![]() ![]() “Buster Douglas didn’t get lucky in this fight, it wasn’t a fluke. “People think of it as ‘Mike Tyson lost’ rather than ‘Buster Douglas winning’,” said Schaap. The pair were adamant that this wasn’t necessarily the narrative it has been mythologised to be, and denounced claims that some of Tyson’s actions - such as him having cut ties with his trainer Kevin Rooney - meant that he was the architect of his own downfall in Tokyo. Like David v Goliath entered lexicon, so too has Douglas versus Tyson become the modern-day tagline for the triumph over adversity.Īhead of a 2019 documentary centred on the notorious bout, called ‘42 to 1’, both Douglas and director Jeremy Schaap were interviewed by ESPN. Boxing had witnessed its biggest ever upset. The fight was over and there was a new king. Tyson had put Douglas down in the eighth round with a stinging uppercut, but the underdog had regained his feet and kept working away at his opponent’s increasingly-closed left eye and by the time he delivered the crushing finale Tyson’s legs resembled little more than jelly. Evander Holyfield was in the eye-line (ultimately Tyson and Holyfield wouldn’t actually meet inside the ring for another six years).īut 10 rounds later, Douglas’ hands were in the air and Tyson was flailing around trying to find his gum shield and searching for some safety and support from referee Octavio Meyran, after suffering a four-punch combo that made him taste canvas. Weighing 232lbs in a 6ft 4in frame and with a reputation for lacklustre training and a beleaguered backstory, ‘Buster’ came into the ring to face one of the most feared fighters on the planet.ĭouglas was supposed to be a ‘tune-up’. ![]() Douglas’ professional record was also not overly flattering have posted a 29-4-1 return to that point. Such tragic happenings ahead of the biggest fight - scrap that, the biggest moment - of his life were avalanching, and there was no reason to suspect the bookies were wrong. “She'd always told me not to let anything get in the way of my dream and I decided then that, if nothing else, I had to do it for her.” ![]() “I had my biggest fight ever and there were these storms going on in my life. "You know, she came over to my house a few days before she passed, just to check up on me, to see how I was doing, because I was going through a lot of things at that time.” Douglas would later say in an interview with The Scotsman. Most devastating of all, just 23 days before facing off with Tyson, who at that point possessed a 37-0 record, came the unexpected death of his mother. Then, weeks into 1990, Buster's marriage was all but over and the mother of his 11-year-old son, Doris Jefferson, was lying seriously ill in hospital. Instead Douglas became the first boxer to beat ‘The Baddest Man On The Planet’ in a professional bout, on Februat the Tokyo Dome in Japan’s capital, with Iron Mike floored in the 10th round after a flurry of punches in a largely dominant display by the unfancied boxer from Columbus, Ohio.ĭouglas, as one commentator noted, “had every reason to come into bout depressed and downtrodden” amid circumstances which would have affected the most mentally tuned of pugilists.Įight years earlier in 1982, Douglas’ 17-year-old brother, Arthur, died when a gun fell from the top of a refrigerator at a friend's house and shot him in the head. Those are the odds that bookmakers at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas had given James ‘Buster’ Douglas to win the fight against the undefeated and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, the holder of the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles: Mike Tyson. What do you do when you’re given a 42/1 ‘not-a-chance-in-hell’ price for victory? ![]()
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