- — Plutor
Antonia Pery
From The Great Outdoor Fight
1952 Champion. Antonia Pery (who, as has been the tradition for female competitors, registered under the Sobriquet Rouge "Franky Tesmoreno"), one of the few female Fight victors, also ranked among the most brutal fighters ever to participate. Until the advent of "The Man With Blood On His Hands", Ms. Pery was reknowned for her signature disemboweling tactic, taking the phrase "I'll wear your guts for garters" to an entirely new level.
Why Ms. Pery took up the Mantle of the fight is uncertain, as is the reason she eschewed an army, perfering to fight alone. What is known, is this woman set an unprecedented pace in the fight, prompting its fastest finish ever, seven hours into the second day.
Pery is largely considered an enigma in the Fight. She qualified in New Brunswick, Canada, though she was not actually Canadian (see the Ottawa Hypothesis for discussions on the comparative lack of Canadian Fighters). She admitted she qualified there because she was certain she would get a slot. Once into the gate, she surprised many of her fellow Fighters with her unprecedented savagery.
Students of the Fight say that while Pery was without a doubt effective, she lacked grace or style. "That there girl's nothing but hate, blood and nails," Young Jude Surrency remarked. Her preferred takedown -- if one could call it that -- was to disembowel her opponents. The first time she used a pointy rock. After that, she got hold of rib bones of some of her defeated opponents and used them as weapons to rip open her enemies.
Some theories stated Pery was in a Dutch fugue, but eyewitness accounts report she lacked the detachment common to that condition. She was apparently laughing and taking glee as she tore through her enemies, often taunting them as they bled to death. She was indiscriminate, happy to take on a weak or strong opponent, depending on who she saw next.
Her victory was assured in part by the tactics of her opponents, of course. No less than six factions arose that year, and they were involved in battles on all sides. Eliminations ran rampant even without Pery. However, Pery's singlemindedness, her remarkable endurance -- she neither rested nor took her feast, spending much of the night between days 1 and 2 taking out people who were trying to sneak off and sleep or watch the various entertainments the Fight puts on for the Fighters in the evenings. Several of the stronger opponents were taken down under the cover of darkness by Pery's assaults. And when the second day dawned, the command structure of the Fight was so decimated that a free forming mob tore itself apart, leaving only nineteen people after two hours into day two.
Over the next five hours, Pery was the woman to stop, but her opponents simply couldn't match her ferocious glee. In the end, she disemboweled Stark John Burness at the very last, winning the shortest Fight on record. It is estimated that she disemboweled eighty-seven people and contributed to at least fifty-four other defeats -- almost always taking down leaders or other lynchpins and thereby increasing the eliminations done in the chaos surrounding her as well. Indeed, her victory is often ascribed to careful scrum management (which again suggests she wasn't in a fugue state).
At present, she stands as the last woman to win The Fight. She has been interviewed several times, but has little to say other than she enjoyed her Fight a very great deal and that it was so nice of the Fight to give her a venue that let her kill so many people. Little to nothing is known of Pery's life, though it is known that she attended the 1984 Fight, observing from Tower One and looked at least seventy five years of age at the time. It is also worth noting she greatly enjoyed watching the Dutch fugue of Fauntleroy Brown.
It is not known if Antonia Pery is still alive as of this writing. She would have to be approaching (or over) 100 years of age if she were.
The case of Antonia Pery has often been cited in Fight Studies, particularly on the role of the Fight as a "safety valve" for psychopathic behavior.
Della Child recorded a song called "Antonia Pery" in 1997.
[edit] Record
- 1952 - Champion - Last "Man" Standing
Categories: Fighter | Champion | Woman
