Mike Tyson entered the ring at 9am on 11 February 1990 as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. After 10 rounds with Buster Douglas he was lying on the canvas wondering if God had punished him for his magnificence

“On January 8, 1990, I got aboard a plane to fly to Tokyo. Kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to fight; all I was interested in then was partying and fucking women.” And so begins Mike Tyson’s recollections of one of the most famous upsets in the history of sport.

Most bookmakers refused to take bets for the fight. The Mirage, the only casino in Las Vegas willing to offer odds to punters, rated Douglas as a 42-1 underdog. They didn’t seem to care about making money from anyone stupid enough to back Douglas, but even the most punch-drunk gamblers in Vegas would have avoided those teasing odds. If they had known more about Tyson’s lax preparations, they might have stumped up a few more dollars.

“I didn’t consider Buster Douglas much of a challenge,” remembers Tyson. “I didn’t even bother watching any of his fights on video. I had easily beaten everybody who had knocked him out.”

Not only did Tyson not bother to watch Douglas in action, but he barely trained for the fight, bar a few sparring sessions with Greg Page. Ever on the make, Don King saw a way to earn an extra buck or two out of Tyson in the build-up to the fight and opened one of the sessions to the public, charging $60-a-head for a two-round showcase in the gym. Page gave Tyson such a runaround that King had to drag his man out of the ring after a single round, shooing the paying public out of the gym. Tyson ignored the warning signs, deeming Douglas “not worth sweating for”. He was sleepwalking into the most unpredictable defeat in history.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mike Tyson on his way down. Photograph: Colorsport/REX

Tyson had no interest in sparring, but he built up a sweat with the local women. David Haye famously refrained from sex for six weeks before his fights, explaining his reticence with the mantra: “Find a lion that hasn’t had some food for a while, and you’ve got a dangerous cat.” Tyson saw things differently: “Besides having sex with the maids, I was seeing this young Japanese girl who I had had sex with the last time I was in Japan. Robin [his wife] would go out shopping and I would go downstairs to the back of the hotel where this young girl had a room... So that was my training for Douglas.”

Tyson was nonchalant about the fight but he was determined to make the weight. Having arrived in Japan 30 pounds too heavy, he had bet King that he could slim down on time. On the eve of the fight, he weighed in at a respectable 220 pounds, pocketed his bonus and looked to make merry: “The day before the fight I also had two maids at the same time. And then two more girls, one at a time, the night before the fight.”

Tyson is under no illusions about his complete failure to turn up for the fight: “It wasn’t the usual Tyson going into the ring. It was obvious to anyone who was watching that I really didn’t want to be there. The fight started and I fought horribly.”

By the end of the fifth round, his left eye was in bad shape. He went back to his corner to discover that his team hadn’t bothered to bring an ice pack or any endswell to relieve the pain and reduce the bulge. They filled up a latex glove – “what looked like an extra-large condom with ice water” – and held it against his podgy face. It didn’t work.



The one-eyed Tyson trudged back into the centre of the ring, where he traded punches and expended more energy for a couple of rounds. Things were looking ominous by the eighth, but then he threw a trademark upper-cut with his right and knocked Douglas off his feet.



That should have been it. No defeat. No surrender. No upset. No humiliation. No consequences for treating the fight with a haughty disrespect and ignoring the merits of an opponent who had nothing to lose and everything to gain. But the timekeeper was Japanese and the referee was Mexican, and they couldn’t understand each other well enough to count to 10 together. Douglas was given a few extra seconds of grace and was able to pull himself back on to his feet.

Two rounds later he was the heavyweight champion of the world.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Buster Douglas stands over knocked out Mike Tyson in the 10th round. Photograph: Sadayuki Mikami/AP

Tyson went back to his hotel room but there was no maid to console him and he was no longer the champ. He told himself that he was robbed but also wondered if his sheer domination of his fellow man had irked the Almighty: “I knew that God didn’t pick on any small animals, that lightning only struck the biggest animals, that those are the only ones that vex God. Minor animals don’t get God upset. God has to keep the big animals in check so they won’t get lofty on their thrones. I just lay on my bed and thought that I had become so big that God was jealous of me.”

While Tyson asked himself if he had become bigger than Jesus, Douglas set about making some money. He eschewed the rematch with Tyson and instead picked up $24m for fighting Evander Holyfield. Tyson has always maintained that, while Douglas boxed manfully in Tokyo, his victory was essentially a fluke. Douglas seemed intent on proving him right when he faced Holyfield.

