The Morning According to Us: The NEXT Redemptive Tale in Sports

Meet Skeet Reese, the best bass fisherman in the world. And a pretty good cage dancer too. Yep.

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We could have found his next sporting role.

It's a shame Mickey Rourke didn't win last night, but let us steer him to his next redemptive sports role: a man named Skeet is the best bass fisherman in the world. That's the end of the tale, Mr. Rourke. The beginning and middle is oh so very interesting. It involves, among other things, cage dancing.

Skeet Reese was a troubled kid in Santa Rosa, California. No real family.

"I raised myself," he says.

As a teenager Skeet got big time into goth. Wore eyeliner. Had earrings. Drank. Did all sorts of drugs. Skeet dropped out of high school his junior year. He quickly realized that a shelf-stocker's salary leaves little discretionary pay, especially for distractions of the salacious kind. So he turned to, yep, house music and hip-hop.

See, Skeet Reese, this grunge- and metal-worshiper, loved to dance. As a younger boy, he saw the power it held over girls; at night, he took to teaching himself. By the time he'd dropped out of school, he was so good DJs and nightclubs around L.A. began paying him to appear. Soon he was a cage dancer, doing things that "I don't talk about out of respect for my family."

This wasn't exactly a fulfilling career choice. In his idle time, then, he fished for bass. He'd fished as a grade schooler, but as a 22-year-old man, Skeet rediscovered the lake's serenity. Out here was what he'd been searching everywhere else for.

So, potential director: (Darren Aronfonsky again, if he's not too busy with Robocop?) it would seem all you'd need from there is a montage that shows Skeet cleaning up his act, dedicating himself to the sport, and, ultimately, in the final frame, ruling the world. But Skeet's life hasn't been so tidy.
For one, he never really cleaned up. He drives a truck that he has to climb a ladder to get into. He blares hip hop at every dock. And he still sometimes dyes his hair. More than any of this, Skeet has inspired other alterna-fisherman to let their freak jigs fly deep into that peaceful pond. Skeet is a bit of a patriarch of the BASS's freak movement. Ish Monroe talks trash to his fish. Mike Iaconelli break dances at weigh ins. Skeet preceded them all and today—six years after Iaconelli won the Bassmaster—finally stands above 'em.

And Mickey, you wouldn't even have to get into shape for this role.

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