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In 1990, James "Buster" Douglas became the undisputed world
heavyweight champion when his controversial knockout victory over Mike Tyson two
days earlier was recognized by two holdout sanctioning bodies (Washington Times,
DC).
James "Buster" Douglas (born April 7, 1960) is an American former
professional boxer who competed from 1981 to 1990, and 1996 to 1999. He
is best known for his stunning upset of Mike Tyson on February 11, 1990
in Tokyo to win the undisputed heavyweight title. At the time Tyson was
undefeated and considered to be the best boxer in the world, as well as
one of the most feared heavyweight champions in history due to his
domination of the division over the previous three years. The only
casino to make odds for the fight (all others declining to do so as they
considered the fight such a foregone conclusion) had Douglas as a
42-to-1 underdog for the fight, making his victory, in commentator Jim
Lampley's words, "The biggest upset in the history of heavyweight
championship fights." Douglas held the title for eight months and two
weeks, losing on October 25, 1990 to Evander Holyfield via third-round
knockout, in his only title defense.
The son of professional boxer William "Dynamite" Douglas, Douglas grew
up in Columbus, Ohio, in the predominantly black Linden neighborhood of
Windsor Terrace. He attended Linden McKinley High School, where he
played football and basketball, leading Linden to a Class AAA state
basketball championship in 1977. After high school, Douglas played
basketball for the Coffeyville Community College Red Ravens in
Coffeyville, Kansas, from 1977 to 1978; the seventeen-year-old was a 6
feet 0 inch power forward. He is in the Coffeyville Community College
Men's Basketball Hall of Fame. He also played basketball at Sinclair
Community College from 1979 to 1980 in Dayton, Ohio, before attending
Mercyhurst University on a basketball scholarship. He moved back to
Columbus to focus on boxing. For a brief period of time during his early
twenties, Douglas was known as the "Desert Fox" within the Columbus
boxing community. This moniker was affixed to Douglas because of a
misinterpreted encyclopedia entry regarding Douglas MacArthur and Erwin
Rommel. Several friends of Buster Douglas mistakenly believed that
Douglas MacArthur was known as the "Desert Fox" and subsequently
addressed the future heavyweight champion as such. However, Buster
Douglas distanced himself from the "Desert Fox" label no later than 1985
because of clarification from his promotional team and the concern that
he might be confused with Syrian boxer Ghiath Tayfour.
Douglas made his debut on May 31, 1981 and defeated Dan O'Malley in a
four-round bout. He won his first five fights before coming into a fight
with David Bey twenty pounds heavier than he usually did in his early
fights. Bey knocked Douglas out in the second round to hand him his
first defeat. After six more fights, all wins, Douglas fought Steffen
Tangstad to a draw on October 16, 1982. He was penalized two points
during the course of the fight which proved to be the difference.
After the draw Douglas beat largely journeyman fighters over the next
fourteen months. Two of his wins were against Jesse Clark. Douglas
fought him a total of three times and knocked him out all three times.
In his last fight of 1983, Douglas was dominating opponent Mike White,
but White knocked him out in the ninth round.
On November 9, Douglas was scheduled to fight heavyweight contender
Trevor Berbick in Las Vegas. Berbick pulled out of the bout three days
before it was scheduled and Randall "Tex" Cobb elected to take the fight
in Berbick's place. Douglas defeated the former heavyweight contender by
winning a majority decision. The next year, he fought up-and-coming
contender Jesse Ferguson, but was beaten by majority decision.
Douglas fought three times in 1986, defeating former champion Greg Page
and fringe contender David Jaco in two of the fights. This earned him a
shot at the International Boxing Federation championship that Michael
Spinks was stripped of for refusing to defend it. Douglas started well
against Tony Tucker and was ahead on points, but he ran out of gas and
was stopped in the tenth round.
