Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan

Author:Declan Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Young God of the Catskills I

Mike Tyson is twenty years, four months and twenty-two days old

and in the dressing room of the Hilton Hotel.

He’s breaking down his gloves:

pushing the leather to the back,

so his knuckles can pierce through.

He’s afraid of everything.

During training he’s been afraid of the world champion,

Trevor Berbick.

He’s dreamed of Berbick beating him.

‘The closer I get to the ring

the more confident I get,’ he will later explain.

‘Once I’m in the ring I’m a god.’

‘I try to catch them right on the tip of the nose,

because I try to punch the bone into the brain.

People don’t have the slightest idea

of just how hard it is

to break somebody’s jaw or eye socket.

They think it’s just the power.

But it’s the accuracy of the power.

Every punch is thrown with bad intention and the speed of the devil.’

It will take Tyson five minutes and thirty-five seconds

to dispose of Berbick.

The final punch,

a left to Berbick’s temple,

will knock the champion down three times:

Berbick’s brain won’t accept he’s finished.

The first time he’ll fall flat on his back

in the centre of the ring.

The second, he’ll collapse sideways into the ropes.

The third time he will fall

forwards, failing to extend his hands

in time to save his face.

Tyson will celebrate with a shrug,

a kiss on the lips of his manager.

‘My record will last for immortality.

It will never be broken.

It’s ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.’

Years on, believing God to be a regular visitor

to his apartment and himself the world champion,

Berbick will be attacked

by a twenty-year-old with a length of pipe

and left to die in a churchyard.

Fifty-two at the time of his death, according to boxing records;

some reports will have him as fifty-six, others as forty-nine.

‘Legally, I’m a spirit,’ he will say between this night

and that. ‘I have no age.’

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