He has a chance at outboxing the Klit - but no Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas here. He's not going to KO the Klit - his chin is too good for that.
Nah not really. Douglas had the potential, it was just that he only put all the pieces together for that fight. Plus Tyson was so under prepared to fight he was nowhere near his best. Vitali won't come in out of shape or training.
Was Vitali running around Tokyo partying and ****ing hookers? Has Vitali recently fired his trainer for obscure reasons? Will the people in his corner be so incompetent that they'll have a latex glove full of water for an enswell? Then no. I wouldn't expect Johnson to "do a Buster Douglass."
Douglas was a decent fighter, with skills and a punch. He lacked the killer instinct and drive to be a particularly good fighter, but for night he put it all together against Tyson, who had limitations in his style, and whose training and attitude were compromised by his lifestyle. Johnson's a mouth with a jab. This will end poorly for him most likely, but you never know: Vitali might get injured and Johnson will get a technical stoppage. Unlikely, but...
The question of this thread was not if Vitali might get injured again. The question was if Johnson can duplicate an upset like Buster Douglas, which means beating the heavy favorite with one's own skill, taking his best shots and outbox and outslug him. Byrd's has a "win" against Vitali, OK; but anybody who could survive the early rounds with Vitali that night would have scored that win.
Also Douglas won because he was motivated by his mom to win and toke his training seriously whereas Tyson had not trained I don't think. The only think Kevin Johnson seems motivated to do is trash talk.
No becasue Buster showed up in the shape of his life and ready to fight hard , its obvius from Johnson he has not.
C'mon Vargas is not in the same class as Johnson. Yes he landed some shots but more importantly Kingpin took them extremely well and was always in control. Not to mention Kingpin showed his power by stopping Vargas (mentioned on the telecast he had never been knocked out in all 300+ amateur and pro career).
He took the fight in one weeks notice, just because Johnson was in boxing shape and Vargas was not, that alone was a huge physical advantage.
In retrospect its easy to say that he has less of a chance than Douglas did at the time but how many of us here would have bet the house on a Douglas win over Mike Tyson back then?