Hindsight Proves It’s Lucky for Buster He Gave Tyson Shut-Eye

In the afterglow, you tremble, picturing what might have happened to James (Buster) Douglas if his fight with Mike Tyson had gone the distance.

Tyson had taken the match as a bridge of sorts to matches more important, and infinitely more rewarding, with Evander Holyfield and George Foreman.

Mike is linked to Don King, who didn’t actually promote the Tyson-Douglas fight in Tokyo, but had a hand in its arrangement. For King, the stakes were big, considering he had the call on Tyson’s subsequent fights in the United States.

A loss by Tyson, which seemingly would have to come by decision, meant catastrophe, an earthly disaster.

Well, whatever motivates Buster isn’t known, but he knocks Tyson flat in the 10th. It develops this is lucky for Buster, because winning clearly up to that point, he may have been on his way to blowing it.

In a state of shock, you discover afterward that one local judge has Tyson a point in front and the other has it even, offsetting the imported judge, an American, who has Douglas by six.

The viewer arches an eyebrow, stitching together this case. If the fight went the full 12, what were they going to do there to poor Buster?

As it is, Don King lodges a protest, claiming that when Douglas was down in the eighth round, he got more time than the rules allowed.

Mind you, here is a promoter intervening in behalf of one of the principals, giving fighters an indication of the fastidious impartiality they can expect in any Tyson fight promoted by King.

In the unique orbit in which boxing moves, Tyson, flattened like a bum, risked only two of his three titles against Douglas--the WBC and the WBA, both of which have yielded to King, holding up judgment on acceptance of Buster as champion.

Not many connoisseurs of this form of entertainment are going to claim they envisioned what would happen to Tyson against Douglas.

All they can say is, Tyson, since the day he rose as heavyweight champion, has been embarked upon a crash course, a mad odyssey uncommon even for boxing to which the mad odyssey is indigenous.

We are talking about street brawls, car wrecks, drinking, lawsuits and arrests. He is charged with kissing a strange woman on a parking lot, starting a scuffle.

Another woman charges she is dancing with her friend in a disco when her skirt is raised--not by her friend, but by Mike. By her account, she experiences what many fighters have. She feels the right hand of Tyson.

The activities attendant to Mike’s marriage to a TV actress are a study in lunacy--fights, broken furniture, scandal, charges by her on national television that Mike is manic-depressive. Then he opts for religion.

While all this is being played in one key, a lower key of arrogance pervades his personality. He is coarse and boastful, announcing repeatedly there is no fighting machine on Earth that matches him, that he never carries an opponent, but is dedicated to ridding the scene of him the instant he sights him.

What he doesn’t do is reckon with the dignity of Buster Douglas, who is no major talent, but who draws his inspiration from Tyson’s contempt.

In the end, someone is stretched out--and it isn’t Buster.

And Tyson, who had something to say after each of his 37 wins, all of a sudden takes a powder, not able to face up to his humiliation.

Today, interesting debates are heard over where this event ranks among sports upsets of the century.

Some insist it is unparalleled, but others counter that while it isn’t garden variety, it may not be bigger than Leon Spinks winning the title from Muhammad Ali.

Then you have geniuses of odds telling you that if Douglas was a 48-1 underdog, Billy Mills was 100-1 in the 1964 Olympics when he wins the 10,000 meters from the Europeans and the Africans.

You want 100-1, or more? You could have got it on Jack Fleck to win the U.S. Open in ’55. He is the driving range pro who not only ties for first in the Open, but beats Ben Hogan in the playoff.

Okay, the next guy puts in, what are you going to say about Chaminade upsetting Virginia, then the mightiest team in basketball? Chaminade is a midget, operating in Honolulu, and is rated as much of a shot against the No. 1 team as Pomona-Pitzer would rate against Miami in football.

So the horse guys are heard from next, and they ask if you remember Canonero II? Canonero leaves Caracas for the Kentucky Derby on a plane that catches fire. It returns to Caracas. Canonero catches the next plane that lands in Miami, where he is hurled into a long quarantine.

He is then moved by van all the way from Miami to Louisville, arriving just a few days before the race. He is made a field horse, the ultimate indignity. Otherwise, like Jack Fleck, he is 100-1.

And he wins the Derby by 3 3/4.

Whatever the niche reserved for Buster Douglas in the pantheon for sports upsets, we are reminded again in boxing of the vulnerability of tough guys, the fearsome creatures emptying bars when they stroll through the swinging doors.

Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Mike Tyson--all establishing that no one has a lock on toughness. Somewhere, in the world populace, a Buster Douglas lurks.

It is most fortunate, before the start of the 10th round, that the corner of Buster didn’t tell him to play safe . . . that he had the fight in the satchel.

Without the knockout at this unsavory scene, you tend to suspect the satchel was being carried by Tyson.