But while this gave him a novel respectability there, he had to admit to himself that though he hated losing fights to women, he was strangely addicted to it. It shouldn’t happen. It was disgraceful and humiliating. But it was exciting at the same time.

Although he had the label of “Loser” at the gym and with various women he knew, he actually had a very good job. He worked well at it and always had plenty of money. After a while he began to think, why not use some of it to indulge his fantasy? The saying “more money than sense” applied to Todd in spades. It was actually a lot cheaper to get into trouble at the gym. Yes, but if you pay for it, you’re anonymous, he reasoned.

So out came the credit card, and he went online. Sumi, he read, was a mature Chinese lady “who dislikes Western men”. (You’re allowed to say it that way round.) “She likes nothing better than to get into a ring with them and make them look like the wimps she knows them to be.” Hands trembling slightly, Todd rang the number advertised. A seductive voice at the other end told him to be at a certain address at a particular time – unless he was the coward she suspected him to be.

It turned out to be a ring outside an industrial estate that was hired out for private use at weekends. Sumi was waiting moodily in her corner when he arrived. He swallowed hard at the sight of her: full-breasted and broad-hipped, in a blue leotard that looked as if it had been spray painted on her, she looked the mean, unforgiving Oriental fighter her resume made her out to be. She insisted on him being nude as she wanted to see “what little I have to work with”.

Todd stepped into the ring. With the slightest of nods from Sumi, they met in the middle. These stories can only guess at what the participants thought at any given moment. But there is no knowing what Todd was thinking when he tried to kiss Sumi. She pushed him away and replied with her own special kiss – her knuckles on his chin.

While he sat on the canvas rubbing his sore chin, Sumi told him that he was going to pay for that. Financially, physically, psychologically, or all three, Todd wondered as he got up, slightly shaken.

They circled, and he expected to undergo the slogging match of a lock up. But Sumi was too impatient a person for that. Instead, she slipped round to his side, seized his right arm and locked it in the crook of her left arm. She proceeded to bend it, earning herself numerous shouts and cries of anguish from the man who was paying her to inflict such pain.

Dragging his arm behind him, she worked him down to his knees. Then, seeming to change her mind, she hauled him back up, placed him in a chicken wing with one arm and a headlock with the other, and marched him to the ropes. She laughed as she grazed his chest on the coarse material of the top rope. Then she dropped him like a bomb to the mat, in a novel hold that involved twisting his right arm around her head and punching his right ear with her free hand.

After hauling him 180 degrees, still on his knees, Sumi snapped her thighs shut around his neck for the good old reliable head scissor. But that makes it sound predictable, when it was far from that. Showing great strength and dexterity, she raised them both so that only her head, shoulders and arms were on the mat; moreover, she did it so quickly that for a second or two, Todd left the mat altogether. But he landed painfully on his front soon enough. For her part, she sat almost lazily resting on her hands, while enjoying the spectacle of the man sprawling within her thighs.

Todd was so paralysed with pain and lack of oxygen that he didn’t even gaze at her lovely breasts, even though they were just a few inches above his face. What a relief it was when she asked, “Babe, submit?” He did, instantly, as loudly as his scarce breath would allow.

Sumi stood over him and flexed in celebration (well she might, because he was paying her handsomely for what was proving to be a most enjoyable workout for her). For his part, he lay thankfully gulping down lungs full of oxygen.

Seeing that he was in no hurry to get up, she looked at an imaginary watch. Well, if he was going to stay lying prone, there was something she could do about that. Seizing both his wrists, she thumped him hard on the middle of his back with her left boot in a surfboard. Pushing him down with her foot while pulling him up by his wrists, she made him shriek with pain.

“Submit Babe,” she repeated, only this time it was a command not a question. Once again, he did, readily.

Sumi stood beside Todd, with a look on her face that said, “Well, that was easy!” Then she sat on his back and flexed. But she wasn’t prepared to linger while he recovered this time. After surprising him by rolling him onto his back, she forced her thighs shut around his middle for a crushing body scissor.

Holding his near arm, just in case he tried to free himself, she smiled down at the writhing man sandwiched between her powerful thighs. Just as Todd thought he heard a rib crack, she demanded his submission once more. The irony was that, as much as he wanted to, the pain was such that he was unable to say anything for some moments before at last managing a feeble, “I submit”.

Sumi sadistically kept the hold going a little longer, just because she could. Still, she had better give him his money’s worth and she couldn’t destroy him just yet. So she sat on his face and flexed, savouring an easy victory, before commanding him to get his gloves on.

Leaning moodily against the ropes in her corner, she was a daunting sight in her blue-and-white dragon boxing gloves – even more so when she started shadow boxing. When she glared over at Todd, he wondered whether to make a run for it, before concluding that she would almost certainly be able to catch up with him. So he joined her in the middle instead. They touched gloves, then raised their fists.

