Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson 25th anniversary: Douglas, others recall 'the biggest upset in the history of boxing'

For a guy who really never liked boxing enough to work hard at it, except for a few months before his biggest fight, Buster Douglas seems to have made peace with the sport that made him, at one time, rich and famous.

I found him Tuesday afternoon on the eve of the 25^th anniversary of his greatest moment waiting for his afternoon class of youth boxers to arrive from school at 3 o'clock.

For the last seven months, he's been working with kids at the Thompson Recreation Center as part of the Columbus, Ohio, Parks & Recreation Dept. Over the phone the 54-year-old Douglas sounded excited about taking his boxers on his first big meet:

"Just went to Ashland, Ky., for the Golden Gloves down there. This was my first of many to come."

Tonight they will commemorate Buster Douglas' heroic moment at a charity benefit dinner in Columbus and time will retreat for just a few hours.

They'll remember a virtual nobody with a champion's physique finally fulfill his elusive potential. All because of a strange confluence of factors between challenger Douglas and 3-year champion "Iron Mike" Tyson.

It's been a widely held belief that the death of his mother Lula Pearl gave Douglas the abandon and fearless charge he needed to overcome a fighter most thought invincible. When I asked him, Douglas did not deny it:

"I was already working hard and determined and focused. But when my mom passed, that really intensified it even more. It gave me even more desire.

"We talked a week before she died. She had expressed some concerns about the fight."

Expressed concern how?

"Well, you know, Mike was on a big wave then. He was destroying everything in his path. I know her aunts and her girlfriends were like, 'Lula, woo girl, your baby got a big one comin' up.' I think she was like, let me go talk to my baby and see where he's at."

It's well-known that Tyson's marriage to noted gold-digger Robin Givens was in disarray and that is often rightfully cited as a reason Tyson's head was not totally into the fight.

What is not readily known is that Douglas was enduring marital trouble, as well:

"At the time, I was going through some things with my wife, too. We were separated."

Buster and Bertha, his wife of barely two years, had become estranged. Meanwhile, the mother of Buster's son was battling leukemia. Lula's talk with her son did them both good:

"She wanted to make sure I was focused and on the right course and gonna give it my all. We sat down and discussed it. Once we talked, she was satisfied that I was focused and well on my way to accomplishing my goal. She walked out of there convinced I was gonna do well."

It was the last time Douglas saw his mother. Lula Pearl Douglas, a restaurant cook, died of a stroke on Jan. 18, 1990 - three weeks before the fight.

You know the rest. The 42-1 underdog, a strange hushed crowd at the Tokyo Dome in Japan not believing what it was seeing. And the greatest upset in the history of boxing, maybe all of spectator sport.

"IT WAS THE BIGGEST UPSET IN THE HISTORY OF BOXING"

It happened a quarter-century ago tonight and some of the people most intimately involved count it among the most memorable nights of their lives.

"It was the biggest upset in the history of boxing," said Boston-native pay-per-view announcer Bob Sheridan. "It's certainly the biggest thing that happened in my career before or since. I've done a lot of terrific fights. But nothing as dramatic as that."

"It's absolutely the most memorable and significant event of my life," said John Johnson, son of Douglas' manager of the same name. Now a Columbus attorney, Johnson was a young law student at Ohio State when he took the trip to Japan with his father to basically be a gofer, serve as a liaison between the Douglas camp and the HBO and King telecast crews and do pretty much whatever chores or errands were needed. "It changed everything in my life, everything in my parents' lives."

Johnson saw the fight from the Douglas corner with trainers John Russell and J.D. McCauley, Douglas' uncle. He can be seen in the video, the only one in a white shirt among a crew outfitted in black, jumping into the ring in jubilation after the shocking KO.

Their man, a 29-year-old definition of a journeyman, had pulled off a miracle knockout of Tyson, a front-to-back 10-round rout that would have been considered complete domination if not for a Tyson knockdown of Douglas with a clean uppercut to the chin in the 8^th round.

All of which made Douglas' resounding response in the 9^th, knocking Tyson up against the ropes and bullying him before a saving bell, then his knockout of Tyson in the 10^th, that much more dramatic.

