33 years ago - Exactly how good was Buster Douglas?

For one night only he was the best.

 

That Buster Douglas would have beat the Klitschko Brothers, Wilder, Joshua, Usyk, probably a past prime Riddick Bowe. Shame this Buster Douglas only appeared for one night during his career.

 

You missed out Ali and Foreman. For that one night the man was a god.

 

It’s funny that 44-1 is seen as so outlandish when nowadays major fights happen with those odds almost every week

 

I was 12 back then and I still haven't got over Tyson losing that night lol
I was proper gutted!

 

How overrated was Mike Tyson

 

I was happy. I read an article in one of the boxing magazines, before this fight was even going to happen, Buster Douglas trainer was saying that Buster is so talented that if he ever put it all together in one night that he could defeat anybody. While watching the fight,I thought to myself, my, my, my, i think his trainer was telling the truth.

 

At the 7:36 mark you say: "Look, the only thing we can ask of any champion from any era is to consistently defend against the top available competition."

And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, Tyson Fury will always only be just a footnote in HW history as the only WBC title holder who fights a voluntary title defence against an almost 40-year-old, 12 losses opponent whom he'd already beaten twice like a decade ago.

 

Ok, among all boxers, he was a great one-he had to be in order to be a world champion and have that one moment of greatness-but among world champions, he was just not that good.

So, when you mix all the boxers together-world champions and non-world champions-he was very good, but not an all-time great. He caught Tyson at the right time.

 

He used his size advantages very well against midget Tyson but at just under 6'4 he wouldn't have those against the Klitschkos and I can see him out boxing Wilder but Wilder landing something big and ending it, it'd be a bit like the Ortiz fights. Douglas was not a hard hitter.

 

Such an overrated boxer

 

Tyson was just simply not of this planet back in those days. One of the reasons why Douglas won was because only like a 70% version of Tyson showed up.

Vitali, Wladimir and Wilder really weren't that special. This Douglas would have slaughtered them.

 

If we take a step back from the hype, in several important respects Ruiz beating Joshua was a much bigger upset than Douglas beating Tyson:

1. There had never been a Mexican heavyweight champion in the 134 years since Sullivan became the first world heavyweight champion (only one Latino HW champion generally and three other Mexican title challengers, who had been stopped in every title fight: Ramos KO'd in 2, Arreola KO'd in 10, 6 and 8, Molina KO'd in 9 and 3), whereas there had been 23 black American heavyweight champions (and who knows how many title challengers) when Buster won it, 105 years after Sullivan.

https://www.boxing247.com/boxing-news/the-plight-mexican-heavyweight/55345

(Ruiz was seen as an undisciplined no-hoper even before his first title challenge when he was consistently weighing in the 240's, rather than 268 as he did for Joshua 1)

2. Ruiz is officially 4 inches shorter than Joshua with 8 inches less reach, Douglas is 5.5 inches taller than Tyson with 12 inches more reach and was 11 lbs heavier than Tyson while being in peak condition

3. Douglas was in good form, on a 6 win streak and coming off wide points wins over former champion Berbick and future champion McCall. Ruiz was on a 3 win streak, coming off a 5 round RTD win over faded non-title challenger Dimitrenko and a lacklustre 7-3 decision win over faded longtime journeyman Kevin Johnson

4. Douglas was very likely regarded as a bigger puncher than Ruiz, which is usually key in upsets like this

5. Ruiz's slow feet and lack of range meant that there was an easy way to beat him with minimal risk; Parker had already provided the blueprint if it was needed (plus we've all seen Lewis-Tua, Wlad-Brewster 2 etc.) This must have been a major factor in Joshua taking the immediate rematch

6. There was no analogous easy, reliable stylistic blueprint to beat Douglas (who everyone thought would be blown away quickly by Tyson's plan A) and Tyson was anthropometrically limited to plan A. No rematch materialised (indicating that it wasn't seen as a complete fluke and relatively easy to remedy), despite huge money no doubt being on the table

7. No heavyweight as fat as Ruiz had ever beaten a reigning heavyweight champion, certainly not one as big and accomplished as Joshua. Tony Galento hurting and dropping Joe Louis almost exactly 80 years prior was the closest anyone had come to accomplishing something similar

8. Tyson was known to be less than fully disciplined and didn't have his best team around him anymore, Joshua was known to be a 24/7 professional athlete and was comfortable with McCracken, who had guided him to 5 additional defences, including a 7th round KO over a more highly regarded pressure fighter in gold medallist Povetkin in his previous fight

9. 23 years old is hardly ever prime in a psychological/experience sense (let alone for such a star, with so many distractions), 29 year old Joshua had far superior amateur pedigree and was a lot closer to what's considered a HW's prime age when he fought Ruiz

10. Douglas and Tyson were 1-1 for knockdowns with Douglas finishing a brave Tyson in the 10th, whereas Ruiz and Joshua were 4-1 for knockdowns with Ruiz breaking Joshua's spirit in the 7th

If you knew nothing about boxing you'd have thought big Buster was the favourite to beat little Mike. But on an intuitive level no one would have thought that Ruiz should/would beat Joshua. Aesthetically it's not remotely comparable; Tyson-Douglas is run of the mill in that regard, while Joshua-Ruiz 1 is stranger than fiction. Imagine if Rocky had put a thrashing on Apollo Creed while being built like Ruiz, audiences would have regarded it as absurdist comedy. Show a non-boxing person the fights, ask them which is the crazier upset and they'll say Joshua-Ruiz. This will only increasingly be the case in the future as fewer people remember Tyson losing in 1990.

 

Thats a lot of crap shoehorned in to a lot of words