He’s Columbus’ Heaviest Hitter : Boxing: After winning the heavyweight title, James (Buster) Douglas has become the No. 1 celebrity in his Ohio hometown.

The ballroom chandelier lights went out and a spotlight shone on the Ohio State football greats as they walked to the dais.

Each time the spotlight illuminated one of the figures from Columbus’ past, a volley of cheers went up in the darkness. One by one, they strode down the aisle, bathed in white light and cheers: Jack Tatum, Archie Griffin, Chris Spielman, Howard “Hopalong” Cassady . . .

It was the 35th annual Columbus Touchdown Club banquet, and 1,500 were on hand to see more than some old Buckeyes. This time, they’d get to see the Biggest Buckeye of them all. As the master of ceremonies said, upon introducing the last football player: “Ladies and gentlemen, a little later in the program, we’ll have another important introduction.”

Groans.

Finally: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, James Buster Douglas!”

And there he was, captured in Columbus’ spotlight at last. Had Buster Douglas showed up at the door for this event one week earlier, they might not have let him in. The Johnny Carson and David Letterman shows are one thing, but this was the Columbus Touchdown Club banquet. In Columbus, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.

The standing ovation lasted 30 seconds, with Douglas smiling and waving back. Certainly, this was warmer than his send-off almost a month ago, when about 150 people showed up to bid him goodby.

From there, Douglas went to Tokyo, knocked out Mike Tyson and won the the heavyweight championship. Generally, Nevada oddsmakers were so disinterested in this one, no lines were posted. However, at a few casinos in Las Vegas and Reno, you could have gotten 42-1 odds on Douglas.

“I was in Reno last week, saw those odds, and I was tempted,” Tatum said.

“Buster showed everyone that there’s been a great fighter inside him all these years, but that he needed a great opponent to bring it out of him.”

The audience listened intently as Douglas spoke, until he said, “Columbus is No. 1,” and the crowd cheered again. He was given a trophy. More cheers.

Douglas couldn’t stay for dinner, the emcee explained. Something about taping a show with Larry King.

Douglas’ stay lasted only a few minutes. When he left, it was to polite applause, not a roof-rattling ovation.

It was as if folks in Columbus, as everywhere else, still can’t believe it: James (Buster) Douglas, heavyweight champion of the world.

THE MANAGER

Buster Douglas turned pro in 1981, but his career really began in 1983, Douglas and his manager agree, shortly after Douglas had been knocked out by a six-foot-10 journeyman, Mike White.

Douglas and his uncle and co-trainer, J.D. McCauley, made a decision: Douglas would never win a heavyweight championship with Douglas’ father serving as both his manager and trainer. Douglas’ father is William (Dynamite) Douglas, a competent middleweight/light-heavyweight of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Enter John Paul Johnson, a hot-tempered fixture in the Columbus football and boxing scene with a reputation for getting things done. In 1979, he had somehow maneuvered a mediocre Columbus light-middleweight, Steve Gregory, into a world title fight in Denmark.

Douglas, McCauley and Johnson met one morning in 1984 in Johnson’s kitchen. Johnson placed an empty paper plate in front of Douglas.

“James, this is what the boxing world thinks of you today, nothing.” Johnson said. “But from this point on, things are going to change. You’re going to go on from here and win the heavyweight championship.”

Some in Columbus say that even more amazing than Douglas’ knockout of Tyson is the fact that 5 1/2 years after hiring him, Douglas still hasn’t fired Johnson. “I’m the kind of guy who two days after you hire me, you want to fire me,” Johnson said Friday, watching a Sports Illustrated photographer take pictures of Douglas with one of his championship belts. Johnson, who calls himself “a disciple of Jesus Christ and Woody Hayes,” talked about his second high school head football coaching job, at Mansfield, Ohio. The first one, at New Albany, Ohio, in 1981, ended abruptly in its first season when he directed an obscene gesture toward the father of one of his players.

“At Mansfield,” Johnson said, “I needed a police escort when they rode me out of town. They said I threatened to kill the principal. It was a lie. I’d said I’d like to kill him.

“I was a good football coach. My problem was I didn’t care a thing about the parents, only the kids who played for me. The kids loved me, the parents hated me. That’s what got me into trouble.”