If it'd had nothing to with a heavyweight title, it would have been one of the most entertaining headline fights in boxing history. And because Tyson had been such an unchallenged champion, the unprecedented occurrences kept piling up in a space of minutes.

Sheridan noticed one almost right away: Douglas' long, snapping jab was reaching the champion with impact.

"Prior to that fight, no one had ever forced Tyson to take a step back - except for [British champion] Frank Bruno one time. In those days, everyone was intimidated tremendously by Tyson. And it was clear in the first round Douglas wasn't afraid of him."

DOUGLAS AND TYSON'S DIFFERENT PATHS TO TOKYO

As Don King's closed-circuit announcer since 1968, Sheridan announced virtually every big fight during the sport's golden age including the next two most stunning upsets - George Foreman's 6-knockdown annihilation of champion Joe Frazier in Jamaica in January 1973; and Muhammad Ali's knockout upset of Foreman in Zaire in October 1974.

By the mid-1980s, all three had retired and the sport's heavyweight division was undergoing a depression brought on by chest-thumping neo-Ali wanna-bes who lacked his intellect - the underappreciated "Easton Assassin" Larry Holmes and the Spinks brothers of St. Louis, gap-toothed semi-lucid Leon and pumped-up cruiserweight Michael.

When the piston-fisted teenage Tyson came on the scene, guided by Floyd Patterson's septuagenarian former championship trainer/manager Cus D'Amato and began waylaying through a depleted landscape of has-beens and never-weres, people took notice. Who knew he and a club fighter in Columbus were on a collision course for history?

As a part-time sportswriter for The Columbus Dispatch without a staff byline, using the job to work my way through Ohio State's Industrial Design college, I stumbled upon both fighters before anyone outside of boxing's savant circles had ever heard of them. I was introduced to a 17-year-old amateur Tyson and his assistant trainer Kevin Rooney at the Ohio State Fair boxing competition in August 1983 and watched him knock out a kid from Mississippi named Jerry Goff, then gain a walkover when his would-be No.1-ranked amateur opponent, Kansan Olian Alexander begged off with what he had claimed was a sore left hand. Alexander showed me the hand. It looked pretty normal to me, but who knows?

What I do know is, even at 17, Tyson's inhuman hand speed for a big man generated fear in almost every fighter who saw him. Alexander would not have been the first or the last.

Fascinated by Tyson's matter-of-fact demeanor and his studious approach to the sport engendered by D'Amato and business manager Jim Jacobs, I got his number, kept track of him and ended up talking to Tyson by phone again in the spring along with D'Amato and reformatory boxing coach Bob Stewart, doing a 2,000-word feature in June 1984 entitled Destined For Fame. Tyson promptly lost in the Olympic Box-Offs to Henry Tillman a week after.

Five weeks after that, I met Douglas while covering a scheduled 8-rounder at a nightclub on the east side of Columbus in July 1984. The fight was called after Douglas knocked down a club fighter named Dave Starkey and the fighters' cornermen somehow ended up going at it in the ring. Amid total chaos, the fight was declared a no-contest.

Unlike Tyson, those were the types of nights for which Douglas seemed destined. He didn't even like boxing but became involved at the behest of his father Bill, a very good and fearless middleweight contender in the 1960s and early '70s.

The most frustrating aspect of Buster's apathy was how good he could look in flashes, on the rare times he was motivated and in shape. His body was tall and thick and his jab almost of the quality of Holmes' tree-trunk.

But too often, Douglas simply didn't have the heart for the later rounds. Most notably, he basically quit while ahead in a televised July 1987 fight against Tony Tucker and was TKO'd.

That would have basically been the end of Douglas on the national scene but for the persistence of his manager John Johnson, a former low-level assistant football coach under Woody Hayes at Ohio State. And because promoter Don King needed a potted plant to stand in front of Tyson for a quick payday while waiting for a big-money fight against prime contender and 1988 Olympian Evander Holyfield to be completed for later in 1990.

And that was the inauspicious run-up to a fight few national outlets sent anyone to cover back when all the major papers unfailingly flew their boxing beat men and/or columnists to cover heavyweight title fights. Oh yes, King had set it up for Feb. 11, 1990 - in Tokyo.

