For the first time in nearly a month, the top billing spot was deserving of the placement, and for those that left early having been disappointed the last 2 weeks – well – you missed a bloody good fight. Mathilda! actually had an opponent who deserved his chance at her, and he came respectably close to taking it.

No protests from the crowds this time. In fact as time ticked by, and blades flashed, and bodies parried and dodged, the edges of the seats started to get a lot more use than they had recently. It took nearly 20 minutes for this one to reach a final conclusion, and the sorcerers in the crowds with the means to record it are going to get a lot of work in the bars and inns of Casablanca this next week, replaying those 20 minutes for the armchair analysts to study. I certainly can’t tell you after this first watching whether it was brilliance by Mathilda! or an eventual mistake by Cassius Reynard that led to a final opening coming available, and being cleanly taken by Mathilda!

Also interesting, is that for the first time in a goodly few weeks, both fighters left the Arena walking. Admittedly, Cassius needed the assistance of the healers in order to achieve that, but the possibility that these two might meet again was not lost on the crowds, and the cheers were loud and long. With this victory, Mathilda! graduates to Junior class. With this loss, Cassius remains a Master class, on 22 victories, so 3 more needed to win free. Cassius will need to return faster than usual though, if he wants another crack at Mathilda! – one way or the other, she’ll be gone by June, and he normally would be back once in March and once in June. Will Mistress Fox risk her only current Master class fighter against the Graeme Helgram stable’s rising star?

Seriously large quantities of money are now changing hands each week on Mathilda!’s fights. The word is that you will be pretty much unable to find a bookie who will take an accumulator bet on Mathilda! at this point. The money men are no longer willing to gamble that she might not pull this feat off.

We shall see, indeed.

It’s official – the crowds at the Casablanca arena have launched a new form of protest as Mathilda! despatched another one this week. As Mathilda!’s offerings continued to be of a gruesome and needlessly violent nature, a significant portion of the audience gave her the finger. But instead of waving it in the air, they stuck it down their throats for a mass synchronised puke protest – presumably as an expression of support for those members of the crowd for whom that reaction to Mathilda!’s wins has been involuntary these last few weeks. I had wondered why the blackcurrant and orange milk shakes had been selling quite so effectively in the half hour before Mathilda!’s fight.

I’m just not getting it. Sorry and all, but I have been a correspondent at the arena for a good few years now, and I had always thought that this was supposed to be entertainment? Thrills and tension as warriors battled it out on the sands, with death and glory as the prize?

So – what is it we’re getting with Mathilda? This week I had trouble working out whether I was in a science fiction story or somehow had fallen down the rabbit hole into Alice in Wonderland, because my first thought was ‘blink and you missed it’ and my second thought was the immortal phrase ‘off with his head’.

I have no idea where she came from – presumably she was somewhere in the ground at the point the president hit the gong,  but within seconds there was the other guy’s head describing an arc, and a fountain of arterial blood spurting from the neck. It took the body longer to fall over than the fight had lasted.

Betting has fallen off markedly on Mathilda’s fights. Until some owner comes up with an opponent who can actually list a blade to her, fighting Mathilda! is going to continue to be a dead loss.

This was one of those rare weeks when more money changed hands before the fighters emerged onto the sands than did after it was all over. Mathilda! returned – which was the big question everybody was betting on. Was she back to full strength – well that question will have to wait for another week, because this week she did not give the poor sod who was put up against her chance to test her in the slightest.

Slightly unexpected however, was the fact that Mathilda! chose to actually butcher the guy out there on the sands. Clearly affected by the surprising dead man’s blow last week, she was clearly not allowing the smallest glimmer of a chance of such an incident being repeated. Somewhat gratuitous, and no doubt traumatic to even a hardened arena audience, Mathulda! demonstrated a skill in the art of evisceration that equals her skills in combat with the living. From the significant quantity of vomiting that took place in the crowds, it was not a demonstration that most of them felt was particularly necessary.