"I dunno, I dunno. Somethin' musta gone wrong. Maybe he shorted out."
"Or maybe for once you hit the right combination, how about that, Charlie? Maybe I'm real ripe, now, after all these years of tankin' around!"
"But Tanker! Use your head! The Champ's brand new, spankin' young. He's the newest-styled fighting machine in existence. What chance you think we stand against that?"
"Listen. I fought that bum last night with ease, you know that? There I was, just glidin' around him, punchin' him at will—"
"Maybe it was an accident! Maybe somethin' went wrong with his system last night...."
"And maybe I dropped him on the square, too...."
"OKAY!" shouted Charlie Jingle in desperation. "Maybe you did. And maybe, if you go in against the Champ, maybe he'll kill you! Maybe he'll smash you so hard I won't be able to put you together again. You wanna take that chance? Or you wanna settle down nice and quiet in some Pug factory, supervisin' young fighters?"
"Naw!" yelled the Tanker. "I wanna take that chance! I want you to get me a fight with the Champ!"
"Are you dumb, or what? Don't you know they never come back?"
"All I know is this," began the Tanker. "Fourteen years we bin together. Fourteen years you stuck it out and starved it out, workin' with scraps from a junk-heap, with stumble-bums like me who've seen their day. There was times when you went hungry because the junk-heap needed oil, or wiring, or a pattern-analysis, or parts. Now you got something! Now you can be on top! You know damn well you don't want any part of that Hollywood fiasco. You got a crack at big money. You gonna let it go by-the-by because you're afraid a pile of wires might get killed? Naw! We fight, and that's the way it stacks!"