After the Tucker defeat Douglas won four consecutive fights and went on
to fight Trevor Berbick in 1989, winning by a unanimous decision. He
followed that up with a unanimous decision victory over future
heavyweight champion Oliver McCall, and earned a shot at the undisputed
heavyweight championship held by Mike Tyson, who became the universally
recognized champion after knocking out Spinks in one round in 1988.
(Douglas fought on the undercard of the event and defeated Mike Williams
by TKO in seven rounds.)
The fight against Mike Tyson was scheduled for February 11, 1990 and
took place in Tokyo at the Tokyo Dome. Almost everyone assumed that the
bout was going to be another quick knockout for the champion. No
challenger had taken Tyson beyond the fifth round since 1987. Many
thought it was just an easy tune-up for Tyson before a future mega-fight
with undefeated Evander Holyfield, who had recently moved up to
heavyweight from cruiserweight where he became the first boxer to be the
undisputed champion of the weight class. Douglas was given so little
chance of lasting against Tyson, let alone beating him, that nearly
every betting parlor in Las Vegas refused to hold odds for the fight.
The one casino that did, The Mirage, made Douglas a 42-to-1 underdog.
Douglas's mother, Lula Pearl, died 23 days before the title bout.[5]
Douglas, who had trained hard, surprised the world by dominating the
fight from the beginning, using his 12-inch reach advantage to
perfection. He seemingly hit Tyson at will with jabs and right hands and
danced out of range of Tyson's own punches. The champion had not taken
Douglas seriously, expecting another quick and easy knockout victory. He
was slow, refusing to move his head and slip his way in (his usual
effective strategy) but rather setting his feet and throwing big,
lunging hooks, repeatedly trying to beat Douglas with single punches. By
the fifth round, Tyson's left eye was swelling shut from Douglas's many
right jabs, and ringside HBO announcers proclaimed it was the most
punishment they had ever seen the champion absorb. Larry Merchant
memorably added, "Well, if Mike Tyson, who loves pigeons, was looking
for a pigeon in this bout, he hasn't found him."
Tyson's cornermen appeared to be unprepared for the suddenly dire
situation. They had not brought an endswell or an ice pack to the fight,
so they were forced to put tap water into a latex glove to hold over
Tyson's swelling eye. By the end of the fight, Tyson's eye had swollen
almost completely shut. In the eighth round, Tyson landed a right
uppercut that knocked Douglas down. The referee's count created
controversy as Douglas was on his feet when the referee reached nine,
although the official knockdown timekeeper was two seconds ahead. In the
ring the final arbiter of the knockdown seconds is the referee and a
comparison with Douglas's winning knockdown count issued to Tyson two
rounds later revealed that both fighters had received long counts.
Tyson came out aggressively in the dramatic ninth round and continued
his attempts to end the fight with one big punch hoping that Douglas was
still hurt from the eighth round knockdown. Both men traded punches
before Douglas connected on a multi-punch combination that staggered
Tyson back to the ropes. With Tyson hurt along the ropes Douglas
unleashed a vicious attack to try to finish off a dazed Tyson but,
amazingly, Tyson withstood the punishment and barely survived the 9th
round. In the tenth round, the severe punishment Douglas had inflicted
on Tyson finally began to take its toll on the champion. Douglas
dominated the round from the outset. While setting Tyson up with his jab
Douglas scored a huge uppercut that snapped Tyson's head upward. He then
followed with a rapid four-punch combination to the head, and knocked
Tyson down for the first time in his career. Tyson struggled to his
knees and picked up his mouthpiece lying on the mat next to him. He
awkwardly attempted to place it back into his mouth. The image of Tyson
with the mouthpiece hanging crookedly from his lips would become an
enduring image from the fight. He was unable to beat the referee's
count, and Douglas was the new world heavyweight champion. As Douglas
said in an interview years later, “I thought Tyson was getting up until
I had seen him looking for that mouth piece and then I knew that he was
really hurt. So anytime you know you only got ten seconds to get up so
you aren’t going to worry about anything but just getting up first. So
when I had seen him looking around for that mouth piece I knew he was
really hurt.” By contrast, during Douglas's knockdown two rounds
earlier, Douglas shows to be ready to continue early in the count (he
bangs his fist against the canvas in frustration at having let Tyson
land the crucial counterpunch, showing no signs of being seriously
hurt). Douglas, however, clearly waits for the referee to count to 8
before getting up.