THE FIGHT

Two different feeds were available for fans - either the HBO call of Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Ray Leonard; or the sonorous call of Sheridan, going solo as he often did, on pay-per-view.

I'm guessing I have watched the fight at least 15 times, probably splitting between the two broadcasts. Both are very good. But while Lampley is attentive and Leonard is particularly perceptive on the HBO call, Sheridan is masterful and nothing less than prescient on a number of occasions during the fight. It's the sort of expertise you only get from a man who positively specializes in a sport as the onetime Miami baseball player did starting when he began tagging along with the training Dundee brothers and hanging out at gyms in the '60s.

King, a shameless schmoozer with Hollywood and Vegas types, was known for occasionally seating inexplicably nutty color analyst combos next to Sheridan. Once it was singers Pearl Bailey and Kris Kristofferson. In Zaire, it was British celebrity interviewer David Frost and NFL great Jim Brown.

"The most distracting broadcast I ever did. Frost was the worst because he was such a fan of Muhammad's. I'm trying to call the fight and he's jumping up and down and screaming. They had to shut his mike down."

For Ali-Chuck Wepner, King's big idea was to pair Sheridan's blow-by-blow with the "analysis" of soul singer James Brown and comedian Redd Foxx: "They were on two different kinds of drugs, one's on cocaine and the other on downers. And I gotta try to call the fight between the two of them and make some sense."

Now 70 and still very busy calling fights, "Colonel Bob," as he's known, lives in Las Vegas and retains those great pipes. He says he has not listened to his call of Tyson-Douglas in many years but still remembers plenty of detail. And it is wonderful because he is, mercifully, all by himself, seeing clues, interjecting observations, understanding what's going on and telling the audience. And there was plenty to tell:

"As the fight progressed, it was pretty clear to me something unusual was going on. But still, even though Tyson was not having a great night, you were just waiting for the explosive uppercut or big right hand."

That would, indeed, happen. But there was so much more after it that left everyone astounded.

The fight's 91/2 rounds can be broken into three parts:

Rounds 1-4. Douglas establishes both his tactical plan of standing his ground and his lack of fear - but beyond that, a stunning lack of respect for Tyson - by letting his hands go with not just the long jab but lead rights with leverage and purpose, something no one had mustered the nerve to do against the fearsome young champion.

Douglas: "I was pretty surprised how easily I was hitting him. My timing was pretty quick and he wasn't able to stop me from catching him with the jab. I was really amazed at that. I was beating Mike's ass from the first round on. I was controlling him. Keeping him in the center of the ring and turning him, that was the fight plan."

Johnson: "We were all very excited. But we also felt Buster was following the plan to perfection."

Rounds 5-7. It begins to dawn on Tyson and his inexperienced cornermen Aaron Snowell and Jay Bright (he had jettisoned the Rooney group shortly after D'Amato's death in 1986 and Jacobs' in 1988, at King's behest) that they are in serious trouble, especially after a big Round 6 in which Douglas rocks the champion with multiple flurries of power punches.

Douglas: "At that point, it was seek-and-destroy. I was out to destroy. The only way I was gonna get Mike to realize I was the better man was to beat on him until he wasn't in front of me. Because he was not giving in one iota. My manager John Johnson told me several times during training that 'Once he's behind, he'll just say f--- it,' throw in the towel, so to speak. But Mike never did that. He never waivered, he fought hard the whole fight."

Sheridan: "The thought now has crossed your mind - man, this could be some upset. Still, no one else had done what Buster had done to that point. So, you still expected Mike would catch up with him at some stage. You just couldn't believe what you were seeing."

Rounds 8-10. They defy belief. First, the bomb everyone including Sheridan anticipates does drop when Douglas gets careless near the end of Round 8 and Tyson is able to pry his guard apart and land a short uppercut at close range directly on his chin and the challenger falls in a heap. Douglas, pounds his fist on the canvas in frustration, looks at referee Octavio Meyran giving him the count, rises to his feet by 9 and the bell sounds. Then, begins a spectacular sequence of events - just not the ones anyone expects.

Douglas: "It was a good punch. But I was more or less focused the whole time on what was going on. From when it landed all the way to the time I got up. It was like I was caught off-balance in the wrong position. I could've got up at 4 or 5. I just stayed down for a couple of more seconds and did a quick body check to make sure everything was in order. Then I got up. But I could've gotten up a lot earlier."

