Page 48 of Split Decision

We take a car.

She's been prepping me since breakfast—not in the way Mack preps me for a fight, which is specific, physical, and built on months of observed tendencies, but in the way of someone who understands that the ring I'm walking into today operates differently. Different rules. Different footing. The person across from me won't be trying to knock me out. She'll be trying to get me to knock myself out.

"She's going to open warm," Syndi says in the car, not looking up from her tablet. "She always opens warm. It makes people comfortable, and comfortable people say more than they intend to."

"I know how interviews work, Syndi."

"You know how you think interviews work." She looks up. "Lindsey Blair covered Andi's story. She's not neutral territory. She has an existing relationship with your fiancée, an opinion about the people who came after Andi, and an audience that cares about the outcome of this situation." She holds my gaze. "That's not a hostile interview. It's a complicated one. Complicated is harder."

I look out the window at the Strip passing in daylight, which is always slightly wrong—like seeing a stage set without the lighting it was designed for.

"What's she going to ask about?" I ask.

"The Commission review. Your record before you went professional. Andi." She goes back to her tablet. "In that order, probably. The first two are the approach. Andi is what she actually wants."

"Then I'll talk about Andi."

"Yes." A pause. "Carefully."

The studio is smaller than I expected. Lindsey Blair's show has the reach of something meant for a room with high ceilings and a live audience, but the production office is just a production office—monitors, cables, and people moving with the focused efficiency of a crew that does this five days a week. The impressive part is that Lindsey and her team flew out here and set this up specifically for me, because I'm confined to Joe's camp and can'tget back to Atlanta, where she normally films. She didn't wait for me to come to her. Lindsey is already on the set when we're brought through, reviewing notes with a producer while a makeup artist works on her without her seeming to notice.

She's smaller than she looks on television. Not fragile—compact. There's a precision to how she holds herself that I recognize from the gym: someone who doesn't waste movement.

She looks up when I walk in.

"Luke Woods." She crosses the set and shakes my hand—firm, direct, no performance in it. "Thank you for being here."

"Thank you for having me."

"How's training?"

"Better every day."

She smiles. It's a genuine smile, which is interesting. "Sit. Let's talk before we tape."

The pre-interview lasts twenty minutes.She covers the logistics—format, timing, and what the segment is building toward. Then she sets down her notes and looksat me with the attention of someone who has decided to be honest with a subject rather than strategic.

"I want you to know where I'm coming from," she says. "I covered Andi's story. I know what she went through, and I know what it cost her. I'm not interested in adding to that. But I'm also a journalist, and the Commission review is a story, and you're here, and I'm going to ask you about it."

"I know," I say.

"What I'm not going to do is frame it as guilt before you've had a chance to speak. That's not how I work." She pauses. "If you're honest with me, I'll be fair with you. That's the only deal I can offer."

I look at her for a moment.

"I'll take it," I say.

The producer counts them in. The cameras go live. Lindsey Blair's on-air presence settles into place like a second skin—the same person, slightly elevated, the warmth calibrated rather than performed. She introduces the segment, lays out the context of Luke Woods emerging from Joe Caruso’s training facility as a legitimate heavyweight contender, and then turns to me with the ease of someone who does this effortlessly.

"Let's start with the Commission review," she says. "Because I think the audience deserves to hear it from you directly."

"I appreciate that," I say. "The review is procedural. An anonymous complaint was filed referencing fights I was involved in before I turned professional. Fights that weren't sanctioned. I'm not going to pretend they didn't happen. They did. That was a part of my life, and it made me the fighter I am, and I'm cooperating fully with the review."

"You're not disputing the history."

"No. I'm disputing the framing. There's a difference between a young man fighting in unsanctioned bouts to survive and a professional athlete with integrity problems. The complaint is trying to collapse that distinction. I don't think it holds."

Lindsey nods. Not agreeing—registering. "Who do you think filed it?"