VISION GRID SYSTEM: THE COMEBACK OF RYOMA TAKEDA

Cabello and Ryoma remain standing motionless, neither man making any attempt to resume the fight.

The referee glances from one fighter to the other, his patience finally wearing thin.

”Box!” His voice rings through the arena. ”Let’s go! Continue boxing!”

Still, Cabello barely reacts. He remains rooted to the spot, his mind trapped inside the question Ryoma has planted there.

Ryoma, meanwhile, slips right back into his imitation. This time the mimicry is almost exaggerated, wearing the very same bewildered expression, matching the vacant stare and even the slightest twitch of Cabello’s face as though determined to keep the illusion alive for as long as possible.

Unable to watch any longer, Rivera is the first to break the silence. He slaps the ring apron sharply, even though more than twenty seconds still remain in the round.

”What’s wrong with you, Cabello?” he shouts. ”Stop worrying about his gimmicks. Focus on your boxing. You’re still ahead in this fight.”

Cabello hears him.For a fleeting moment, his pride answers before his doubts do.

He slips back into his Cuban rhythm, drifting unpredictably within a small pocket of the ring while keeping his eyes locked on Ryoma, watching the imitation continue without interruption.

Then the rhythm begins to accelerate. His frantic, random movements grow quicker and quicker, almost like a machine with a circuit malfunctioning, desperately throwing out one pattern after another.

”Keep following me, bastard...”

He is no longer dancing because he feels it. He is forcing the performance, convinced that if he pushes the pace high enough, Ryoma will eventually fail to keep up.

Instead, it has the opposite effect. With Cabello’s confidence beginning to crack, so does his creativity. The randomness steadily fades. The variety in his movements shrinks.

A few movements begin repeating too often; the same shuffle dance, the same upper-body bow from side to side, the same angled jab after the same smooth step.

Even the smoothness itself is beginning to disappear. The dance is almost gone. What remains is Cuban Boxing stripped down to its structure, with little of the sugar or the flair that once made it impossible to predict.

As Ryoma keeps following, the two continue weaving around one another, occasionally releasing punches after each maneuver, yet not a single clean shot finds its mark.

”They’re making the same reads, throwing the same feints, even pulling the trigger together!”

”Those punches aren’t missing by inches anymore… they’re missing by the smallest margin imaginable!”

The more Ryoma continues matching his pace, the more Cabello’s confidence continues to erode. The fear of another dual exchange lingers over every decision. And because of that, not a single punch leaves his hand with full commitment.

The margins quietly begin to widen, each exchange losing the razor-thin precision that had defined the previous ones.

”The exchanges are slowing down...”

”Yeah... neither of them is committing anymore. I wonder if that double knockdown is finally catching up to them.”

Until, at last, the bell rings.

DING!

Around the Tokyo Dome, a collective breath quietly escapes from tens of thousands of spectators.

It is the kind of relief reserved for people who feel they have just watched a catastrophe narrowly fail to happen.

A beat later, appreciative applause begins rolling through the Tokyo Dome, growing louder as more and more spectators join in.

”That was insane!”

”I’ve never seen anything like that!”

”Ryoma actually copied everything!”

”Cabello! Shake it off!”

”Let’s go, Ryoma!”

”This is getting crazier every round!”

”Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Even so, many in the crowd cannot ignore the subtle decline creeping into both fighters’ performances. However extraordinary the round has been, it leaves behind the unmistakable feeling that neither man can continue like this for much longer.

”That may have been one of the strangest rounds I’ve ever called,” the first commentator says, still trying to process what he has witnessed.

”Strange... and incredibly dangerous,” the second replies. ”They forced far too many dual exchanges. Every one of those trades came with both fighters accepting the same damage at nearly the same time.”

”You can get away with that once. Maybe twice. But over and over?”

”I honestly don’t know how much longer either of them can keep surviving this.”

Only the fighters and world champions in attendance see something entirely different, especially those who have fought both Ryoma and Cabello within the past year.

To them, the drop in intensity over the final twenty seconds has little to do with fading performance. It is the result of Cabello’s changing rhythm, and the mental state quietly unraveling behind it.

”How do you see it?” Villanueva asks, leaning slightly toward Ramos beside him. ”Do you really think the kid is running out of gas?”

Ramos shakes his head. ”I doubt it. He’s been incredibly frugal since the opening round. That last round was brutal, sure, but I think he can take those shots better than most people realize.”

He keeps his eyes on the ring. ”The real question now is the champion.”