Douglas's joy over the victory soon turned to confusion and anger as
manager John Johnson informed him in the dressing room that Tyson and
Don King were lodging an official protest about the referee's knockdown
count in the eighth round. A week later, during an in-studio interview
with HBO's Larry Merchant, Douglas admitted that the protest and the
post-fight confusion ruined what should have been the best time of his
life. During that interview with both fighters, Merchant asked Tyson the
first four questions, infuriating Douglas's management crew, who stopped
just short of walking out of the HBO studios.
While the IBF immediately recognized Douglas as its champion, the WBA
and WBC initially refused due to Tyson's protest.[9] However, Tyson
withdrew his protest four days later amid worldwide public outcry and
demands from boxing commissions around the world, and Douglas was
officially recognized as undisputed heavyweight champion.
While still champion, Douglas appeared on the February 23, 1990 episode
of the World Wrestling Federation's "WWF The Main Event", as special
guest referee for a rematch between Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy
Savage. Originally, Tyson was scheduled to be the guest referee, but
following the upset, the WWF scrambled to sign on Douglas for the event.
At the end of the match, Douglas was provoked into a 'storyline' punch
and knockout of Savage, who was the 'heel' wrestler in the match.
The defeated Tyson clamoured for a rematch and Douglas was offered more
money than he had ever made for a fight. Not wanting to deal with
Tyson's camp or his promoter Don King, Douglas decided to make his first
defence against #1 contender Evander Holyfield, who had watched the new
champion dethrone Tyson from ringside in Tokyo. Douglas went into the
October 25, 1990 fight at 246 pounds, 15 pounds heavier than he was for
the Tyson match and also the heaviest he had weighed in for a fight
since a 1985 bout with Dion Simpson, in which he tipped the scale at
just over 247 pounds.
Douglas came out rather sluggish, and was thoroughly dominated by
Holyfield during the first two rounds. In the third round Douglas
attempted to hit Holyfield with a hard uppercut that he telegraphed.
Holyfield avoided the uppercut and knocked an off-balance Douglas to the
canvas with a straight right to the chin. Douglas did not get up, ending
his brief reign. He retired after the fight.
Douglas vs Holyfield was a reported $24.6 million payday for Douglas.
Doing little for the next several years, Douglas gained weight, reaching
nearly 400 pounds. It was only after he nearly died during a diabetic
coma that he decided to attempt a return to the sport. He went back into
training and made a comeback. He was successful at first, winning six
straight fights, but his comeback almost came to a halt in a 1997
disqualification win over journeyman Louis Monaco. In a bizarre ending,
Monaco landed a right hand, just after the bell ending round one, that
knocked Douglas to the canvas. Douglas was unable to continue after a
five-minute rest period and was consequently awarded the win by
disqualification (on account of Monaco's illegal punch).
A fight with light-heavyweight champion Roy Jones, Jr. was touted in the
late 1990s, although ultimately fell through. In 1998 Douglas was
knocked out in the first round of a fight with heavyweight contender Lou Savarese. Douglas subsequently had two more fights, winning both, and
retired in 1999 with a final record of 38–6–1.
Comment:
• In the fight against Tyson, the underdog challenger was competing in the face
of almost unthinkable personal tragedy. His son Lamar's mother was suffering
from cancer. His wife, Bertha, had left him unexpectedly months before. And,
just 23 days prior to the fight, Douglas's mother, Lula Pearl, died suddenly of
a stroke. |
