Biscuit Oliva vs Kingpin

The Arena

Wilson Fisk invited Biscuit Oliva to New York to discuss a business arrangement: Oliva could leave any American prison whenever he wished, and Fisk had uses for a man like that. Oliva listened politely, then said he would rather know whether Fisk was as strong as people said.

So the two men took off their jackets in Fisk’s private gym, eighty floors above Manhattan. Fisk loosened his tie. Oliva flexed, and his shirt split down the back.

Round One

Fisk moved faster than his bulk suggested, and his first punch, a short hook to the body, was the kind that has crushed rival bosses’ ribs. It hit Oliva like slapping a wall. Oliva looked down at the fist on his stomach and smiled.

Oliva answered with a hammer-fist to the shoulder that buckled Fisk’s knees. The Kingpin stayed up through pure will, and his eyes went cold. He stopped treating it as a show.

Fisk did not get angry; he got careful. He circled, testing with jabs and low kicks, looking for a joint to attack or an angle to exploit, the way he takes apart rivals in business. Every strike he landed found muscle like poured concrete. Oliva walked forward slowly, arms open, a broad and genuinely friendly smile on his face, and that frightened Fisk more than any snarl.

The Turn

Fisk is a sumo-trained grappler under all that tailoring, and he caught Oliva in a crushing bear hug, lifting him off the floor. Oliva had been squeezed by machines in prison weight rooms. He wrapped his own arms around Fisk and returned the hug.

Both men strained, faces purple, veins standing out, the floor creaking under their combined weight. And slowly, the most dangerous man in New York realised he was losing a squeeze contest.

Oliva could have ended it there. Instead he held the squeeze, letting Fisk feel exactly how strong he was, and talked to him the whole time: about prison libraries, about his girlfriend, about how hard it is to find a good tailor for a body like his. Fisk, crushed in the embrace, could only grunt.

The Finish

Fisk let go first and tried to break away. Oliva did not let him. He lifted the Kingpin bodily off the floor, all four hundred pounds of him, and set him down very carefully on his back on the gym mat, then put one forearm across his chest.

Fisk pushed against the arm with everything he had. It did not move. After a minute, he stopped pushing and began to laugh, a deep, slow laugh. “The arrangement,” he said, “is off, I think.”

Oliva helped him up and straightened his tie for him. “The arrangement was never on,” he said. “But the gym is nice.”