This would become a point of contention when King disputed the decision after the fight on the grounds that Meyran's count was inordinately slow.

Johnson: "When Buster got knocked down, while he was on the canvas, I remember my dad looking back at me and our eyes met. We had four or five chairs set up right behind the corner, kind of in the aisle basically. And he looked back and we made eye contact for a moment. I don't know why. But we've talked about this and we were both thinking the same thing: If he doesn't get up, by God, he changed how people thought of Buster Douglas. He had given Mike Tyson more hell than anyone ever had."

But what if he did get up?

Johnson: "I don't think I processed that."

Sheridan: "When Douglas went down, I do recall saying it would be highly unlikely he could recover. What's he gonna do in this next round?

"And then he came out in the ninth round and he was completely recovered. Which was the most shocking thing to me. And landing big punches. By this stage, I know I'm witnessing something that's very historic and I was aware of it, you know?"

This totally flies in the face of all precedent for the challenger, a man who had folded in the heat of Vegas against Tucker, had deferred to every real adversity he'd ever encountered in a major fight. He has come off the canvas at the end of the eighth and is now pummeling Tyson in the ninth with blow after blow, the champion seemingly being held up by the ropes.

Johnson: "Then, Tyson leans forward and Buster takes a forearm and just pushes him back way over the ropes."

It's a startling scene - the bully being bullied only moments after he seemed destined to save himself.

Douglas: "I knew I was punches away from ending it. I was trying to get it, trying to get it. I finally got him in the 10^th. But that ninth round, I felt I had him, too."

The 10^th almost feels like a fait accompli with Tyson charging from his stool and attempting one brief flurry before lapsing back into almost a wait for the inevitable, as unbelievable as it seems. His left eye is swollen closed. He paws with his punches. Sheridan notices his legs looking unsteady.

And then Douglas ends it with one of the most famous combinations in boxing - left jab, left jab, thunderous right uppercut, grazing left hook, grazing right hook, smashing left cross drilling the champion to the canvas. Tyson's mouthpiece flies loose and he falls directly into Douglas' corner, sprawling. The night of firsts ends with the last one - Tyson suffering his first knockdown.

Johnson: "He was right in front of us in our corner. I was screaming the whole time: "Stay down, Mike! Stay down!"

The HBO crew shooting the fight gets a grotesque scene up close: Tyson blindly fumbling for his mouthpiece with a glove, attempting to shove it in his mouth and rise just as Meyran counts him out.

Chaos, even in sedate Japan. "Unbelievable! Unbelievable!" yells Sheridan, as if he's seen something wondrous from another world.

Johnson and his father jump in the ring with McCauley and Russell, all hugging and jumping in spontaneous exhilaration. In their center is Douglas, one glove aloft, face placid, as if he knew it all along.

Douglas: "I was focused on hearing my name announced [by ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr.] as 'the new heavyweight champion!'"

And then he begins to cry. It seems to hit him all at once that his beloved mother is still gone.

HBO's Merchant asks him why he's crying and he manages to blurt it out: "God bless her heart."

Douglas: "I went through a lot, man, leading up to that fight. I finally got the opportunity and I did it.

"I was afraid all along that was someone was going to delay it or postpone it. But it all fell in line for me."

Eight months later, a bloated and undertrained Douglas lost to Holyfield by a third-round knockout. The moment of inspiration was long lost, never to return.

For a long time, Douglas was aimless, having nothing to do, nothing to strive for, a man of naturally modest ambition who had forced himself to rise up for one sliver of glory.

Somehow, he seems happier this way, enjoying the people he encounters and working with kids. And he rarely minds being recognized for his moment a quarter-century ago.

"The thing I get every time is, everybody knows where they were. They're like, 'Man, I was here. I was there. I was with my dad.'

"It's been a great reaction, to hear somebody's story and what happened in their lives, in their time. I'll tell you, it's been an awesome experience to hear that every day."

Bob Sheridan's call of Tyson-Douglas (part 1 of 3).

The full HBO show, call by Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Ray Leonard.

DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com