”Yeah...” Villanueva nods. ”During that knockdown, it was obvious Ryoma wasn’t nearly as hurt as Cabello. I have to give him credit for the way he took that hook. Having been the first one to fight him myself, I can picture exactly how he did it.”

He exhales quietly. ”And I’m convinced he was only copying Cabello right to the very end.”

Ramos glances sharply at him. ”So you think Cabello’s the one who’s hurt?”

”He is...” Villanueva replies. ”I’m just not sure which part of him hurts more. His body... or his ego.”

Meanwhile Liam O’Connell, having fought both Cabello and Ryoma earlier this year, may understand exactly what Cabello is going through better than anyone else.

”He’s losing his sugar,” Liam says quietly.

The remark catches Jean Pascal Roy’s attention. He glances at Liam for a brief moment before turning his eyes back toward Cabello inside the ring.

”That’s the one thing that frustrated me more than anything when I fought him,” Liam continues. ”And I know exactly what Ryoma had been dealing with over the last few rounds. But halfway through the sixth... I think Cabello started losing his identity.”

Then Liam shifts his gaze toward Ryoma, his brow furrowing with equal parts curiosity and confusion.

”I’m convinced Ryoma had a chance to turn the fight around near the end. But for some reason... he chose to keep the imitation going.”

Jean Pascal Roy’s attention follows. Across the ring, Ryoma sits quietly on his stool with his eyes closed, exchanging no words with his corner.

A moment passes and Roy’s eyes narrow with growing interest before the corner of his mouth slowly curls into a faint smile.

”So that’s how it is...” he murmurs. ”I think most people believe this imitation was nothing more than a desperate gamble from a fighter who couldn’t deal with Cabello’s boxing.”

He gently shakes his head. ”But this strategy goes much deeper than that. It’s layered.”

Liam turns to him, lifting his brows with a few puzzled blinks. And Roy simply widens his smile with the innocent delight of a child.

”What we just saw was only the setup,” he says. ”He’s now poisoning Cabello’s mind… just like what he did to you a few months ago.”

***

Back in the red corner, Cabello’s team immediately surrounds him, busy providing treatment while trying to calm him down.

Yet Cabello’s own frustration makes the corner feel increasingly frantic, with Cabello visibly irritated and unable to settle his mind despite everyone around him trying to bring him back into focus.

”Damn it...” he mutters, pulling the towel away from his shoulder. ”That bastard... He’s not fighting me. He’s just... there. Every time I move, he’s there. Every time I think I have something, he already takes it.”

”Hey, Cabello...”

”He’s not supposed to be able to do that,” Cabello says, his voice lowers, frustration mixing with something much harder to hide. ”Who the hell fights like that?”

Rivera grabs his shoulder, forcing him to look up. ”Listen to me. You’re letting him get inside your head. He’s making you forget the only thing that matters.”

Rivera points toward the center of the ring. ”The score. You won every round before that. Every single one. Round six? Worst case, it’s even. A draw.”

Cabello turns his face away, showing no interest in the score being mentioned. The numbers no longer matter to him, because what feels threatened right now is not his lead on the scoreboard or even the championship belt itself, but the identity and pride he has built around his boxing.

”Listen to me,” Rivera says, his grip on Cabello’s shoulder tightening, his voice becoming even firmer. ”You are still ahead. But he’s making you think you’re losing because he made you uncomfortable. But being uncomfortable isn’t the same as being behind.”

Cabello looks back at him, the doubt and fear now visible in his eyes. ”Tell me, Rivera... how do you beat someone who can read your mind?”

Rivera blinks. ”...What?”

”He didn’t just steal my boxing,” Cabello says, his voice lowering. ”He’s fucking reading my mind.”

”Cabello... did you actually hear what you just said?”

”Yeah, I know how it sounds.” Cabello runs a hand over his face. ”But how do you explain it? He’s not just following my movements. He’s following my words. He finished something I hadn’t even said yet. It’s like he’s reading my head like an open book.”

Rivera falls silent for a moment. One part of him tries to immediately reject the absurd idea. But the more he thinks about it, the harder it becomes to dismiss Cabello’s argument.

He has studied every fight Ryoma has had. He knows how the young fighter constantly plays with his opponents’ psychology, how he manipulates their expectations and turns their own instincts against them.

And then there was what happened in the last round. Ryoma didn’t just imitate Cabello’s movements with impossible precision. He copied his rhythm, his reactions, and even his words.

That’s something Rivera cannot explain. No matter how many years he has spent inside the world of boxing, he has no answer for what he has just witnessed.