People denigrated Mike Tyson after James “Buster” Douglas, who was flabby but ready and had heart, beat him bloody in 1990. People had always made fun of Mike for his lisp and teeth and gentle nature. But suddenly people began to say he always was susceptible, never was a great threat – that he had never faced any real challenge in the heavyweight drought of the eighties. In 1990, experts could see that he had let himself go.
Robin Givens and her mother had been taking advantage of him for a year or more. He had taken to listening to the Deep Magic of Don King and the Nation of Islam. Sometime after the shameful Douglas fight he raped a black beauty contestant. The downfall was complete for the time being.
The experts had said the way to beat him would be to hold your ground, show no fear or weakness, assert yourself. Treat him like a bully that needed to be put in his place. People shared the common knowledge: the best thing to do with a bully is to stand up to him. Maybe because all bullies are cowards, or because all bullies can be beaten. These are not my experiences.
When I teach people fishing for stream trout, I try to pound into their heads the three things that our beautiful adversary needs. The first thing a trout in a stream needs is respite from the relentless current that always pushes, rest found behind an obstacle, or in an eddy, or in deeper, slower water. The second thing needed is food, which always drifts or swims down to or near him in the current. The third is protection, and because all of his enemies come from above (eagles, osprey, mink and otter), he likes to hide under logs or vegetation, or hide his profile in the shimmering waters of a shallow riffle. Or hide at the bottom of a deep pool.
The Kadunce is no river. It is a stream. I have even fished it upstream where it is a creek.
One time in high summer and low water, I took a middle-aged husband and wife to the grotto of the narrow, first (9’) waterfall, under which is the pool. It is very cramped fishing and I had the woman on the right wall roll casting into the pool, and the man on the left wall casting right to left at the waterfall and drifting deep in the pool. They had to take turns casting so their lines wouldn’t cross in the close gorge.
Then from downstream splashing in the shallow waters here comes a group – maybe a dozen – of kids and teenagers, and a young woman herding them from behind.
The lead kids stumbled and splashed right by me through the riffles, and up along the left wall alongside my husband client, and they started to inch past him over the pool at the falls.
“Hey!” I finally shouted. “What’re you doing? We’re fishing here!” All the group stops.
And the young woman, coming up, says, “We’re just going to climb up the waterfall,” and she started on.
“We’re fishing here! You’ll scare the fish!”
“We’ll go alongside and up the waterfall.”
“The fish can see! And hear you! There’s another way around you can take.”
“We don’t want to go up and around!” she pushed back.
“There’s a secret way. I’ll show you.”
The young woman was getting hysterical. She mumbled the requisite comment, “I’m local,” and when I had led her and shown her the secret passage up behind the promontory and around the waterfall to upstream, she stormed by me. I watched her throw a rock down the gorge over the falls into the pool, and shout something about fish, or fishing, or fisherman, nothing nice.
I don’t know if it is politically or morally correct to like Mike Tyson. Anyway he is only my 2nd favorite fighter – Alexis Arguello is my #1 favorite.
I don’t think he was a bully way long ago. It’s hard to know sometimes, especially when I examine myself. It’s difficult for me to assert myself. I guess most often I just get stepped on. Sometimes I’m assertive, and ready and courageous. Other times I unleash in a rage, as if I’m human and not dead, or an animal and still fighting.
Maybe someone who likes Mike Tyson and is like him in some ways just shouldn’t be around people.
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