The man who tamed Tyson.

[The Comedian]

Spotted a wonderful interview with Buster Douglas in The Scotsman. Spurned on by the death of his 'momma' the 42-1 shot destroyed a in his prime Mike Tyson in Tokyo. Fantastic scenes...

 

Link

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt8LZ8FjGN8

 

TWENTY YEARS, he says. Twenty years! Where'd that time go? He wants to know. "What happened, man? Somebody stole my life. Hehehehe." He can close his eyes now and be back in Tokyo in a heartbeat; tenth round in the Dome, a right, a left, a right, a left and down Mike Tyson goes. Goliath on his ass. Greatest upset in the history of boxing, that's what they called it. Greatest upset in the history of sport, you might say. "My moment," says James 'Buster' Douglas. "My night. Twenty years, right? Whaddya wanna know, dude?"

 

"You remember your odds, Buster?"

 

"Yes sir, 42-1."

 

"You remember the press conference?"

 

"Oh, man. Let me tell you about that. Day before the fight it was. Mike went first. About 300 reporters in the room. Questions, questions, questions. Mayhem. I go second. And the room empties. I'm looking down at five guys and rows of upturned seats. Felt sorry for the writers actually. They couldn't think of a damn thing to ask me. Eventually, one fella says, 'So you're Buster Douglas from Columbus, Ohio?" I'm thinking, 'What's that? An identification before the murder?'"

 

"Nobody gave you a chance. Tyson was an animal, he was..."

 

"He was a man, same as the rest of us."

 

"He was a monster, Buster. The baddest man on the planet. Won 37 out of 37 before you beat him. Won 32 by knockout. Won 17 of those in the first round. He was 24 years old and in his prime. Reduced Michael Spinks to tears just by looking at him. You weren't scared like everybody else?"

 

"Never been scared in the ring. Been scared out of it, but not in. My momma, Lula Pearl, she scared me plenty. And my dad, Billy 'Dynamite' Douglas. And my grandad, James 'Pillsbury Doughboy' Douglas. Most scared I've ever been was when I was a kid and I came home crying and my mom says, 'What's the matter with you?' and I say, 'A boy's threatening to beat me up'. She threw me down on the floor and put her knee on my chest and said, 'You don't stand up for yourself, then I'll be the one doing the beating'. She was my hero, God rest her. Tyson? Nah, nothing to be scared of there. I was in the ring and he was looking over at me and doing his thing, ya know? Staring through me. Acting like this was gonna be over real quick. The whole atmosphere was like that. But me? I was peaceful, man. In the zone. I had my stuff together."

 

Everybody thought they knew Buster. They knew he had talent; size and speed and skill that when turned on to its maximum amounted to an impressive fighting machine. But they also knew other things, these reporters who walked out on him. They knew that mentally he was weak, that it didn't take much to demoralise him, that he'd given up in fights in the past, fights that he was winning but that he suddenly, and inexplicably, lost interest in. They knew that Buster really didn't like the fight game all that much, that in his heart of hearts he didn't want to be in the ring at all. Basketball was his first love. Only reason he was boxing was to please old Dynamite.

 

His dad had been a contender at middleweight and light heavyweight in the 1960s and 1970s, but had never quite made it. Dynamite wanted his son to achieve what he never did. And, oh boy, that caused some friction. "He was a great father, but he was intense. So, so intense. He was relentless. Pushing me and pushing me. It was like the clash of two personalities, him all driven and focused and me, well, laidback, I guess. I loved him, but I was never like him."

 

There were other things going on as well, he says. Things that contributed in big ways and little ways to the man he was on that February night two decades ago. Back in May of '82, his 17-year-old brother, Arthur, got killed when a pistol fell off the top of a fridge at a friend's house and discharged in the side of his head. Hardly a day went by without him thinking of Artie. In the early weeks of 1990, Buster's marriage to Bertha Paige was at an advanced stage of collapse and another woman, Doris Jefferson, the mother of his son, was lying seriously ill in hospital.

 

On top of that came the sudden death of his beloved mother, 23 days before the Tyson fight. He tells you about that, but stops and starts as he does so, the emotion still raw. "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. Everything was going awry. I had my biggest fight ever and there were these storms going on in my life. Then she died. A stroke, right out of the blue. I went over to her house to be with her. 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."

 

His people reckoned that Buster wouldn't fight, that the tragedy would skew his focus and obliterate his desire. His manager, John Johnson, took him aside and said, "Kid, we can call this thing off here and now", but Buster wouldn't hear of it. The quitter was not about to quit, not this time. Instead he trained hard and often and got himself into the condition of his life; 232lbs in his 6ft 4in frame. Tyson, meanwhile, was making changes of his own.

 

The champ had not long since gotten rid of Kevin Rooney as trainer, a blunder that would cost him dear. Rooney was a pro, a brilliant operator with years of experience. A father figure in a sense. In his place came a bunch of compliant amateurs, the kind of crew who were too sycophantic to challenge Tyson when he needed challenging. He arrived in Tokyo in a full-length white fur coat and paraded himself about town like he was in no danger in the Dome. He had every reporter and every television crew in his slipstream. He said he was going to knock Douglas out, but he wasn't sure exactly when or precisely how. An uppercut in the first, perhaps. Or maybe a thudding right-hand in the second. He doubted it would go three rounds. Certainly wouldn't go four.