The fight was over within three rounds. Douglas sucked up punches for the first two rounds without throwing anything of note. Then he hit Holyfield with a decent shot at the start of the third, became a little too giddy and started going after shots. Midway through the round he threw a sluggish uppercut that only succeeded in throwing himself off balance and giving Holyfield a shot. The challenger did not hold back. Holyfield stuck his right fist firmly into his opponent’s face, knocking him out for the next five minutes and securing The Ring, WBA, WBC and IBF belts in the process. Holyfield had settled for $8m of the purse – only a third of what Douglas was paid – but he had earned the right to be called the champ.

Things were never the same for Tyson after his first defeat. His belts were passed around the heavyweight division during the early 1990s as he went to prison and then fought his way back into contention. He won back the WBC and WBA titles in 1996, but on that February day at the start of the decade, he had to be content with lying on a Tokyo hotel bed and challenging his maker.

The preview



Matthew Engel travelled to Tokyo in February 1990 to witness another easy victory for the champion. Or so he thought.

Tyson’s career needs the unthinkable: a defeat

By Matthew Engel on 10 February 1990



Think of the great upsets of heavyweight boxing history – James J Braddock beating Max Baer, Muhammad Ali beating Sonny Liston, Leon Spinks beating Ali – put them together and double them, and you might get somewhere close to the consternation that would be caused if James Douglas should happen to beat Mike Tyson in Tokyo tomorrow.

If Douglas looks carefully round his hotel suite, he will find near the Gideon Bible a slim volume entitled How to Cope with Potential Disaster. It deals with fire, earthquake and other everyday hazards. There is no advice about how to cope if set upon by 16-odd stone of extreme meanness. What advice can anyone give except “don’t do it”?

Douglas, by all accounts, is an upright, technically correct, even stylish sort of boxer. But no one can find anything in his record (29 wins, four defeats) that suggests he has a possibility of doing anything against Tyson, who has yet to find another individual with gloves on capable of being more than mildly irritating.

There is some evidence, based especially on his performance against Tony Tucker, that Douglas’s courage is suspect. Yet that is the quality he will require above everything else.

Theoretically Douglas will have considerable advantages of weight, reach and height. He is about five inches taller than Tyson, yet he would have a similar height advantage if he were being set upon by a tiger. Carl Williams, Tyson’s last opponent, was a similar sort of height. He lasted 93 seconds.

No one will offer odds on this contest. Douglas, despite being one of the world’s 10 leading heavyweights, seems to have as much chance of beating Tyson as a sumo wrestler does of riding the St Leger winner.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mike Tyson becoming the youngest heavyweight champion ever in 1986. Photograph: Douglas C Pizac/AP

This is a measure of the mess in which the promoter Don King finds himself. He has a champion who ought to be the greatest money maker boxing has known. Tyson is the only fighter under 30 that anyone in the United States, outside the fancy, has even heard of. But he is so much better than everyone else that he defeats the object of the exercise.

The next defence is already signed and sealed without so much as an if or but about Douglas winning. Tyson is due to fight again at Atlantic City on June 18 against Evander Holyfield. (“Is that a name,” as Bill Shankly once enquired when introduced to a reporter with a difficult moniker, “or an address?”).

Holyfield is unbeaten and can be presented, with a small leap of the imagination, as a worthy opponent, so the fight is just about promotable within the US. Beyond that, there is really only absurdity.

Plans include Tyson versus 42-year-old George Foreman, which will make a lot of people money and a lot of other people sick Tyson versus a professional wrestler such as Hulk Hogan or geographical gimmicks of the Rumble in the Jungle sort Tyson at the Berlin Wall, in Beijing, or on the moon if King can find a co-operative local co-promoter.

The crazy thing is that for Tyson defeat would now constitute a good career move. The Japanese, on his second visit, no longer find him much of a novelty. The £600 seats have gone, to people who are less interested in seeing than in being seen, but the £20 seats remain slow-moving.

Twenty quid is hardly more than the cost of a cup of coffee in Tokyo, but you can make that last longer than 93 seconds.

Tyson is still big news here. The sports papers, the equivalent of our tabloids, splashed his boorish performance at the press conference on Thursday with pictures of him wearing his Walkman while supposedly answering questions.

The headlines were “Tyson Was Arrogant” and “Sullen, Disgruntled Champion” and one paper talked of him using ‘an extremely vile expression which should not be used to women”. Rather touchingly, they did not take it personally: “Tyson took a hostile pose but he was kind to the Japanese reporters and only replied seriously to their questions ... there is no love lost between Tyson and the US reporters, but to the Japanese he acted like a clean-cut college boy.”

There is even a local rumour that Tyson wants to buy a house here. My interpretation is that the champion is indeed sullen and disgruntled. Apart from that being his natural mien, the main reason is that after several weeks cooped up in Tokyo, trudging through the streets at 3am to avoid the crowds and the fumes, he is bored out of his brain. If he decides to demolish Douglas quickly, it will probably be an attempt to get an early plane out.

