Why do people say Douglas was fat against Holyfield ? He looks about as fit as a modern heavyweight

Didn't he though? I'm not saying he did, because that is what's out there now. But during the build up to the fight, what was said was different. This is JD McCauley according to UPI the week of the fight:

"He worked for 5 years. Anything he did after the fight he deserved. When the buzzer rang, he answered it," McCauley said of the start of training for Thursday night's defense against No. 1 contender Evander Holyfield. 'We're going to buy him a donut shop after this one. Buster is a thoroughbred. When you've got something like this, you've got to fine-tune it. He's a 100 percent thoroughbred. We don't care what he weighs. Everybody is blowing this thing out of proportion. His weight won't make any difference. Buster is going to plaster this guy (Holyfield) because he's got the good legs. Buster is 30 percent better now. I know it. In all ways. He's more of a man now because he knows he belongs there. The fight game is 85 percent mental. After you get the physical part, it's all mental. You've got to believe in yourself."

And this is Douglas post fight: "I felt comfortable with the weight. What I did was put on added bulk, pounds. But as far as my condition, it was good.'' This is from the night when making excuses is considered good business.

What's interesting is the degree to which what he said was dismissed outright by The Seattle Times who responds directly to these comments in the text of their article: "That is difficult to believe. It never happened. Douglas never trained. He didn't take the fight seriously...you live by the knife and fork and you die by the knife and fork. Douglas, whose body was shaking like Jell-O, his trunks pulled high over his gut, missed jab after jab."

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The description is weird, almost hateful, branding Douglas "a bad fat man." It does not reflect reality. The reaction to Buster's condition was immediate, violent and sustained in a way that's never been seen before or since. No source is quoted, no insider is named for the notion that he "didn't train."

That's the kind of thing, but what is the source for Douglas not doing any roadwork? Let's have it that will help put things in perspective.

Before his defeat of Tyson, Douglas was described as a fighter that "lost every fight Don King wanted him to lose and won every fight Don King wanted him to win." He was known for his inconsistency, famously - also famously, is that Buster's performance was the biggest upset in the history of heavyweight fights. Given the above three facts, why would he be expected to match the Tyson performance every time? Or even ever again??

 

"I trained hard but you know what i only had four or five weeks" seems to be the key quote from that video, i'd say.

 

You know, now Buster Douglas is fat I got to say he's my favourite fat guy. I like fat guys whose eyes start to disappear a bit, but contrarily, I also like fat guys whose features don't bloat, so they have a tiny face in this giant fat head. Douglas does both of those things, he hits both my favourite fat-guy tropes.

 

Yeah, i covered this. Douglas weighed 3.5 pounds more than he did for McCall which was an excellent performance. It doesn't mean Buster trained, it doesn't mean that he was good against Holyfield, it doesn't mean Holyfield gets more credit, but that's what it was. Douglas was not unusually heavy. If he was 4lbs lighter (1.5% of his bodyweight) he wouldn't even have hit a new weight. This literally means if Douglas had had a big crap before the weigh in he would have weighed less than he did against McCall Nor was it a career's heaviest.

People definitely get overly-fixated on the number of pounds Douglas held at the weigh in.

 

I basically do see what I expected to see if he had a truncated camp, he was about 10lbs over where a trainer might have wanted him to be, on the other hand he's claiming to have wanted the extra weight for Holyfield, just like Fury claimed he wanted the extra weight for Wilder.