Buster Douglas Has Become Main Course

Don King once called James (Buster) Douglas a hot-dog-and-beer fighter.

When Douglas fought, often before the main event, people went for hot dogs and beer, the promoter contended in recounting how it was he who built the fighter into a star.

While Douglas bristled at King’s characterization, he did say, “I was always the one on all the major undercards. I wasn’t the one they looked at.

“They’d have Joe Blow or somebody . . . I was the one nobody considered. They knew of me, but they really didn’t think I had what it took to be champion . . . they didn’t know they were moving right past the man who was going to do it all, who was going to shock the world.”

Douglas often was criticized as being a reluctant warrior and sometimes for being downright dull.

On Feb. 11 at Tokyo, Douglas figuratively smeared mustard on King’s shirt and dumped suds on his head, leaving the flamboyant promoter sputtering and dazed.

Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in the 10th round and won the undisputed heavyweight championship, then James Douglas went home to Columbus, Ohio.

“I definitely feel at home in Columbus,,” Douglas said. “I feel I’m James, not Buster, the fighter. Being either one, I’m comfortable at. I’m more comfortable as James because that’s the every day guy.”

He does, however, enjoy the celebrity of being Buster.

“All I ever wanted to be was the best,” said the 30-year-old Douglas, who has been fighting professionally since 1981 and who has a 30-4-1 record, with 20 knockouts. “Now that I am the best, it’s new, it’s exciting, it’s unreal. Every time I go to a hotel now I’m on the top floor. Before, it was, ‘Let me try to find you a room.”’

The toast of Columbus could become the toast of Las Vegas Thursday night when he defends the title against unbeaten Evander Holyfield, the No. 1 contender. And, typical of his career, Douglas goes into the fight as an underdog champion.

Douglas was soggy toast of any town when he fought Tony Tucker for the vacated International Boxing Federation title May 30, 1987, at Las Vegas. Even with a piece of the title at stake, Douglas found himself in a preliminary role. The star of that show was Tyson, who stopped Pinklon Thomas to retain the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council titles. Douglas also boxed on the undercards of three other Tyson title fights and as a prelim fighter on four other heavyweight championship shows.

After after six rounds, Douglas was leading on all three official cards and the scheduled 12-round match was even after nine. Tucker won in the 10th when Douglas was stopped. It seemed to some observers that Douglas just quit fighting.

Douglas admits to lacking mental toughness in that fight.

“There were things with my dad and I,” Douglas said of his relationship with his father-trainer, Billy “Dynamite” Douglas, a rugged middleweight- light heavyweight of the 1970s. “I wanted to be my own man, I wasn’t little Buster any more.”

Douglas also said his father “wasn’t able to jell with other people in camp.”

The professional relationship between father and son ended with the Tucker fight. The personal relationship also became strained, but the father who was not in Tokyo for his son’s finest hour is in Las Vegas for his first title defense.

Douglas began what has become a seven-fight winning streak after losing to Tucker and he maintained a high ranking by the IBF, WBA and WBC, but, he said, “the problems were building up.”

Then his life changed.

“On July 20, 1989, I accepted the Lord into my life,” he said.

“My training wasn’t going well,” said Douglas, who on July 21 fought Oliver McCall in a preliminary to Tyson’s first-round knockout of Carl Williams at Atlantic City, N.J. “My wife and I had been at odds. I really didn’t want to fight. I told John (manager John Johnson), ‘I’d like to pull out of this one.’ John said it would jeopardize my chances for a title shot.

“I was lying in bed in a hotel room in a pool of sorrow. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was ready to give up.”

Some friends from Columbus were in town for the fight, Douglas recalled, and “they came to the room and we talked. I found out everybody had problems. We joined hands and prayed and read scriptures.

“It was a wonderful experience. When I lie back down, it was a 180-degree turnaround.”

Douglas won an easy 10-round decision over McCall in an uninteresting bout.

“It (boxing) is a vehicle; it’s a drive,” Douglas said in reconciling his profession with his faith. Pat Day, a top jockey who is a born-again Christian, has said he considered giving up race riding, but then decided he must have been blessed with his talent for a purpose.

Douglas, however, can understand being asked how he reconciles his beliefs with boxing, which he took up at age 10.

“The main reason I walked away from boxing when I was 15 was because I didn’t like the way people perceived me as a fighter -- a brute, non-caring. They acted like ‘Man, don’t hit me.’ Man, like I couldn’t control myself. It took me years to look at it as a sport.”

“My life was at a crossroads,” remembered Douglas, who attended two colleges on basketball scholarships, but who did not get a degree. “In my third year in college things weren’t going well. I wasn’t applying myself, so I went back to boxing as a pro at 21.”

Douglas says his religious experience enabled him to focus his life, but one night in early November at Columbus it got briefly, and dangerously, out of focus.

He was supposed to fight underneath Tyson’s defense against Donovan “Razor” Ruddock Nov. 18 at Edmonton, Alberta, and hoped to use his appearance to further his chances for a title shot. Tyson got sick, and the card was postponed.

“When I found out that night that the fight was canceled, I went out and had a couple of drinks,” Douglas said. “I was flying down the highway and got into an accident. It was my fault and I got into trouble for that. I just ran off the road . . . I was being chased by the police.

“I had to do three days rehab and they suspended my license for three months, I believe.”

He also continued to believe in himself as a fighter and when the Tyson-Ruddock match fell through he suddenly got his chance at the championship.

Douglas certainly needed to take a single-minded approach to his fight against Tyson.

-- He and his wife, Bertha, separated shortly after he fought McCall. “We’re back together again, and about to have a baby in January,” Douglas said.

-- The mother of his 12-year-old son, Lamar, was seriously ill. She since has had a kidney transplant, Douglas said, and is doing well.

-- On Jan. 18, Douglas’ mother, Lulu, died.

“Through all of this I was able to stay focused,” Douglas said. “I stayed strong.”

Before the fight, the general feeling of the boxing fraternity was, well at least Buster is going to get $1 million for his beating. That amount far outstripped his earnings for his first 34 fights.

Douglas was dominant against Tyson, despite a controversial knockdown in the eighth round. Referee Octavio Meyran failed to pick up the timekeepers count, instead beginning his count at “one,” and the Tyson camp contended he should have been awarded a knockout.

Douglas and Johnson charged King with breaching his promotional contract by trying to get the result overturned. King contended he was just trying to create controversy in order to set up an immediate rematch. It was while claiming that he made Douglas into star that King made his remark about the new champion having been a hot-dog-and-beer fighter.

Under the terms of the court settlement, King is not involved in Douglas’ first title defense for which the champion will make about $20 million.

“Attaining it has been everything I thought it would be and more,” Douglas said. “Only in America.” His audience laughed at hearing the soft utterance of the phrase King has boomed at numerous news conferences. The champion smiled.

Buster Douglas is pleased with life. So is James.