Johnson was a student assistant coach on Woody Hayes’ staff at Ohio State for four seasons in the 1970s, where he says he was in charge of saving Pete Johnson’s (no relation) college career. Later, Johnson would score 58 touchdowns in his career. “Pete Johnson was a big disappointment when he got to Ohio State,” Johnson said. “Almost immediately, he was considered a recruiting mistake. None of the other coaches liked him. In fact, he was actually going to be cut his first year. I spoke up and said I thought he could play, that he just needed work. So Woody told me, ‘OK, then you turn him into a fullback.’ ”

While Johnson coached at Ohio State, he dabbled at teaching boxing at several amateur boxing clubs in Columbus. The son of a coal miner from Red Jacket, W. Va., Johnson also became involved in juvenile work for the city of Columbus and, later, the State of Ohio.

Now, the State of Ohio is trying to fire him.

“It’s all tied up in committees. I’m appealing,” Johnson said, with a wink and a smile.

The Ohio Department of Youth Services took on Johnson in 1983. There ensued newspaper story after newspaper story, most attributed to Johnson, about insufficient funding and unsafe conditions for state juvenile facilities.

Johnson’s version of one of his clashes: “One time I cleaned up and painted a gym at a facility and put rugs, at my expense, in the chapel. I was written up for insubordination.

“Kids are committing suicide in state juvenile facilities, for God’s sake,” Johnson said.

“One time I spent four hours trying to talk a kid off a rafter 50 feet in the air. He wanted to kill himself. Hey, you talk about pressure. You talk about a heavyweight championship fight. That was real pressure. I talked that kid down, too.

“See, eight out of 10 kids who the state sends to Ohio facilities are going on from there to state prisons. It’s obvious we aren’t doing something right, so I spoke up and some people had a problem with that.

“One time a nurse was brutally beaten at a state facility right here in Columbus. There was no security where she was assigned. She’d been on the job two weeks. She’s a paraplegic today. It happened two days before Christmas. I was so affected by it, I couldn’t speak to my family on Christmas Day.”

Douglas earned $1.3 million for the Tyson fight, but millions more are in the pipeline.

“I am personally going to build some gyms for these kids,” Johnson said. “What’s lacking in how we treat these kids is love. James and I are going to show them some.

“Working with those kids, that’s my greater calling.”

With Johnson running Team Douglas and the fighter’s father directing his son’s training, Douglas’ career didn’t exactly take off. Twice, it veered off the tracks. Four fights after Johnson came aboard, in 1984, Douglas lost a decision to another journeyman, Jesse Ferguson.

But Douglas bounced back with an unexpected decision over Greg Page, won two more decisions, and was then, in 1987, signed to fight Tony Tucker in Las Vegas for the International Boxing Federation championship.

Douglas, ahead on points, ran out of gas in the 10th round against Tucker and was stopped. It was a crusher. Two more rounds and Douglas would have been a champion, looking at seven-figure paydays. He earned $220,000 that night, his biggest boxing payday until last weekend.

Douglas’ father was so angry at his son that night he abruptly left the ring in disgust. He’s still angry . . . and no longer training his son.

“Buster and his dad are still close, they talk all the time, but Bill doesn’t speak to many others around him, and he doesn’t come to the fights,” a camp insider said. “We’re still the guys who ‘took my boy away from me.’ ”

Many of the reporters visiting Columbus to see Douglas these days call his father at home and the answer is the same: “Sorry, I’m not doing any press,” and he hangs up.

“It just wasn’t working,” McCauley said of the father-son team. “William would push Buster right to the edge of getting in great condition, but never got him over that line. It was time for a change.”

“Too much has been made about my father not being with me in Tokyo,” Douglas, 29, said. “He watched the fight here on TV, with his brother. My dad and I are close. He’s elated I won.”

Douglas embarked on a new training program, one leaning more toward strength and conditioning than sparring.

“We got serious after Tucker,” McCauley said. “We went to two-a-days.”

And so Douglas won five in a row. And when promoter Don King had a Tokyo date and no opponent, there was Buster Douglas.

