with his right fist, but she sidestepped it.

There was a confused few moments of attempted bear hug or clinch, which had the crowd frowning and squinting, before Adele was whisked up by Bobby, who held her like a baby. Then he knelt down and forced her over his leg, back first, in a backbreaker. (Derwent silently nodded approval, while his wife, Sandra, tutted next to him.)

Just as the pain began to show on Adele’s face, she swung violently to free herself, rolled off his leg and sliced his body between her legs for one of her famous scissors.

“Get out of that one, lad!” someone shouted, to laughter.

For good measure, Adele seized Bobby’s right arm into an armbar to go with the scissor. She hooked her gleaming boots round each other, and notched up the pressure with her legs, constricting Bobby’s ribs, back and stomach. Those well-known, feared, legs. Bobby felt as if his body must cave in with the increasing pressure she kept exerting, while she scorched his arm socket at the same time.

Flexible and adaptable, Adele swiftly changed holds and opted for a sleeper, entangling Bobby from behind like a spider with its prey. She was beginning to enjoy herself, and she gave up the hold for something else – but Bobby was too quick for her. For a second time he scooped her into the air, and held her on his shoulders in another backbreaker. Adele realised that she had not quite got over the first, and the renewed pain made her wince.

But Bobby couldn’t see her face. If he had, he would probably have chosen to maintain the hold. As it was, he allowed them both to drop, keeping hold of her right arm, which he now dragged through his legs into an armbar. However, those pointed boots above him were worrying. He watched them for any movement, and Adele, sensing his concentration going, jerked her arm free and jumped across his upturned body, pinning him, and trapping his right arm in an armbar. (His left arm was more agreeably secured by her thighs and buttocks.)

Adele settled into the hold, then chose a rather more direct attack on that right arm. She relinquished the pin and twisted the arm grotesquely the “wrong” way, making Bobby yelp with pain. He felt the arm go weak.

For the second time, Adele instinctively knew how he felt. His arm was now temporarily useless, so she must try another hold. The crowd applauded as she swung herself above him, faced upwards, leant back and seized his chin from behind in her locked hands, to form a bridge. Lowering herself from the waist down, she imprisoned his legs under the knees, and bent them back under the pressure of her mighty thighs. At the same time, she hauled Bobby upwards by the chin, as if he were in a camel clutch.

Adele liked conflict, and dominating males. The intimacy of wrestling excited her, along with the thrill of competition and the fulfilment of victory. While she was forcing Bobby to breaking point, she began to breath more quickly, stimulated by his body being in complete subservience to her skill and strength. Her sensitive nipples instantly reacted to sexual stimulus, and she was aware of a growing soreness as they seemed to be trying to burrow through the wispy-thin material of her leotard. It was no good, she would have to change holds, despite the superlative bridge that she had him in.

Just as Johnny gave into pain and let out a wail, she unexpectedly let him go. But he was too dazed and shaken to do anything about it – plus she gave him so little time – while she coiled her arms around his neck and gripped. The hold, and the variations she extracted from it, can best be described as a headlock-sleeper-choke. Now she had him on his back, facing in the opposite direction; now he was on his knees beside her, his head trapped in one of her arms, his opposite arm secured by the other. Or she had him looking helplessly up at the ceiling, his head suffocated by her left arm while her strong right hand gripped his right arm in a twist.

She walked him round the ring like this, to laughter, before scooping him up over her left shoulder and slamming him down on the canvas. As his chest hit it first, Bobby was reminded of his first attempt at a racing dive, when it felt as if the water burnt his chest. But he had other things to worry about. Adele had him by the right leg. Taking hold of his foot, she twisted it into an ankle lock. Bobby cried out in pain while she manipulated away. He reached out and gripped the bottom rope of the ring, as if he were a blood donor taking his mind off the needle with that strange bean bag they give you.

