The trip to Hermosillo wasn't simply a geographical relocation; it was the first time Ángel felt that sports had ripped him from the safety of home and thrown him into the regional "lion's den." The sports institute's van wound its way along the highway, traversing the lunar landscape of La Rumorosa and venturing into the endless plains of the Sonoran Desert. At fourteen, Ángel no longer fit in with his classmates' boisterous antics. While the others threw water bottles at each other or slept, he had his headphones on, letting the rhythm of Linkin Park's "Faint" isolate his mind from the chaos outside. On his lap, which now barely fit in the narrow seat, he held a copy of Differential and Integral Calculus. His fingers, calloused from the carpet and stained with ink, worked out derivatives in the margins of the pages. Keeping his mind occupied with mathematical abstraction was his way of controlling his adrenaline; For him, a move was as predictable as good technique, if you knew where to apply the force.
Upon arriving in the Sonoran capital, the air greeted him with a different density. If Mexicali was dry fire, Hermosillo felt like a heavy, damp ember. Sonora was the land of men forged in the fields, wrestlers who based their success not on aesthetic agility, but on a grip strength that seemed designed to bend horseshoes. The "Estado de Sonora" gymnasium was a pressure cooker where the echo of shouts and the smell of warming cream created a suffocating atmosphere. Ángel, at 1.75 meters tall and weighing exactly 70 kilos after weeks of strict dieting, walked through the pavilion, attracting suspicious glances. His body was no longer that of a child; his thick, defined back projected an authority that his student eyes were still trying to process. He wasn't wearing the most expensive uniform, but he walked with a solidity that made the locals nervous.
"Listen carefully, Ángel," Coach Víctor told him as he helped wrap his wrists in the locker room. The sound of the tape being tightened was the only thing that competed with the whir of the exhaust fans. "The guys from Sonora are going to go for your neck right away. Their style is aggressive hand-fighting. They'll try to tire you out with pulls so you lower your guard and run out of breath. Don't fight with their strength; that's what they want. Fight with your build. You have longer arms; use them to control the distance, and when you feel them getting desperate to close the distance, that's when you punish them with your physical strength."
The first match was against a local fighter nicknamed "The Buffalo." He was a young man with a massive neck, shoulders like river stones, and a look of utter self-importance. When the whistle blew, the collision of bodies echoed throughout the gym, a raw, visceral impact that could be felt even in the stands. Buffalo attempted an immediate waist takedown, looking to overwhelm Angel with sheer size and pressure.
However, Angel applied the principles of resistance he had mastered: he lowered his hips to reduce his center of gravity, created a forty-five-degree angle with his legs, and locked his opponent's forearms with a firmness that surprised the Sonora crowd. "It's a first-degree armbar," Angel thought mechanically as he felt his opponent's hot breath against his neck.
The match was a six-minute technical bloodbath. In the second period, Angel detected a pattern: Buffalo was shifting all his weight onto his right leg just before each attack. Using explosive speed that belied his new size, Angel executed a perfect duck-under: he slid under the giant's arm, wrapped his arms around his waist like a screw, and, arching his back in a bridge that would have made Newton smile, launched him with a side suplex that left Buffalo staring at the ceiling lights. The sound of the impact against the mat brought a moment of profound silence to the gym.
The final score was 6-2 in favor of Mexicali. Ángel didn't celebrate loudly or gesture to the crowd. He simply shook hands with his opponent and the coach from Sonora, then returned to his backpack. As he caught his breath, he pulled out his notebook. He still had three more fights to secure a podium finish, and his mind was already calculating his next move, both on the mat and in the study materials he needed to complete upon returning home.
That night, at the hotel, Ángel called home. Carla answered immediately; the sound of her sewing machine in the background sent a pang of nostalgia through her.
"You won, right?" she said, recognizing her son's silence.
"The first one, Mom. It was tough, but the technique worked," Ángel replied, while in the background he heard Roberto asking about the points scored.
"Rest, son." Your father says not to get too confident, that the next one will be smarter. And I tell you to we put a surprise in the secret compartment of your backpack.
Ángel searched and found a small bag of Don Beto's dried beef and a note from Mónica that simply said, "Be the lightning bolt."
He smiled to himself and turned on his music player. Skillet's "Hero" started playing. Tomorrow would be the day. He was no longer the bookish kid; he was the wrestler from Mexicali who had gone to Sonora to prove that the Baja California desert forged a different kind of steel. He fell asleep visualizing the gold, with the same clarity with which he visualized the solution to a calculus problem.