Two sullen, raven-haired beauties. The one physically more imposing; the other faster, spiteful, leaner, and seemingly more alert. I was already thinking of From Russia with Love before Ana María Torres and Mayela Pérez told Esto yesterday they expected their fight would be “to the death”.

Google turned up the whole passage [http://803.engbook.spb.ru/]:-

“While Kerim spoke, Bond examined the two beautiful, taut, sullen animals in the centre of the ring… One was bigger-boned than the other, and obviously stronger, [that would be Torres] but she looked sullen and slow-eyed and might not be quick on her feet. She was handsome in a rather leonine way, and there was a slow red glare in her heavy lidded eyes as she stood and listened impatiently to the head of the tribe. She ought to win, thought Bond. She is half an inch taller, and she is stronger.

“Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther–lithe and quick and with cunning sharp eyes that were not on the speaker but sliding sideways, measuring inches, and the hands at her sides were curled into claws. [this would be Pérez, ‘the Little Cobra’]. The muscles of her fine legs looked hard as a man's… She looks a dangerous little bitch of a girl, thought Bond. She will certainly get in the first blow. She will be too quick for the other“.

Bond, you may remember, was wrong on both counts; and it was only the fortuitous supervention of an explosion that prevented the smaller girl performing the ‘kiss of Dracula’ on her helpless opponent “as she bore down on her with all her weight and bent her to the ground”.

This time, there was no ‘BOOM!’ — only the merciful intervention of a referee — and it wasn’t the Little Cobra’s fangs “reaching towards the offered neck” but something more akin to the finale of Bonnie and Clyde, with one girl trapped on the ropes, helpless, beaten, her body shaking convulsively as she was riddled with… er… (can you be ‘riddled with punches’?).

Well, that’s what it says.

Oh, and it was Torres that won. [TKO 1 min 50 secs into the sixth].

(More details as reports become available).