“What the –” muttered Derwent. Well he might, because Adele had lifted his protégé up, and had him perched precariously on the top rope. She teased Bobby and the crowd: gripping him in another headlock, she let him dangle and hover over that rope, swinging him now outside the ring, then back inside. What was the ref to do? If he entered the ring, all she had to do was let him drop – it was up to her whether he fell inside, or dropped several more feet outside.

Derwent breathed a sigh of relief when Adele turned to face inwards, locked her other hand round Bobby’s neck and appeared to put him in a neck breaker. But she hadn’t finished teasing. Because she still had him balancing on the rope, which she now stepped over so she stood outside the ring, threatening to slam him onto the floor of the arena – and onto the laps of the crowd in the front row, including Derwent.

It was their turn to be relieved when Adele swung back inside the ring. But she still carried the hapless Bobby on her shoulders in a back breaker, and could easily tip him over the ropes if she felt like it. In fact … yes, she was going to. There he was, about to drop head first. Adele loosened her hold, Bobby slid down; then she tightened her grip again, spun on her heel, and he banged painfully onto the canvas in the middle of the ring.

“Thank God,” muttered Derwent. After all, she had only slammed Bobby ignominiously onto his back in front of a crowd of thousands!

This time it was his left leg that she seized, and she twisted it into a hideous ankle log. By now, Bobby’s psychological defences were shattered, and he shouted out in pain. Adele lifted him up by the leg, so that only his right forearm was still on the canvas. She knelt on the canvas and bent his leg behind her neck. Then she let go, and Bobby landed on his head and shoulders.

Adele stood up, took hold of both his legs this time, and kept him in place with an elegant, shiny, boot on his face. He opened his mouth in silent distress; when he tried to close it again, he found he was biting a stiletto heel. He quickly opened his mouth again. He had no wish to antagonise her further by biting or in any way soiling it.

Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. By way of a brief headlock, she got him onto his front. Then, facing away from him, she hauled his legs up and back, hooking them under each arm, and then applying increasing pressure, in a sharpshooter. Bobby’s body, from his waist to his ankles, was bent backwards away from any natural position, while his upper body was trapped where it was on the canvas, since Adele now sat on the small of his back.

Bobby gritted his teeth while Adele steadily increased the pressure. Derwent could no longer look, as his Great Hope lay helpless under this all-conquering woman. Something would have to give soon. When he did look again, Bobby was off the canvas from his chest down. The last time he looked it had been his waist. A wrestler himself, he could imagine the degrees of agony it had taken to get to that stage.

It was a relief when Adele finally relinquished Bobby’s left leg. But it was only to start hauling the other leg about. Yes, thought Derwent grimly, it was another ankle lock. How she liked those! She still knelt above him on one knee, and those lucky enough to be sitting behind could see her strong back working away. While her hands and arms dragged his leg about as she chose, the flexible muscles in her back responded. Her thighs and buttocks rippled with her actions, and many a man found himself wishing he could spend a night with her.

It was, perhaps, predictable that she should opt for a camel clutch, and inflict suffering similar to the sharpshooter on Bobby. But then, why go for something unpredictable, but less effective? Once again, she sat on the small of his back, trapping his arms under hers, while she gripped his head and pulled him at an excruciating angle away from the rest of his body.

Cheers went up from several women when Adele sprang and sat on Bobby’s neck. This was what they had come to see – her renowned scissors! She snapped the vice of her thighs shut around his neck, and hooked her boots round one another. Then she took hold of his arms and heaved, stretching him yet again to the edge of endurance.

“Aaagggghhhh!” cried out Bobby, utterly broken. Broken in the way Adele always dealt with her challengers. She had him docile now, all thought of resistance gone.

She let him drop and he slumped onto his back. She lay above him, in the “69” position, for her well-deserved treat of face-sitting. More cheers arose when she started fiddling and teasing at the front of his shorts, occasionally grabbing and filling him with fear.

But not this time. Adele was content with her victory – for that is what it now was. The crowd roared deafeningly as their heroine sat on her victim and invited them to view his helplessness. Then she stood, and thousands of phones clicked to picture her standing over the defeated male, her slender boot on his face, with one arm raised in triumph.