http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/feb/12/mike-tyson-buster-douglas-tokyo The unpredictability of sport: it's what drags us back every time, encouraging us to believe we will see drama, excitement, an injection of a thrill that might not be so obvious in our own lives, day to day. Twenty years ago this week in Tokyo, James "Buster" Douglas gave the world all the drama and excitement it could handle when he knocked out This content is protected in the 10th round of a fight that has come to be regarded as the biggest upset in the history of This content is protected . But how much of a shock was it really? It shocked nearly everyone at the time: the fight writers, the lone Las Vegas bookmaker who'd made Douglas a 42-1 shot, the promoter Don King ... and it seemed, plainly, to shock the hitherto invincible Tyson. Douglas said he always expected to win; that's true only if you believe in hope as an expression of unshakeable conviction which is a dubious premise. Douglas hoped with all his heart he could win. I doubt how much he believed it. While the bookies might have been underestimating the chances of the skilled if diffident heavyweight, Buster was still a locked-down underdog. Buster was busted, his wife had just left him, the people around him didn't think he had a prayer. Then, three weeks before the fight, his mother died from a heart attack. These were real tragedies rather than the prospect of a sporting one in the ring that inspired Douglas, a sensitive man unsuited to his profession, to give the very best he could on the biggest night of his life. It was sport, again, providing a stage for heroism, which is why many fighters fight. But Tyson was 37-0 with 33 stoppages. How did he lose to this likable, 29-year-old sacrificial lamb of a man? What was not so apparent then but became clear in the tumult that followed was the fact that Mike was also suffering away from the ring. He was critically underdone, physically and mentally. In the hours before the fight, on 11 February 1990, Tyson sat in his hotel room, watching martial arts on TV, listening to his flunkies, as he had done all his life. He was also wrestling with a perpetual fondness for indiscriminate sex, whisky and other stimulants. His life had for some time been a rolling catastrophe. His wife had publicly humiliated him on national television then left him. Cus D'Amato, his muse, had died. Don King was his master. The psychological traumas of his childhood that had lain dormant for years now gathered again to drain his resolve. Only two fights previously, Frank Bruno had rocked his head in the first round, only to fold in five. "Iron Mike", as he was marketed, was there for the taking, sooner or later. Tyson was told to believe he was the "baddest man on the planet". He was not. He was, as Mickey Duff once memorably remarked, the biggest and best bully on the planet. And his self-loathing unravelled to expose the great lie as Douglas recovered from a withering uppercut and knockdown in the eighth to batter the champion into one of boxing's most ignominious falls, in rounds nine and 10. Tyson has left us with many images: from terrifying to vulnerable. But none matches for pathos the picture of his groping for his mouthguard on the canvas in the final seconds of his first reign, his eyes glazed, his powerful body electrocuted into baby-like clumsiness. In truth, then, this was not so much a classic upset as an accidental collision of two lives, two fighters with their own burdens, handling them in entirely different ways. It was an aberration. Douglas would surrender the title meekly to Evander Holyfield eight months later and be remembered as a curiosity rather than a great champion much as James J Braddock, the original "Cinderella Man", would be remembered after beating Max Baer to win the title in 1936, then losing it to Joe Louis in his first defence two years later. Braddock went on to make good money in the construction business. Twenty years on from Tokyo, Tyson recycles his legend on the celebrity dinner circuit (largely in the UK), Holyfield, accused this week of assaulting his third wife, reaches still for one last crack at glory in the ring, and Douglas, just like Braddock, settles down to make some money in property, in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. He might just have turned out the most contented of them all.
EPIC fail. Tyson is my favourite boxer of all time but even a blind man could tell that a Mike who was substance abusing, burning the candle at both ends and NOT training hard and being put down in sparring (with rapidly diminishing skills post Rooney) was in for a massive wake up call. The fight still shocks me now but with hindsight it was always going to happen. The prime, undefeatable, impecably skilled Tyson had gone and never returned. A real shame to see him quitting mid fight to lesser fighters in later years when others were living off his name and past reputation and he had nothing left in his heart or skillset other than a punchers chance. The Lewis fight was a massive joke, pre-fight Tyson looked out of it like he had been doped by elephant tranquilisers. I personally think he was high just to get through the fight. He knew he didn't have it in him to win anymore. As an aside, I hate also that people lazily labelled him a bully - a ridiculous statement based largely on his features and used by those who favour revisionist history projecting the angry, aggressive Mike post prison onto the gracious and polite young man from the Catskills, NY who shook the world before rediscovering the same kind of bad crowd that marred his early years. In terms of stature and standing at anywhere from 5'10" to 5'11" depending on which way the wind was blowing he was considered a fairly small heavyweight.