 

"People were throwing the Tony Tucker fight at me all the time," says Buster. "Oh, man, they never stopped. This was three years earlier, right. I was beating Tucker. I was winning the fight and then something happened and I just, kinda, stopped fighting. I don't know why. My camp was an unhappy one at the time, maybe that had something to do it. My trainer and manager were arguing with my dad a lot. Dad wanted a say in things and they didn't want him around and I was just left in the middle and it got on top of me a bit. Hell, I don't know. But I lost to Tucker and everybody said I gave up. And if I gave up against Tucker, what chance had I against Mike?

 

"But I was a different guy. You know what I was like in the dressing room? I was anxious, but not because I was fighting Tyson, but because I was afraid that something was going to happen and the fight would be off. I was feeling so good and I was so convinced I could win I was praying: 'Please let this fight go ahead, because I'm ready now.' My mom was watching over me. Every step, I felt her presence. Every step."

 

It only took a few moments of round one for the world to realise that Douglas' head was in the right place this time. He landed some haymakers that shook the champ. When Tyson landed some good shots of his own, Douglas didn't flinch or fall. When Tyson pulled a stunt, a stiff arm into his rival's face, he got the same back. They exchanged looks at the midway point and the expression on Tyson's face was one nobody had ever seen before. He had the demeanour of a confused man. And the swollen left eye of a fighter under pressure.

 

"That ****ing guy is scared to death," Johnson told Buster. Into the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and seventh and Buster was dominating, hitting with the jab, landing punches in clusters. "In the eighth, I was so confident I started to admire my work. Bop, bop, bop. I'm picking him off. I'm great! I lose concentration for a second and I'm down. Oh man, disaster. He caught me with a big uppercut and I'm on the canvas. Idiot! I punched the floor in anger at my own stupidity. But I got up and then the bell went and everybody in my corner was going, 'He comin' for you now, Buster. He comin'. You ready for this, coz he comin' with everything he got'."

 

The ninth was one of the great rounds in heavyweight boxing history; Tyson shoots out of his corner like a rocket, the baddest man reborn. But Douglas refuses to give way. They trade blows and then Buster gets on top again, rocking the champ, bullying the bully and doing it in style. "Beautiful," says Bert Sugar, the legendary boxing writer. "Just beautiful."

 

In the tenth, Douglas lands a four-punch combination that sends Tyson to the floor, his gumshield spinning out of his mouth and coming to rest beside his prone body. He paws at the canvas and sticks it back in his mouth, half in and half out. No way he's getting up, no way. One minute and 23 seconds into the tenth round at the Tokyo Dome, boxing witnesses its greatest upset of all time.

 

"They interviewed me in the ring straight after. Emotional, you know. All I was thinking about was my mother. God bless her heart. I think it was destiny's work that night. I believe it. My mom dying, my marriage breaking up. Other things, too. All sent to test me. But I passed the test. That was the greatest day of my life."

 

It was a fleeting glimpse of Buster at his best. Those same writers who said he was a chump now spoke of his potential greatness, his undoubted ability to become one of the most formidable heavyweights of them all, if he kept it together upstairs. But there was little chance of that, alas. Later in 1990, Buster fought Evander Holyfield in his first defence of the title. He got $24 million for his efforts, which were pathetic. He lost in three rounds. Holyfield put him down and Buster had no heart to get up. He was branded a disgrace, a coward, a cheat.

 

"Truth was, I didn't want to fight. Psychologically, I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I wish I had been, but I just didn't have it in me. I was Dynamite Douglas's boy, but I never had the desire he had. So I lost my title and missed a great opportunity. Could have made $100m if I'd beaten Evander and got a rematch with Mike. Not to be, though. Not to be. I got in trouble after that. You know what happened, right?"

 

Buster cut himself off from his people for a while and things went downhill rapidly. He ate too much, drank too much, partied hard and never trained. He missed his mother and felt angry at how he threw away his title. He sank into a depression and became obese, 25 stones and up. And then his body packed in. Four years after beating Tyson he was in a coma. Three days it lasted. "Real scary. Life-threatening. People thought I wasn't gonna survive. I was in the dark and all I was doing was looking for some light. Searching. And the light come back on, thank God. I looked at it like a second chance. I needed to get things back in order. I come out of it, man. Feel blessed now. I do."

 

Six years after losing to Holyfield, Buster made a comeback, fighting nine times and winning eight of them. The one he lost was for a version of the heavyweight title he once owned, but he dealt with it fine this time. He just went back to his place in Columbus, Quick Jab Ranch, to be with his wife and kids, where he remains to this day. Life has thrown him all sorts of challenges in the meantime. A second brother, Robert, was killed in a gun fight in 1998 and his dad passed away from cancer a year later. "I've had stuff to deal with, but who doesn't? I'm pretty content now. I've got a great family and a good life. I've got some money and some projects I'm chasing. And I've got people all around the world who remember who I am."

 

Remember? How could we ever forget.