Confrontation Between Chuck Cox and Steven Powell: ‘Tame as a Teddy Bear!’

Chuck Cox verses Steven Powell (a rumble in the jungle) can be viewed in three parts on YouTube. I will link for you Part 2, but I would expect you will desire to watch the Prequel and the Sequel. Initial reports characterized this confrontation of sorts (by the father of Susan Powell and her father-in-law) as charged with hostility.

On the other hand, after multiple viewings, I found the video to be civilized, playing to the cameras (since they both have media sabe), a trifle mellow actually. As an example, Steve waxes for a moment about Susan’s diaries, which he and Josh are threatening to publish, as painting an entirely different picture as to who Susan really was/is (perhaps a bit coquettish).

Chuck Cox remains stoic, gentlemanly, good mannered as he can be while Steve recasts an image of Susan that is unrecognizable to her friends and family. Chuck hardly requires a restraining order, such as Josh is seeking, but this is a canny strategy of the Powells, to make Chuck look like a vindictive, bitter father, bent on revenge.

steve cox susan powell

Josh’s request for a protective order against Chuck Cox was denied on Tuesday by a Superior Court commissioner in Tacoma. The commissioner did order them to stay at least 500-feet away from each other, however. There was no mention of Steven Powell having to keep his distance from the Cox family, I might mention.

After all, it was Steve who made a dramatic unwanted guest appearance at the Fred Meyers Grocery Store parking lot (in Puyallup, Washington) on Saturday. I should add, there was a non-toxic ‘honk and wave’ happening, that only had a simple goal of keeping Susan’s case in front of the public eye. This was coordinated (I should think) with the unexplained search of abandoned mine shafts, by the West Valley police, in Ely, Nevada as a backdrop.

chuck cox steve powell two

That’s a tangential issue, but the mine searches are the gasoline on the already burning flames undulating out-of-control over in Puyallup. Alright, I’m exaggerating, but isn’t Josh exaggerating also when he said he thought his father-in-law was going to kill him at a Lowe’s home improvement store last month? What exactly happened at the Lowe’s that was so incendiary?

We prefer to believe that the exchange at Fred Meyers was charged with bile and venom. We may fantasize it’s a repeat of the fight of the past two centuries, The Rumble in the Jungle (Muhammad Ali verse George Foreman, October 30, 1974 in the Congo).

It was anything but. As mellow as the Grateful Dead playing a free show in the Haight. The two teddy bears were perfect gentlemen. Santa Ana said, after crushing the Alamo: “It was but a small affair.” An apropos quotation as an analogy.

Why is this tepid bicker (scrap, hassle, brush, brawl, feud, dispute, oppugn, battle, spar, quarrel, dual, bandy, skirmish) going viral on the internet? Not much meat to eat (where’s the beef?). My best theory is that it beats Reality TV hands down.

Why? Because it’s not scripted. RTV is not real, really! This is real. Both fathers believe strongly in their respective causes. We want the truth, and we feel as if by watching them spar, the truth will be revealed unto us.

Steve Powell and Chuck Powell Part 2