Krishna, seeing this, asked the driver to make way with the beast for Him. At this the rider urged the infuriated beast towards Him.
With a smile, Krishna grasped with his soft little hand the nose of the furious beast, who, with a bellow, fell to the ground lifeless, dragging the driver down with him.
Krishna then tore the tusks from the brute's head; and Rāma and Krishna entered the wrestling grounds with the tusks in their hands and blood-stained from the slaying of the beast.
Kangsa's heart sank at the sight, and even the wrestlers recoiled in terror at the blood-stained figures who gazed on them with supernatural power in their youthful eyes.
Yet true to the command of Kangsa, Chānoor, the chief of the wrestlers, cried: "Come, ye youngsters, good wrestlers are ye! The good king hath invited you to participate in the contest, so come and wrestle and give pleasure to King Kangsa, he who is the greatest of all kings and men.
With a smile all-wise Krishna looked at the wrestlers, then, with eye aslant, he gazed on Kangsa, who trembled at the look; and answered Chānoor thus: "Though subjects of King Kangsa, yet only boys of the forest are we, unlearned in the art of wrestling. Therefore, we pray you, match us with boys of our age and not with men whose muscles are iron and whose hearts are bold as a lion's. If we are to meet men like these, unfair is the game, and unjust, and we decline the arrangement." Then Chānoor became insolent, because of the confession of Krishna which he thought was made in weakness, and cried:
"O thou who hast killed the furious elephant as if in sport, thou askest to be matched with one of thine own age! With me thou shalt wrestle, me the most powerful, the strongest man of the age, and Rāma shall match with Mushtik; and, be it just or unjust, fair or unfair, thee I will fight and fight to kill." And so a combat began between the man that was mortal and the youth that was God.
The man a giant was of colossal brute force, of stature great, with muscles all knotted and crooked as the boughs of an oak-tree of many years' growth.
And the Boy, smooth as a sweet maiden, all curved with grace, smilingly awaited the onslaught.
Forward the wrestler came, with the snort of a wild bull, to meet the Boy, who, calm and serene, smiled in his eye.