The rumble of eighteen-wheelers echoed through the Texas dusk as Wade “Big Rig” Rollins and Dale “Rusty” Crenshaw pulled into a truck stop just outside Amarillo. Their rigs—chrome-covered, bug-splattered beasts—hissed as they parked side by side. Both men were in their early fifties, leather-skinned from years on the road, still big and strong from decades of loading freight and living hard.
But these days, hauling wasn’t their only gig.
They were part of an informal, spread-out brotherhood of long-haul drivers—men who shared more than just rest stop tips and highway shortcuts. This crew, known quietly on CB radios and burner phones as The Convoy Club, had a different kind of cargo: women who fought. And not just any women—tough, older, hard-living women who knew pain, wanted cash, and loved the thrill of a fight.
It had started a few years back. Wade had picked up Marlene at a greasy truck stop in Nebraska—a fifty-something waitress with dyed red hair, thick thighs, and a mouth like barbed wire. She’d told him over a coffee and pie that she used to brawl for money in Oklahoma City. Wade had taken her to a buddy’s yard in Albuquerque where another driver had a similar woman with fists like hammers. They’d fought in a circle of headlights and cheering men, and from then on… the idea spread.
Now it was a regular thing, unofficial but consistent. Men like Wade and Dale picked up women who were down on their luck—many overweight, most north of forty, all with something to prove. They’d ride in the cab for a few days, trade stories, flirt, maybe more. But most importantly, they fought. For $500 a match, sometimes more.
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That night in Amarillo, Wade spotted a familiar face at the diner attached to the stop. Darla. Big gal, late forties, long bleach-blonde hair, heavy in the hips and chest, but quick with her hands. She’d fought twice before—once in a rest stop parking lot outside Flagstaff, once behind a weigh station in Missouri.
She lit up when she saw him. “Wade, you old bastard. You got room for a mean bitch like me?”
Wade grinned. “Always, Darla. You still fightin’ or just talkin’ tough?”
“Oh, I’ll throw down. Got rent to pay and rage to spend.”
Dale returned from the pumps and gave Darla a once-over. “You bring her, I’ll find someone to face her.”
Darla leaned back with a smirk. “Find me someone real. Big. Mean. I’m not slappin’ around some baby-face.”
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Two days later, the Convoy Club was rolling through New Mexico. Dale had made a few calls. One of their brothers, Trucker Jim, was rolling out of Phoenix with a woman named Loretta—a large, rough-skinned ex-bartender with a bad knee and a worse attitude. The match was set for that Friday night at a sandlot outside Las Cruces.
Word spread through the club. By the time they arrived, six other rigs were parked in a rough circle, lights shining down on a makeshift ring of old tires and rope. Women hung around the cabs, smoking, stretching, or pacing like animals ready to charge. Most of them weren’t pretty. They were big, bruised, busty, and older. Some in sports bras and cut-off jeans, some in tank tops and leggings too tight for comfort.
But all of them came to fight.
