Buster Douglas Defeats Mike Tyson, Tokyo, 1990

The experts said Mike Tyson was unbeatable; he was anointed the greatest boxer in the world and no one could stop him. Buster Douglas had different plans. He defeated Tyson in what is considered the greatest boxing feat in history. Douglas skyrocketed to fame overnight. But his story didn’t end there. The fame eventually destroyed Douglas from within, until he was fighting another great fight—this time with his life at stake.

To boxing experts, James “Buster” Douglas could have been—in the words of Marlon Brando—“a contender.” His father, William, had been a heavyweight boxer, who handed down to his son the physical pedigree and pugilistic tutelage necessary to make waves in the unforgiving world of the ring. Douglas started his career off well, going 18–1–1 in twenty professional fights since 1981. But a string of losses to unspectacular opponents set him back, and in 1990 he was written off as a legitimate title contender at only twenty-nine. He had struggled with his weight, and HBO boxing commentator Jim Lampley described him as “a plodding fighter who has difficulty looking spectacular.” But one night in Tokyo, Japan, Douglas stunned the boxing world.

His opponent that evening was “Iron” Mike Tyson, a brash and terrifying fighter, undefeated as a professional and known for his impossibly powerful punches and lightning quickness in the ring. Tyson had become the world’s youngest heavyweight champion in 1986, and it seemed unlikely that Douglas would upset him—so unlikely, in fact, that the odds for the fight were set at 42–1.

Douglas was fighting with nothing to lose. He had the flu. The mother of his son was in the hospital. His own mother had passed away twenty-three days before the fight, and Douglas wanted to honor her memory. Douglas had trained hard for the fight, while Tyson, by his own admission, enjoyed the nightlife Tokyo had to offer.

Douglas marched into the ring, fearless, unintimidated by Tyson’s fearsome gaze. As the opening bell rang, Douglas deftly landed a number of jabs on Tyson, coming at him from hard angles, fully aware that one blow from Tyson could send him to the canvas. Douglas continued to outbox Tyson in the later rounds, landing several combinations of hooks and uppercuts. When Tyson tried to counterattack, Douglas tied him up. In the eighth round, Tyson managed to land a blow to Douglas that knocked him down, and he barely escaped the count to get back up. In the ninth, Tyson went for the kill, anticipating that Douglas was still dazed from the knockdown. But Douglas held fast, heaping more punishment on Tyson than he had ever experienced.

In the tenth, Tyson succumbed to the accumulated punishment, as Douglas sent him backward to the mat, where Tyson grasped around in vain for his mouthpiece, eventually feebly sticking it in his mouth backward.

Ding Ding Ding!

Douglas’s corner rushed into the ring to congratulate him. HBO boxing commentator Larry Marchant rushed over for an interview, asking what inspired Douglas to pull off the greatest upset in boxing history. Then it all came to a head for the new champ.

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“My mother, my mother! God bless her heart!” Douglas sobbed.

But as Virgil wrote in his Aeneid—“fama volat”—fame flies. Douglas had a hard time facing up to the pressure of being the champ—the media requests, the hangers-on, the money, the critics, the girls, the drugs, the alcohol, the food. He gained weight and lost the title in his next fight, never to recapture it again. Douglas retired immediately afterward and for the next several years lived a sedentary lifestyle, living off his riches and contracting diabetes, pushing four hundred pounds. He was a nobody again. When he awoke from a diabetic coma in 1994, he had one thought:

“I got to get out of this pity party,” he told ESPN.

Douglas decided to fight professionally yet again. He lost nearly two hundred pounds in the two years after he was hospitalized; and during his comeback attempt, he won six consecutive fights. Although he didn’t get a shot at the title, he retired in 1999, contented. “I had the opportunity to change. Some people don’t get that,” said the forty-nine-year-old Douglas, who is married and has settled down in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m excited for the future. I want to watch my grandchildren grow up. I have a new lease on life.”

Ever the fighter, Douglas continued to blaze new paths in life after retiring from the ring. He has started his own construction company and also authored his own cookbook for diabetics, Buster’s Backyard Bar-B-Q. Douglas now has peace about his boxing journey, understanding how special his feat was, even if the success didn’t last as long as he would have liked. When Sports Illustrated asked him in 2010 how he wanted to be remembered, Douglas answered, “Just as a man who had a dream, went after it and achieved it.”