Quite dissociative. If you realized that he was being beaten it was believable. It was bound to happen sooner or later. But at times you needed to remind yourself it was real. If you didn't realize that he was being beaten, you probably expected him to KO Douglas up till the very end.
That is exactly how I felt. it was quite surreal. Hard to believe it was actually happening. (And, I am even from Columbus) I can still hear Lampley saying "Down goes Tyson." Totally shocking at the time.
You could see in the second round Tyson was in big trouble. you just had to block out the commentary by the shills announcing the fight and watch closely what Buster was doing. Not spending your time waiting for a Tyson homerun punch. By about the 5th or 6th round, you could see he was starting to take Tyson apart in there. That's the one type of result you just don't see champions suffer---being taken apart.
I remember setting aside a little time for a quick one round knockout before going out clubbing with friends, and I was visiting my folks for dinner before heading out. We turned it on so dad and I could watch while the ladies busied themselves with talking or whatever it is women do. At first it was "Oh, Tyson might have lost that first round" and then it started snowballing. Pretty soon, even even the women were watching with rapt attention. The last three rounds were high drama, with Douglas going down and almost not making it back up, to having Tyson stagger around the ring in the 9th, to the almost slow- motion action movie- like sequence where Tyson was suspended in mid-fall for a time before Douglas unleashed that quasi left hook/cross, as much an exclamation mark at the end of a very long sentence as anything. Then you heard one of the announcers say breathlessly, disbelievingly, "Mike Tyson has been knocked out." As if having to physically say the words to get it to register in his own brain. Then Lampley making the announcement....."Say it now, gentlemen......Buster Douglas is the Heavyweight Champion of the world. " Mesmerizing. A cool memory.
Didn't have the pleasure of watching it live ,I wish ! but hearing the result the next morning on the new s was shocking .A result that just seemed ...Fake News !
It seemed to be, yeah. That night in the bar, everyone was talking about it anyway, which people just didn't do. Boxing wasn't a big thing by then except for Tyson. The fact that he'd lost created a stir in a place that otherwise wouldn't have taken note.
Watching his fights and witnessing the atmosphere surrounding his bouts and appearances, one got the impression that unlike Louis or Ali who inspired love and hatred, emotions of the heart one way or another, people showed up to watch Tyson the way they would show up to watch a natural phenomenon like a storm, or gawk to watch the result of a car accident or something. Tyson was more of a voyeurism trip than a fandom scene.
I didn't see it live, but there was quite a surreal quality to watching Any Ruiz beat Anthony Joshua. There has always bee this fantasy in boxing folklore of "what if Tony Galento had somehow beaten Joe Louis, or another fighter who went against every physical ideal had somehow got to the top?" That was the day that it finally happened!
Not going to say I called it, but I remember telling my buddy some nonsense about Douglas having his warrior father's blood in his veins giving him a chance. As it started happening I was on the phone by the 4th or 5th round calling people telling them to watch. Was in an apt. on the main berg in town at the time and afterwards I could hear people on the street talking about it. Probably my favorite boxing memory
Yes watched it, Mike looked like he was little trained and unmotivated while Buster for perhaps the one time in his boxing career was what he could be mentally and physically. Buster was also coached well to what Mike would do, every forward movement by a rather slow Tyson was met with a step back and short left hook by Buster, and this just continued. After the knockdown it became slowly apparent that Mike wasn't going to land another game changer and just had nothing.
