[Braxton: He’s walking him out of the corner! He’s looking for an electric chair, or maybe setting up something even worse!]
Billy stumbled forward, carrying his brother toward the center of the ring. He locked his hands tightly around Ray’s calves, ensuring there was no escape. Billy let out a shout, preparing to drop backward and drive the back of Ray’s vulnerable neck straight into the canvas.
Before Billy could shift his weight backward, Ray snapped out of his daze. He leaned his torso backward, wrapping both of his legs tightly around Billy’s neck and head.
Billy’s eyes widened, realizing his center of gravity had just been completely hijacked.
Ray threw his own upper body down toward the canvas while keeping his legs locked around his brother’s throat. The momentum ripped Billy backward, flipping the heavier man upside down in mid-air.
Billy crashed head-first into the canvas beneath the force of the reverse hurricanrana plus ddt.
[Tanaka: Ooo! Ray Jr reversed into a stunning poisonrana]
Billy hit the canvas skull-first and rolled twice before coming to a stop near the ropes.
Ray Jr scrambled to hook the leg, his ribs screaming under the mask, but Billy’s arm was already draped over the bottom rope. The referee pointed at it, refusing to count.
[Braxton: Wow, he’s got the rope! That reversal alone should have finished it.]
[Tanaka: Nothing finishes this one clean. We’ve seen that many times already tonight.]
Ray Jr let go of the leg and pushed himself up. His neck throbbed with every heartbeat as he rolled his head slowly, testing it, and turned to find Billy already dragging himself up by the ropes on the far side.
Both men stood facing each other again. Neither one had much left to give, and both of them knew it.
Billy lifted the under of his mask, spat a mouthful of blood onto the canvas and wiped his jaw with the back of his taped hand.
"You should’ve stayed down," Ray said, his voice low under the mask, meant only for his brother.
"So should you," Billy answered.
Ray charged first this time. He threw a forearm that Billy ducked, then Billy answered with an uppercut that connected clean, snapping Ray’s head back. Ray staggered but caught himself on the ropes and came off them with speed, driving a shoulder tackle into Billy’s midsection. It folded him over.
Billy grabbed at the ropes to stay on his feet. Ray grabbed him by the shirt collar and whipped him across the ring. Billy rebounded hard, and Ray met him with a spinning heel kick that caught him flush on the jaw.
Billy went down to one knee.
The crowd rose with the impact, a wave of noise rolling from the front row all the way up into the rafters.
Ray didn’t let him breathe. He grabbed Billy by the hair, hauled him up, and drove a knee into his gut. Billy doubled over, and Ray hooked him for a suplex.
Billy blocked it. He hooked his own leg around Ray’s, throwing his weight forward, and the two of them crashed down together in a heap.
They rolled apart, both scrambling to their feet at the same time. Billy threw a wild lariat. Ray ducked under it and answered with a dropkick to the back of the knee, the same knee that had been Tijuana-itized months ago.
Billy’s leg buckled. He went down hard, grabbing at the joint, his face twisting under the mask.
[Tanaka: There it is! Ray Jr finally going after that knee!]
[Braxton: You’d think he learned that from watching Billy work on his own opponents. The student becomes the teacher.]
Ray stomped down on the back of Billy’s calf, twice, before Billy rolled away and used the ropes to climb back up. He was standing on one leg mostly, his weight shifted heavy onto the good side.
Ray came at him again, but Billy was ready this time. He caught Ray’s incoming boot and twisted it, spinning Ray around into a dragon screw leg whip. Ray’s own knee cracked against the mat as he went down.
Both men were down now, on opposite sides of the ring, each nursing a leg.
The referee started the mandatory count, though neither man was close to the ropes.
By four, Billy was up, limping heavily. By six, Ray had pulled himself up using the middle rope, his own leg trembling under him.
Billy came in swinging, a series of forearms that Ray blocked with his arms crossed in front of his face. Ray fired back with two of his own, then a third that opened a fresh cut above Billy’s exposed eyebrow.
Blood ran down into Billy’s uncovered eye. He blinked it away, snarling, and threw a headbutt that missed as Ray pulled his head back at the last second.
Billy’s own momentum carried him forward. Ray grabbed the opening, went behind and hit a snap suplex that dropped Billy flat on his neck and then his back.
Ray climbed to the second rope of the corner instead of pinning, favoring his less pained leg, balancing carefully.
Billy stirred below him, rolling onto his stomach.
Ray leaped, dropping a leg across the back of Billy’s neck.
Billy howled and clutched at his throat, rolling to the ropes again out of instinct more than strategy.
[Braxton: There isn’t a clean maneuver left in either one of them.]
[Tanaka: And the crowd doesn’t care. Listen to the noise in this building.]
The chant started somewhere in the lower bowl and spread fast.
"Ray Jr! Ray Jr! Ray Jr!"
Billy’s head snapped toward the sound. His bare eye locked onto the crowd, then back onto his brother.
He pushed himself up, breathing hard through his mouth, blood dripping steadily off his chin and out of the underside of his mask now. He waved Ray forward with both hands, taunting him, daring him to come finish it.
Ray obliged.
He rushed in, Billy sidestepped, grabbing Ray by the arm and whipping him hard into the corner. Ray’s back slammed against the turnbuckle pads. Billy followed with a running clothesline, but Ray got an elbow up at the last second, catching Billy under the chin and stopping him cold.
Billy staggered back two steps.
Ray came off the turnbuckle and caught him with a jumping knee strike to the chest. Billy dropped to one knee again, gasping.
Ray backed up, gauging the distance, his boot planted and his weight shifting back onto his heel. His brother knew it was coming as well as anyone in the building did, and there was nothing left in Billy’s legs to get out of the way.
Ray fired at his brother.
His boot connected flush under Billy’s jaw, a crack that carried through the ringside microphones and out into the Grand Auditorium.
Superkick.
Billy’s body went rigid for a half second before collapsing...very slowly backward, with his arms falling limp at his sides.
The building came apart.
[Tanaka: Superkick! Superkick!]
[Braxton: He is not moving! Billy Bones is not moving!]
Ray stood over his brother for a moment, sweat dripping off his chest onto Billy’s still chest. He looked toward the corner.
He turned and started walking, his leg dragging slightly with every step. He reached the ropes, climbed to the second, then the top turnbuckle, ignoring the ache screaming up from his entire body.
He rose to his feet on the top rope, balancing with his arms out.
The crowd rose with him, thousands of phones lifting into the air at once, the chant swelling louder.
"FIVE STAR! FIVE STAR! FIVE STAR!"
Below him, Billy’s fingers twitched against the canvas.
Ray bent his knees, set his feet against the pad, and pushed off into the air, arms and legs spread wide, sailing out over the ring toward his brother’s chest.
Billy’s eyes snapped open at the last possible instant. He threw his knee up.
Ray had no time to adjust his trajectory in midair. His ribs crashed down directly onto the point of Billy’s raised knee, the full weight and velocity of the frog splash driving into bone instead of flat canvas.
The sound was bad, a hollow crack that cut through the roar of the crowd.
But it wasn’t only Ray who took the worst of it.
Billy’s leg buckled violently under the impact, his surgically repaired knee twisting sideways in a direction it was never meant to bend.