Up until the the events immediately after the 10th round in Tokyo, Johnson had been a loyal King soldier.

“Don King never forgot us, not even when we were way down, after the Tucker fight,” Johnson said before the Tokyo fight. “James had his chance with Tucker and blew it, and only because of Don King is he getting another chance.”

But that was before the Tyson fight.

After King protested referee Octavio Meyran’s slightly delayed knockdown count over Douglas when Tyson knocked him down in the eighth round, the Johnson/King friendship went on the rocks. And things got even worse when Team Douglas went to New York to tape an HBO special about the fight.

“Don King is completely focused on Mike Tyson, he caters to him like he’s still the champion,” Johnson said. “Now, when Tyson isn’t around, then King treats us with some respect. We owe Don King a lot. And Don has a contractual promotional interest in James’ career throughout his championship, but as far as we’re concerned, he’s voided the contract.

“Don King may earn something out of James’ future fights, but it will be only because of the goodness of our hearts.”

THE CHAMPION

In the summer of 1984, Columbus threw a parade for another boxer, Jerry Page, a light-welterweight who had just returned from Los Angeles with an Olympic gold medal. Buster Douglas stood on a downtown street corner that afternoon and watched Page’s parade.

On Saturday afternoon, Page, this time as a TV commentator, stood on a downtown corner and watched Douglas’ parade. Thousands, in 29-degree weather, turned out in tribute to see a guy who two weeks ago wouldn’t have filled a 1,000-seat arena in Columbus.

Now, they’re talking about putting his rematch with Mike Tyson or a Douglas-Evander Holyfield fight in September in Ohio Stadium, where the Buckeyes play, and drawing something close to 100,000.

When Douglas left for Tokyo, the farewell celebration was held at Isuzu North in Westerville, a Columbus suburb. There were 150 present. The mayor was to have read a proclamation, but he didn’t show up. There was one sign: “Good Luck, Buster!”

On Friday, in a conference room at his lawyer’s office, Douglas talked about his life and the dramatic events of last weekend with a half-dozen reporters. He remembered Page’s parade. “I remember I bought a little piece of Jerry’s parade that day,” he said, laughing. “I stood on the corner and passed out flyers for a fight I had in Columbus a couple of weeks later against Dave Jaco. As it turned out, the fight was called off.”

There’s no other way to put it. Buster has knocked Columbus on its ear.

The Columbus Dispatch’s Page 1 headline, “BUSTER’S THE CHAMP!” is affixed to store windows. Teen-agers wear homemade Buster Douglas T-shirts. The real ones are still at the factory. A 900 number is on the way, one where Buster will tell you, for 50 cents, how he did it.

Columbus Dispatch sports columnist Dick Fenlon ranked Columbus’ top 10 sports stories Friday.

“No doubt about it, it’s Numero Uno,” he wrote of Douglas’ victory in Japan. “If he keeps the title for five years, we might even be able to drop the Ohio (after Columbus).” No. 2 was Ohio State sophomore Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and third was Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters Tournament at age 46. Some others: Bobby Rahal winning the Indy 500, the firing of Woody Hayes and the firing of Earle Bruce.

The fighter himself takes it all in stride, save for an occasional show of emotion over mention of his mother, who died days before he left for Tokyo.

“Mike Tyson is only a man and I fear no man, only God,” he has said numerous times. He also said a spiritual awakening last summer enabled him to convert personal tragedy into triumph.

“When I took Jesus Christ into my heart last summer, it was like all kinds of doors opened for me,” he said. “I had the ability all those years, but I’d never had that one big performance. It was like I was being tested.

“My separation from my wife (she left him last summer), the illness of my son’s mother (hospitalized with a serious kidney ailment) and then losing my mother . . . when that happened, I just knew something big was in store for me.

“See, without the Lord in your heart, you doubt yourself and you burn energy from tension. I was relaxed in there against Tyson. I wasn’t afraid. In my other big fights, I just wasn’t mentally ready.”

He wasn’t mentally ready for New York last week, either. At the taping of the HBO show, for starters, Tyson and King showed up 45 minutes late. In Tokyo, Tyson was late to the main prefight news conference and the weigh-in.

