Douglas’ New Glory Inspires Memories of Other Champions

It is hard, in today’s society, to find an individual more pleased with life than James (Buster) Douglas, heavyweight champion of the universe.

Buster is appearing at press conferences. He is appearing on talk shows. He is appearing on street corners, rapturous in his new importance, which, in a flash, has come cascading through the skylight.

It was only a month or so ago that Buster was strolling the avenues of Columbus, Ohio, another guy in town, hard-pressed to come up with the rent.

And all of a sudden, on a fateful night in Tokyo, Buster swallows Mike Tyson like an order of shrimp tempura, and his rise to celebrity status is meteoric.

Today, there are two points to consider in connection with Buster Douglas: (1) the length of his incumbency as champion, and (2) the manner in which he reacts to his success.

Until the Tyson fight, Buster was rated a worker just slightly more skillful than ordinary. He dispensed no devastating punch and he showed a tendency to tire in bouts as they stretched out. He also got knocked flat, a posture not recommended.

Now he was doing a spectacular number on Tyson, until then a terror, undefeated and untied.

Had a new, improved Buster Douglas arrived on the scene, or was he catching that proverbial lightning in a bottle on a single night?

In baseball, Bo Belinsky, heretofore undistinguished, caught it. He pitched a no-hitter, after which his functions would return to being as undistinguished as before.

Starting for the first time in the majors, BoBo Holloman pitched a no-hitter. Bon voyage, BoBo.

And American households didn’t exactly reverberate from talk of Tom Phoebus after he threw a no-hitter.

On a winter day in 1980, the U.S. hockey team rose from nowhere to win the Olympic championship, knocking off the Soviets in the semifinals.

Flag-wavers lost their composure, labeling this the triumph of the ages, and, more important, the rise, at last, of the American hockey player.

By the next Olympics, the U.S. team was back in the water closet, where it has since languished.

So is Buster Douglas to remain in our midst as super-celebrity, or is he another guy passing through town?

In his present euphoria, he is delightful to behold. He is humorous. He is respectful. And, above all, he is human. He boasts, but cuts it off before it becomes objectionable.

So now your mind strays to predecessors of Buster in charge of the heavyweight title and you wonder, if he stays around longer than one defense, which of the former champs he may emulate.

Joe Louis was no boaster. Starching one opponent after the other, Joe tendered the same explanation after each: “Just another lucky night.”

Joe was so likable that even the IRS melted before his charm. No financial genius in the class of the Rothschilds, Joe blew purses even before he earned them. His visits to promoter Mike Jacobs for advances were well known. At fight’s end, Joe went home, leaving his cut as repayment.

This was all right with everyone except the IRS, which found Joe massively, hopelessly indebted for years after his retirement and, with mercy hard to conceive, washed it, convinced that Joe could never pay it off.

Like Louis, Rocky Marciano was a modest champion. A bruising, relentless brawler, Rocky was genuinely tough but he never talked tough. He avoided bars assiduously, explaining to us one day:

“Bars scare me to death. Every time I walk into one, some guy is there who wants to show the gang back in Toledo that he fought the champ, and there is a scene.”

Floyd Patterson was modest but not your conventional neighbor. He was known to wear disguises.

He lost the title to Sonny Liston, who, quietly, sullenly, exuded toughness. Matched one day against the St. Louis police, Sonny broke a cop’s leg.

But he bowed out like a kitten, first on his stool when he claimed a shoulder injury, and second from a punch in the first round few detected, if, indeed, it existed.

Muhammad Ali, who dispatched Liston, was boxing’s most original figure, a talented comic who created a character, as Charlie Chaplin did.

Ali turned the title into a put-on, becoming the most imitated individual in the history of sports.

But for all the hell he stirred, his outrageous rhetoric, his poems, his religion change, his draft-dodging, he remained a most palatable champion, quite unlike one who would follow named Larry Holmes.

Until the arrival of Tyson, you couldn’t find a more offensive titleholder than Holmes, an outstanding boxer and a clean guy, but arrogant, tasteless and gratuitously nasty. As his success escalated, his offensiveness grew.

Joe Frazier as champion was beginning to get out of hand when, unexpectedly, he had the boff put on him by George Foreman, posing as a mountain of fierceness, an unconquerable giant, until he met up with Ali.

George claimed an experience never before known to boxing. One night in his dressing room, he reported, Jesus appeared. There were no other witnesses, but according to George, Jesus beckoned him to the church. George got himself dunked and entered the ministry, on the way to the comeback on which he is now embarked.

But Tyson, who gave up the title to Douglas? He was a child, unmanageable, who went into orbit when success paid him a visit, carving a path so atrocious that thanks were offered worldwide when Buster did him in.

Now we have Buster at bat, trying to picture his comportment. You conclude you like Buster, adding the guarded footnote that you want to check him a year from now.