CBC-Sports

Boxing's greatest one-hit wonder

February 10, 2010 02:13 PM | Posted by   Chris Iorfida  

As we switch into Vancouver Games overdrive, spare a moment for the 20th anniversary on Feb. 11 of a truly Olympic feat in sports history, the shocking upset win by James (Buster) Douglas over Mike Tyson for the heavyweight title.

Yes, it's been 20 years. For myself, and my equally fight-obsessed brother, Tyson-Douglas was the one that got away.

After watching all manner of flotsam and jetsam evaporated by Iron Mike by that point, I decided in my first year of university to use that weekend to finally commit to an oft-delayed visit with relatives who lived nearby instead of my usual regimen of Saturday night studying.

After all, Douglas was barely a top 10 contender who had lost in the past to previous Tyson victims Jesse Ferguson and Tony Tucker.

In those pre-Internet days, where you couldn't just find this stuff out in seconds, I also messed up on the start time of the fight in Japan so when we were watching the CBC news and the sportscaster - I think it might have been Debbie Lightle-Quan - said "this just in" and read the result, I refused to believe it was true. My relatives got a real big kick out of this, grilling me on whether I thought the news people make stuff up. And here I am in the media.

My brother had a more social time of it that night, hanging out with friends, but he too didn't go out of his way to watch. He arrived at a Niagara Falls, N.Y., bar showing the fight, just in time to see Douglas sobbing while being interviewed by Larry Merchant.

"Did he get his ass kicked?" he asked a bar patron.

"No, he kicked Tyson's ass."

"I beg your pardon?"

The fight famously never had a moneyline offered by any of the biggest books in Las Vegas, that's how much a formality it seemed.

We later found out that Tyson hadn't exactly been spartan-like in preparations and had been dropped in sparring by Greg Page. He had broken up with Robin Givens and was also fighting without proven trainer Kevin Rooney, with his corner that night resembling the Keystone Kops.

But given that Tyson's title defences were climbing into the double digits by that point, you can't sell me on the notion that this was the first time he took an opponent lightly, especially given some of the addled contenders who dotted the landscape back then (click HERE to see which former Tyson challenger spends more time looking for a fix than with any of his 16 children from various mothers).

The fact of the matter is that Douglas executed a great game plan like only a handful of other fighters have in history.

Jab vs. punch

The fight showed how crucial and underrated the jab is as a punch. It's crazy how often it is neglected in big fights, but Douglas gave a blueprint for men like Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, timing Tyson like a metronome with double and triple jabs. Holyfield added a diet of elbows and butts, making the bully cry - and bite.

The Douglas performance also proved how indomitable the will can be when a guy feels like he's got nothing to lose. We had seen just about a year earlier Thomas Hearns come up with his best late-career performance just a few days after his brother had been fatally shot.

Douglas was dealing with the death of his mother, who died during the run up to the Tyson fight.

The uppercut Douglas took in the eighth round that sent him to the canvas for a nine-count was actually one of the most impressive punches Tyson ever landed. Maybe only Gene Tunney against Jack Dempsey in the famous Long Count fight would beat it in boxing history on the list of the top 10 survived knockdowns of all time.

It takes a special kind of discipline and dedication to win the title against one of the best fighters in the game, but it takes even more to stay on top (see the likes of Bernard Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather).

Douglas showed he lacked that quality big-time by packing on 15 more pounds and cashing out his chips eight months later with in a megabucks defence against Holyfield. That was a fight my brother and I weren't going to miss, shelling out closed-circuit money (at Don Cherry's Grapevine) for a dreadful undercard during the short-lived boxing heyday of The Mirage, an ample description for the Douglas effort that night. Hey, we were far from the only suckers.

After a mortality scare related to massive weight gain, Douglas has by all accounts lived a fairly mundane life. He hasn't exactly strived for the same kind of heights outside the ring, but given the many sorry tales of ex-champions swindled, beaten down or numbed by drugs and drink, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Douglas is scheduled to be in the studio for ESPN's Friday Night Fights this weekend. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say.

What are your memories of the Douglas-Tyson fight, either watching or learning about the outcome? Did any other fights you can remember produce the same level of shock?

WHAT TO WATCH

If you can find an Internet feed, there is a Top Rank card on Saturday that features two of the best little men in the business in separate bouts - Mexico's Fernando Montiel and Nonito Donaire of the Philippines.

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