Buster Delivers Blow to Image

From the beginning, we have been pretty taken with Buster Douglas. He made mincemeat of Mike Tyson; he was living proof that every underdog has its day; he seemed to be the most eloquent heavyweight champion since Muhammad Ali and most modest since Floyd Patterson, and, first and foremost, he resisted the psychological double-babble of Don King, who is the sort of guy who could change a $12 bill in fours.

Swollen heads, however, belong to the cosmetics of the boxing business, along with broken noses, black eyes, bloody lips and cauliflower ears. And the skull size of James (Buster) Douglas, sad to say, seems to be swelling day by day as he begins preparation for the Oct. 25 title fight against the undefeated Evander Holyfield at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

Or maybe it’s Buster who is the mirage.

Maybe we see only what we think we see. Maybe he is merely what so many of us wanted to see, a lovable lug in a business that by its very nature brings out the worst in those who populate it. Maybe Buster Douglas is not America’s sweetheart after all. Maybe he is simply a boxer, full of sound and fury, significant of nothing more.

In Rod Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” when a character makes reference to the virtue and nobility of boxing, another says: “Are you kidding? They’d hold these things in sewers if there was head room.”

Well, boxing is not so dehumanizing as that. It does, on the other hand, make braggarts and bullies out of tough customers who no longer can tell the difference between self-confidence and self-promotion. Once a boxer gets his arm raised often enough, he begins to think his armpit gives off no odor.

So, somewhat abruptly, the Buster Douglas we appreciated most for his once-in-a-lifetime heroism and his common courtesy and apparent decency seems to be evolving into one of those prickly prizefighters who finds it necessary to insult his next opponent and to castigate anybody and everybody who ever doubted his superhuman skill.

Today’s Buster demands to know how in the world anybody could have been ignorant enough to have foreseen Mike Tyson laying a finger on him. Today’s Buster mocks the qualifications of top-contender Holyfield, mere minutes after mentioning that nobody should underestimate the quality of any professional boxer.

While they were shooting the bull side by side Tuesday morning in Century City, the equally ambitious Holyfield casually observed that he believed himself deserving of his shot at the champion, having dispatched 24 opponents without defeat.

“Cakewalks!” Douglas cried.

Holyfield was caught off-balance.

“Cakewalks, every one of them!” Douglas said, and he wasn’t kidding. “He didn’t fight anybody!”

This came from a heavyweight more invisible than invincible, whose record before the Tyson fight included losses to such noted blood donors as David Bey, Mike White, Jesse Ferguson and Tony Tucker, and 10-round decisions over the mighty Oliver McCall, Dee Collier and the eminently hittable Randall (Tex) Cobb.

Naturally, Holyfield had to strike back.

“It’ll be a cakewalk when I beat you ,” Holyfield told Douglas.

And here we thought that these two were going to be different, that the new champion and the worthy challenger were going to spend the next two months treating one another honorably, as sportsmen, without the usual come-October-you’re-dead-meat heckling that accompanies so many of these events.

We didn’t expect “When Evander Meets Buster” to be the sweetest encounter since “When Harry Met Sally,” but we had been looking forward to the fight being relatively malice-free. Too much to expect, evidently. It didn’t take long Tuesday for John Johnson, the guy in the champion’s corner, to jabber away on the subject of how Buster was about to “knock Evander Holyfield’s (rear) off,” or for one of Evander’s entourage, Lou Duva, to jab back with claims that Douglas has been ducking his opponent, inventing excuses, doing anything to postpone the inevitable and keep that belt for a few weeks longer.

What should be an intriguing bout, possibly worth the five bills it’ll take to occupy a seat at ringside, shouldn’t have to deteriorate into another of these one-ring circuses.

But Buster has been to the big-top now, and has come to the conclusion that it’s him against the outside world.

“Once again, people doubt my ability!” Douglas pops off.

He is grievously offended that someone might actually be fool enough to favor a professionally undefeated former Olympian over a four-time loser who has fought three opponents in 24 months. That somebody must be pretty stupid to bet against someone of Douglas’ obvious stature, a man who needed only nine rounds to do away with the much-feared Wimpy Halstead.

Buster, don’t be that way.

The fact that you flattened Mike Tyson was evidence that good things come to those who wait, not that good things come to those who are great.

That was you, if you will kindly recall, who spent somewhere between seven to 13 seconds in a prostrate condition on a bed of canvas that February evening in Tokyo, put there by a Tyson knuckle sandwich. Don’t make us sorry you got up.

As fond as we have been of the Buster Douglas who came along to give hope to the hopeless by slaying boxing’s dragon, that’s how disappointed we are to hear him contending now that Tyson was nothing much to begin with, that the only reason anybody thought he was anything special was that “you been telling him for five years how great he is.”

Silly us, to have thought Mike Tyson was a great boxer.

Over the last six months, we have appreciated having Buster Douglas as the resident king of the ring, but if we have to endure continued shooting off of his mouth, we won’t be particularly sorry to see the knocking off of his block.

“Holyfield will go down,” Douglas said.

“When?” someone asked, meaning the round.

“As of November,” he said.

Back up, Buster. Back up.