I'm about half-way through Joe Layden's "The Last Great Fight" which is about the Douglas-Tyson fight. It's really a great book and the only thing I'm not thrilled with is the name. He had just discussed the fight so I told my wife, I need to re-watch that again, got out my DVD, and watched Douglas' masterful performance. The author doesn't spend a lot of time on Douglas' sparring sessions, but he talks briefly about James Pritchard, who I was familiar with namely for his bout with Mike Weaver. Fast-forward to my watching the fight and I noticed in the post-fight celebration, that James Pritchard (possibly more, but I didn't recognize them) was right there as happy as everyone else in Douglas' camp. I am fascinated by the sparring partners -- I know it's JUST sparring, but the concept is very intriguing to me, so forgive me if this goes long and if my questions are a little scattered -- 1) Are sparring partners usually part of a fighter's camp? Do they typically attend the fight? (Or is this a bad example as it was in Tokyo?) 2) Do sparring partners attached to a camp typically identify with the success of a given fighter? (I don't know if Pritchard was close with Douglas -- all the book talked about was how he got the better of Douglas, talked a lot of trash, then a more motivated Douglas took it to him later -- but he was really happy for Buster.) Feel free to add anything you'd like. Typically I'm fine with tangents as anything that spawns meaningful dialogue is great.
I "know" a guy (from the internet) who was sparring Buster Douglas before the Tyson fight. This man here tells the story in this video: (He told the story that he was a sparring partner for Buster and Buster was knocking everybody out and he looked like an animal. Buster saved him by not sparring him.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ2xDRR9_Jc I can imagine bigragu (the guy in the video) can tell you what happened during the whole camp and maybe he saw Pritchard sparring Douglas.