They circled, a grinning Sumi willing Todd to throw the first punch. “Might as well,” he thought, throwing a left. She ducked under it, clearly relishing the action. She backed away a step and insulted Todd by indicating her chin.

If she was trying to make him angry, she succeeded, and he launched a furious right at … nothing. She had seen it coming, evaded it, and replied with a solid left jab to his eye. It felt as if the dragon on her glove had just breathed fire into it.

But that was just the ignition. The dragons’ fire roared into life when Sumi plastered his jaw with a right cross. Todd let out a grunt as her glove hit his face. It forced his head to turn 90 degrees, so that he found himself gazing up at the rickety brickwork on a factory chimney stack, even though his mind was on the throbbing pain in his eye and jaw.

“Oof!” they both seemed to utter at the same time, as she got him low in the stomach with a hefty left. Whenever Todd faced a woman in the ring, he always seemed to crumple around her glove when she hit him in the stomach, and this occasion was no exception. Sumi knew he would have a weak belly – knew him to be weak all round – and decided that here was where to create the real damage.

Accordingly, she propelled her right knee into it, pulling him down by the neck to give the blow greater impetus. True, her knee got him higher up than the punch had, but aiming for the gut in general was all part of her plan to wear him down where she judged him to be most vulnerable.

Keeping her hold of his neck, she slammed her other knee into more or less the same place, reaching a bit further up to include his chest for good measure. How satisfying for her to hear him groan in pain and dismay! After all, he was paying her to beat him up, so she might as well make a good job of it.

Next came what must surely be the shot of the fight. Pivoting on her left foot, she swivelled half round and super kicked. Her right boot hit the back of his head, hooking itself back in, and his whole body vibrated with the force of the blow. So pleased was she with the result, that she super kicked again with the other foot, catching him brutally on the nose. He dropped to the mat feeling sick and dizzy with pain.

Sumi walked around him, raising her right glove in the air. The Chinese dragons fluttered in triumph above the downed man. Then she lifted both arms in triumph, before beckoning Todd to get up and resume the unequal fight.

He did get up, rather shakily, only to be welcomed by Sumi’s left glove powering into his chin. It was a good, solid blow, as you’d expect from a seasoned professional fighter like her. Poor Todd was really out of his depth. For the second time, his whole body jarred with the force of the blow; his head rocked back while his mouth snapped shut.

She got him, jaw and chin this time, with a masterly right cross. It momentarily bewildered him. Feeling faint, he retreated a step. Sumi, like a medieval soldier seeing the enemy turn and flee, tore after him and seemed to bury her left glove in his stomach. Todd doubled over, wailing in severe pain and anguish.

Drawing her glove back afterwards, Sumi seemed to hurl it at Todd’s jaw. She laughed at the way her fists were sending him in all directions, like a spinning top.

She was building up a momentum. Whether Todd was aware of it by this stage is debatable, but she could feel the pace of the fight increasing, as if it had its own personality. She attacked his chin with an uppercut. Once again, his head recoiled from her hefty punch. Once again, she found it funny. Once again, too, her punch made his teeth clang together, so violently that he heard it. Her ample breasts swung and bounced merrily away as she uppercut him, but unfortunately for him, he was too far gone to notice.

Sumi hammered her right glove into Todd’s stomach. That was it: he couldn’t take any more. He sank to his knees, wondering why he was never given the option to submit when it came to boxing. But no, for some reason it always had to end in a KO. The Chinese lady swung her left glove at her male opponent’s jaw. Her hook dispatched him gloriously, beautifully. He left the conscious world for the time being, and lay on his back, snoring slightly.

Sumi started the ritual count down with commentary, while flexing beside Todd. At 4, she declared that he was dreaming. At 8, she finished the sentence with, “about me”. At 10, it was “I win by KO”. She posed over him before retreating mysteriously to her corner when Todd started to stir.

What was it with these women, he wondered, when she returned with a strap on belted around her hips. Why did they all carry these weird, warped contraptions?

“Suck it, Babe,” she inevitably instructed him.

“Oh blimey, here we go …” he thought, closing his mouth around the revolting thing. Once again, his “work” seemed to bring her to ecstasy.

“Babe, good job,” she told him, still on his knees, and trying to get rid of the taste from his mouth. Oh well, that was something.

She pulled him up by the hair, while ominously brandishing her right fist.

“Babe, was this the fight that you dreamed about?” she asked, while he stared with trepidation at the devilish dragons on the glove that threatened him. The other glove held him in place by the hair.

Sumi put him out of his misery with a full on right cross to the chin. He fell to the canvas, landing heavily on his back. She joined him, as it were, and straddled him in a reverse face-sit, while flexing in triumph some more.

“Babe, good job,” she thought again, but about herself this time. Standing over him with her hands on her hips, she happily contemplated the money that the idiot, Todd, was about to pay her – for about an hour’s work, she would be getting what some person struggling on the minimum wage got in a week. It was a great start to the weekend, she thought, happily posing and flexing over him one last time.