February 11, 1990

I woke up on sunday morning and couldn't believe what had happened!!!!.

 

The main thing I remember is a guy I worked with at the time said "Douglas pulled out a can of whup ass on Tyson!"

 

I thought it was a joke. It took me a while to actually believe what I was hearing on the radio. It didn't seem possible that Tyson could lose anyway, but losing to such a hopeless underdog seemed particularly unbelievable.

 

My dad told me I had a hangover from Saturday night!!!! I thought he was taking the ****!

 

Nobody thought Douglas would win. Even his own family.

If you say you thought Douglas was going to win, you are lying.

I remember I spent that night at a college semi-formal. I didn't even watch the fight. That was the first Tyson championship fight I didn't watch. I know Japan is like 11-12 hours ahead of EST. I guess it was on in the afternoon, or tape delay in prime time (more likely.)

I was just turned 21 yrs old. My roomate and I took our dates to Hardees (fast food) and got giant Moose Cups that were great for mixed drinks at the party. My date passed out. Her friend picked her up from our hotel room. My room mate walked back to campus for no reason. I hooked up with his date.

The next day I did a double take when I heard the result of Tyson/Douglas. I thought the drugs/alcohol from the night before had messed with my mind. LOL.

 

I remember the 2 big headlines of that day was Nelson Mandela being freed from jail and Mike Tyson getting knocked out. I have to admit I didn’t know much about Mandela at that time and it was definitely the Tyson defeat that grabbed my full attention.

Prefight, just like everyone else I thought that this was going to be just another routine defence for Tyson and hoping that a fight against Holyfield would be made soon after as Holyfield might be the only one out there that might have a chance against Tyson.

 

Thought it was just another fight; heard about it while I was in Blockbuster, some guys were saying, "Yeah, it was about time he got beat." I thought they must've been talking about someone else; NOBODY could beat Tyson at that point. Wrongo ...

In hindsight, I look at the 42-1 odds against Buster; a $10,000 bet would've meant a few years off the retirement plans. Stupid hindsight ...

 

We might be related somehow...

 

You were his date?

 

I watched it on tv. Figured it to be about 6 rounds & longer than the made to order Carl Williams fight.

It was obvious that Douglas had done his homework about 30 seconds into the first round. Nice movement & punching in combos while moving his feet. Angles. By the 3rd round, it was a matter of Douglas keeping his gameplan and having the mental toughness to stay with it for the whole fight. No lapses. Physically, he was handling things very well and all of a sudden we saw Mike having to dig deep.

The question was if Buster could keep on the train tracks and not derail. And would Tyson deteriorate faster and more as the bout went on or would Buster pull an effort like the Tucker fight should Mike string together an offensive flurry. What happened was Tyson deteriorated faster.

The announcers were just horrible. Even worse was listening to the Bob Sheridan call, later on. They were so enamoured with the house fighter they weren't watching the pattern of the fight.

 

I was a Holyfield guy (still am) and figured he was the only one around at the time who would/could beat Mike. So no I did not expect it...nor did I excpect it even when he was struggling. I don’t think I believed it until the second it actually happened.

In hind sight I and many others should have seen the stage being set for Mike to lose, but even then not to Buster lol. Watching his fights leading up to this there is a noticeable difference in Mikes training focus etc. we should have seen the signs but most of us did not

 

I had watched Tyson since I had met him at the National Golden Gloves tourney when he stopped Olian Alexander and in Colorado Springs USA boxing at the USA-ABF box offs for the 84 team when he was 16 he was special then and throughout his career I remember him being out-boxed by Tillman in the finals and hitting him once putting him through the ropes....the explosive power was something else and never seen in boxing from my memory as short and compact as he was like a stick of dynamite....watched him on every fight in the pros that was shown on TV he was special then the title fight damn he walked into the ring the intensity the pacing impressive and exciting to watch....the night he fought Douglas was weird he had no fire in his eyes his body looked softer he steamrolled everyone up to that point and I thought oh well he could be out of shape and still beat most of the contenders especially Douglas after all it is 42-1 odds called my bookie and bet a 100 on it...then Douglas had a different countenance to him and looked great, un-intimidated Tyson looked flat and uninspired...the entire fight showed Tyson going through the motions and Douglas slamming him with beautiful combinations in one of the better performances I had seen a big, conditioned, motivated and talented fighter being everything he could be fighting to his potential....to add to it was the typical polite disciplined Japanese crowd silent as the fight went on the silence was deafening.

 

14 hours ahead. Fights there are usually on in the very early morning for us in the US (about dawn on the east coast, and more like the middle of the night, 3-4am Pacific)

If you were in the UK then "fight time" in Japan would be early afternoon for you, but I'm going to infer by the context-clue of going to Hardees (and EST being your go-to zone mentioned) that you're a fellow Yank?

 

I was in elementary school. This was the first day I can remember than all the buzz on the playground was almost exclusively focused on boxing, and not wrestling.

"Yoooooooooo, Tyson got straight dogged!"

"He'd still beat Hogan tho!"
(I did say almost exclusively )