“Larry Merchant (HBO commentator) was treating Tyson like he was still champion,” he said. “And Tyson, he acted like a spoiled brat. Like, telling everybody he’d fight me again today. Hey, his eye was still closed. I felt like reaching over and knocking him on his butt again.

“It was sickening. I beat this guy for 10 rounds, man. And he says (here he switches into an imitation of Tyson) ‘I feel fine, Larry, I’m ready to fight again right now.’ “I didn’t like the way King or Tyson acted. See, King is afraid of making Tyson angry. He acts different when he’s around. Hey, I don’t care if I get respect from Tyson or not. He’ll never be a buddy of mine. But they should understand something. I’m the champion. If I fight Holyfield next, Tyson’s on the undercard.”

Talk about lack of respect. According to Johnson, the only reason they returned home with one of Tyson’s championship belts is because they stole it.

“Cardinal Paige is a Columbus barber who travels with us,” Johnson said. “After the fight was over and as soon as he saw King screaming about the referee’s count on James in the eighth, he started looking for a belt. He saw the WBC belt on a table at ringside and just grabbed it.

“They wouldn’t have given it to James--not that night, anyway.”

When asked how being champion would change his life, he spoke first of his 11-year-old son, Lamar, who saw his father’s upset from ringside.

“It’ll give me the freedom to spend more time with Lamar,” he said. “You can’t put a price on things like being able to attend your son’s football games.”

He laughed, and shared some writings he found in his son’s journal in Tokyo.

“In the hotel one day, I picked up Lamar’s journal. All through it, he’s writing about girls. Man, he never has anything to do with girls. I think Lamar came home from Japan with hair on his chest.

“Lamar’s not going to like what I got planned for him this summer. A tutor. He is going to do better in school, period.”

Lamar, incidentally, is a major problem for Johnson, the ultimate Ohio State fan. Lamar, born and raised in Columbus, wants to play football for Michigan. Sometimes, when he knows Johnson will see him, he wears a maize-and-blue outfit.

“When he does that, John goes crazy,” Douglas said, laughing.

Experience, he said, enabled him to quickly shake off the effects of the eighth-round knockdown in Tokyo.

“I’d been through that before,” he said. “I’d been hurt. Mike White hurt me bad. So when Tex Cobb hurt me bad, I shook it off and looked him in the eye and said to myself: ‘I been there before, baby.’

“Mike (Tyson) hadn’t been there before. Plus, I dominated him throughout and that hadn’t happened to him, either. I hurt him with those shots I took him out with in the 10th, but really, he just couldn’t take it anymore.

“What I did was, I kept slipping and firing, slipping and firing. I kept him at bay. And Mike was tougher than I thought he’d be. He had a lot of heart. He took some real shots. But in the end, he just couldn’t take it anymore.”

He paid tribute to his trainer, J.D. McCauley.

“He’s like my trainer and my big brother,” he said. “We talk about everything. I trust him because he tells me what’s in his heart, not what he thinks I want to hear. We argue a lot in training, but he’s the boss.”

McCauley came into the room and listened to the champion’s easy, light banter with reporters. He agreed with a writer that Douglas had looked like a reincarnation of Sonny Liston against Tyson, with his long, punishing left jabs.

“Yeah, a lot like Sonny,” he said. “The big jab, and something big coming behind it.”

After Johnson spoke of telephone calls backed up with endorsement offers, Douglas was asked about his coming fortune.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to blow it,” he said. “I do want to buy a boat, big enough to sleep six, and put it on Lake Erie. I’ll probably buy a Mercedes-Benz, but my 1970 Cadillac will still be my main summer car. My winter car is my Bronco. But my ’70 Cadillac, it’s the hottest thing on the road, man.”

Now, Buster, what about staying in shape?

“I’m going to start running again Monday,” he said, laughing again.

“Actually, I’m already running. I’m running up and down stairs all over town, to avoid the elevators because every time an elevator door opened, there were people waiting there for me to sign autographs.”

Asked to sum it all up, Douglas said: “I went to Japan and I slayed the dragon that had been slaying the villagers.”

And with that, he leaned back in his chair and enjoyed a deep, hearty laugh, one worthy of a heavyweight champion.