So unfortunately, Sports on Earth is no longer active, as is one of my favorite stories I had ever written. It had thousands of views and I was honored (and amused) by the comments and the emails. Below for your viewing pleasure is a PDF. Make sure you have a version of adobe reader to open it.
Thank you everyone for your comments and support in regard to the Mike Tyson piece published last month. Some have asked about some other sections that didn’t make the cut or some other interactions with some fighters. Sometimes, to keep the narrative churning, you have make some tough cuts.
I spoke with Chuck Wepner and Ray Mercer. Unfortunately, I did not get to speak to Bernard Hopkins. I actually had no idea he was at the event until he got on the microphone.
So for those that didn’t get enough of Tyson in their diet…here some of the story that unfortunately I had to cut out.
Chuck Wepner is holding court in front of a dozen onlookers at the Venetian ballroom near the honored guest table. The 6’5 bruiser can’t take two steps without someone reaching for his paw and pleading for a photo. With every request, he offers a quick-witted compliment while the wives of his admirers struggle with the camera zoom.
A fan introduces himself and grabs the Bayonne Bleeder’s right hand, the same one that crunched Muhammed Ali’s ribs and forced him to canvas nearly 40 years ago. He whispers in his ear, “You sparred with my brother, Chuck.”
“Hell of a fighter, your brother,” Chuck answers quickly to the unidentifiable face. “I hope he didn’t hurt me too bad.”
I approach. He is huge. I have been around 6’5 athletes before, but I’m in awe of how imposing he is and how big his hands are.
Today my Mike Tyson feature/essay was published in Sports On Earth.
When I had the pleasure of interviewing “Iron” Mike two years ago, it was for the sole purpose of writing a chapter on him for my yet to be finished book, The History of New Jersey Boxing by The History Press.
So as teaching swamped me, and my wife kept magically producing children, and documents became harder to harder to find, the work is still in progress. Yet I always knew I could put a shorter piece together on my night with Tyson, because I got more from him in an hour than I could have ever imaged. And what a story he told me.
For starters, he was an absolute gentleman. He didn’t try to hide when he was bored of one topic or shy of another. He is a tough interview to prepare for, believe it not. Only for the fact that he has been interviewed a billion times, and asked the same questions over and over. What do you ask the most interviewed athlete of our generation?
Over a steak and a beer, I had an hour to put some questions together from when I first realized he was there. (I had prepared for Marvin Hagler!)
No, that is not me next to Iron Mike. Of course the one picture someone took of us talking didn’t come out.
This story went through a few different phases and magazines. This was the right magazine for it. Editorially, I’m very proud of the work Sports On Earth has produced over the past few years, and it is an honor to be a part of the team.
Call “Iron” Mike whatever you want. Don’t ever accuse him of not being forthright and honest.
Thanks for reading.
One of the hardest parts of writing is knowing what goes and knowing what stays. And often, it isn’t you that makes the decision. And often you get irritated – as I do – but eventually you realize that the editor made the write decision in regard to the flow of the narrative.
I really enjoyed interviewing Evelyn, and was disappointed to have her section cut from my latest article. So here is her story.
***
Brooke’s parents were Buddhist, as were most from her region. Yet considering all the assistance shown by the local Christian churches in the refugee camp, they began attending mass. Brooke converted when she was nine, and eventually, so did all her siblings. Her parents had no objection.
She remembers her first Christmas that winter in New Jersey. She found it very strange to have a tree indoors. There were pictures of a large man in a red suit everywhere.
“I thought it was completely bizarre,” she reflects. “Until one day when someone burst into our house and just starting handing us presents. That changed my opinion quickly.”
Check out my newest article this Thursday in Narrative Magazine on Brooke Luu, a Vietnamese refugee who fought for respect and acceptance in America.
I found it amazing when she told me that she didn’t even think she had an interesting story to tell, despite the fact that she escaped Vietnam past armed guards. She told me once that her husband (who is also Vietnamese) had a similar story, but they never even discussed it, because “if you are Vietnamese, then you escaped. We all have that story.”
Amazing.
Check it out on Narratively Magazine on April 10.
Narrative.ly was named one of Time Magazine’s fifty best websites of 2013. No celebrity trash, just good ol’ fashioned long form storytelling.
Here’s a teaser:
Five year-old Brooke Luu shivered as she kept her eyes on her mother. There were forty bodies crammed in that fishing boat, each trying to remain silent in hopes that the guards armed with AK-47s would allow them to pass into the night and leave the shores of Vietnam forever.
She watched intently as her mother repeatedly tried to slip a sleeping pill into her infant brother’s mouth so he wouldn’t cry and alert the border patrol. If caught, the women would be sent home, maybe to jail. As for the men, a worse fate likely awaited them.
Brooke’s mother mishandled the cup of water as she forced the medicine down the child’s throat and the water splashed on him. He wailed as the rest of the passengers grew restless. All she could do was cup her hand over the child’s mouth to muffle the shrieks.
“There was no way around the guards. We would have to go straight through them,” Brooke recalls. “All we could do was pray that they would let us keep sailing.”
To reach their first destination—a relocation camp in Malaysia—the Luu family would have to escape Vietnam and battle the South Chinese River without a compass. Rumors of Thai pirates and their savagery loomed.
All to reach America.
She can’t determine what was real and what her memory has pieced together. The recollections fade and reappear when she recalls that night in 1980 when her family attempted to bribe and fight their way to a new life without Communism, without control and without fear. She would eventually find it, yet later struggle for acceptance in her new country—and in her old one.
“The children of the Vietnam War that fled have been stripped of an identity,” she says. “All because we didn’t stay behind.”
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MichaelPerrota.com 
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