Only One Boxer Was Inspired

Buster! The way Cassius shocked Sonny, the way Leon amazed Muhammad, that was the way Buster Douglas beat the belt right off of Iron Mike Tyson on a crazy February night in Tokyo, and if you were lucky enough to see it, in person or on TV, it must have made your hair stand straight up in the air, exactly like Don King’s.

Buster! What a night, what a fight! This Mr. X of the boxing world, this mystery guest, this nobody from nowhere, just stepped right up and knocked the sass out of the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, turning him horizontal 1 minute 23 seconds into the 10th round of a fight he controlled from start to finish.

Buster! He did it. Believe it or not, he did it.

How?

“Because I wanted it,” Douglas said.

But HOW, Buster? HOW?

“I did it for my mother,” Buster said, crying. Here he was, a couple of minutes after beating up the meanest bully on Earth, and he was weeping like a baby.

“God bless her heart,” he said.

Buster! He’s the toughest thing on two legs Japan has seen since Godzilla. James Douglas took the fight to Mike Tyson for seven straight rounds--never mind what those Japanese judges jotted down--and then made the mistake of walking into a Tyson uppercut, which sent him to the canvas for a nine-count. Lesser men would have folded up like a card table. Not this man. Not this night.

Buster! He snapped Tyson’s head back, sent sweat spraying all over the ring, shut Tyson’s left eye, made him hug and clinch to catch his breath, beat him to the punch time after time. Two rounds after Tyson put him down, Douglas turned the champion’s face into a speed bag, whapping him, whapping him, whapping him again, supplying all the proof we ever needed that the short fall just as hard as the tall.

Buster! He stood in his neutral corner, watched the referee do the count. Behind him, Japanese ringsiders counted along. Ichi! Ni! San! Shi! Go!

Tyson tried to get up.

Roku! Shichi!

Tyson rolled on his side.

Hachi! Ku!

Tyson struggled to his feet.

Ju!

The referee waved his hands. Tyson was up, but out on his feet. He couldn’t have told you if he was in Korakuen Stadium or in customs. He was deflated and defeated. And what a sight this was, because anybody who has seen Tyson fight, anybody who has seen what this man had done to other men in 37 previous fights, could scarcely believe that the little zombie who walked flat-footed in front of Buster Douglas for 10 rounds could be the same fighter we had come to know and fear.

Who thought he would lose? Nobody thought he would lose. The sports book at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, reluctant to lay odds at all, finally posted the fight at 35-1. According to Jimmy Vaccaro, the manager of the joint, the first man in line stepped forward and promptly plopped $70,000 on the champ, whereupon Vaccaro upped the odds to 38-1. Before the night was over, Vaccaro said Saturday night, he took a $98,000 bet on Tyson. But that man was in for a big surprise from another man . . .

Buster! They said he had no stamina. They said he was too old at 29 to hurt Tyson. They said he was just another plug of a pug from Ohio, more meat for Tyson’s table. But he sure didn’t look like dead meat when he started landing right-hand leads with his long reach, right from the get-go. Through seven rounds, Douglas had landed 49% of his jabs, playing Tyson’s face like a bongo.

Buster! Weren’t you scared, Buster? Didn’t you know who you were fighting, Buster?

“I wasn’t afraid of the man,” Douglas said. “‘Cause I believe in God. That’s the only man I fear.”

He carried a little something extra in his heart, determined to do something nice for his beloved mother, who had died a few weeks before. He also carried a gut feeling, aided in no small part by the knockdown of Tyson by a sparring partner in a Tokyo ring less than 21 days before fight night.

Buster! He said he would shock the world. He did as many of Muhammad Ali’s routines as he could. But nobody listened, nobody watched, because who did this James Douglas think he was, bringing people halfway around the world just to see him get Tysonized? How did anyone, even Buster himself, believe he had a chance? How could anyone, even Tyson, take Buster seriously?

Well, he should have. By the time he turned Tyson’s porch lights off, seconds before he crumbled and wept at the memory of his mother, Douglas did some vintage Ali. He looked right into the camera, struck a boxing pose with his gloves thrust forward and bit his lower lip, doing everything but crying out: “Who’s next? C’mon, who wants to be next?”

Buster! He knocked the sass out of somebody who believed he could beat anybody. How’d you do it, Buster? What did you do that nobody else could do? What did you do out there? “Just what I did,” said Buster Douglas, heavyweight champion of the world. “Just what I said I’d do. Whip his ass.”

Why didn’t anybody else think of that?