But the Japanese seem to have got used to having all these very large men strutting round the place. One member of the Tyson entourage is a little different: John Halpin, hypnotherapist by appointment to King Mike, is a professorial, apparently gentle sort of soul. He explained his theories to me.

“If you can think instead of being disabled with emotion, then you win. What I do helps him be less emotional and more vicious.” More vicious? Ye gods.

The fight



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Buster Douglas v Mike Tyson

The report



Engel, like everyone else on the planet, had expected to see a few minutes of fearsome boxing from Tyson and a fifth defeat for Douglas. But now he had a story on his hands.



World crown slips from a giantkiller’s fists

By Matthew Engel on 12 February 1990



Outside the Tokyo Dome, the scene of yesterday’s amazing fight between Mike Tyson and James “Buster” Douglas, there is a fairground ride which turns customers upside down and back again, at terrifying speed, leaving them exhilarated, dazed and rather sick. It was the most appropriate motif for heavyweight boxing on a day that was both sensational and, even by the sport’s usual standards, utterly shameless.

For five hours, the unheralded Douglas was undisputed heavyweight champion of the world after knocking out the unbeaten and apparently unbeatable Tyson in the 10th round. It was, everyone agreed, the shock of the century.

But it was a result that could not be allowed to happen. Six hours after Tyson and Douglas climbed into the ring, the men who control boxing returned to the Dome to forbid it. In the eighth round, Douglas had been knocked down and should have been counted out. Added to everything, we had a reprise of boxing’s greatest controversy: the “long count” from the Dempsey-Tunney fight of 1927.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tyson before the seventh round. Photograph: Michael Brennan/Getty Images

The referee, Octavio Meyran from Mexico, publicly recanted while the rulers of the sport looked on. There was Jose Sulaiman of the World Boxing Council, there was Gilberto Mendoza of the World Boxing Association and, most important of all, there was the promoter, Don King. Sulaiman said he no longer recognised any champion; Mendoza evaded the question but implied he felt the same. Both organisations will meet the WBC on 20 February, to try to sort out the chaos. Fat chance. The International Boxing Federation, which was not represented in Tokyo, said Douglas was now their champion. So the heavyweight division is back in the confusion from which Tyson rescued it.

Tyson was also on the platform. In one sense, he was the day’s undisputed loser. Douglas was such a no-hoper, Las Vegas refused to take bets. The only arguments were about where exactly Tyson ranked alongside Joe Louis, Marciano and Ali. Now he is just another battered bruiser. The fight belonged to Douglas. He out-thought and out-fought his opponent from start to finish.

Tyson was wearing dark glasses to cover his puffy left eye and sucked on a towel rather pitifully. He spoke softly and pleadingly: “I believed I dropped him with a pretty decent shot and he went down and the referee had counted him out. You guys know me. I never cried or bitched about anything. Forgive my French. I’m just asking for a fair chance. I can handle a loss. I just want to lose fairly.” Whatever happened to the swearing, snarling Tyson of the pre-fight press conference? Indeed, whatever happened to Tyson, the great champion?

The officials watched the re-run dozens of times and showed it to the press five more. Douglas was down for between 12 and 13 seconds. The referee had picked up the count when the timekeeper reached four but he started at one. “I’d like to recognise my mistake because rules are rules,” said Meyran. “I started my personal count and I mistook.”

But when did sporting results get overturned because the referee made a mistake? His word is meant to be law even when he is wrong, and the dressing-room lawyers quickly turned up examples of the WBC and WBA upholding this principle. The Douglas camp maintained that their man was judging his return to the vertical while the referee counted. “He acted like a great pro,” said John Russell, the cornerman. “He listened to the count of the referee. He was fine. He winked at me during the count.” Russell could have added that had his man been hard done by, the odds against Sulaiman, Mendoza and King meeting to reverse the verdict were even greater than the original odds against Douglas.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Buster Douglas floors Tyson. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

But by last night people seemed to have lost interest in the legend of lunch-time. Douglas was just making everyone’s financial planning very complicated. So it had better be recorded now that, those 12 seconds apart, he was totally Tyson’s master. He punched tellingly, then moved out of range. Tyson just lumbered around. When he moved in, he did so primarily to wrestle. It was a wretched and baffling performance. Tyson has had no obvious booze-and-broads distractions in Tokyo, the very opposite. A culprit will have to be found, and it may well be Jay Bright, the inexperienced trainer brought in when Kevin Rooney was sacked a year ago.

Douglas’s small-town team from Columbus, Ohio, outsmarted the Tyson mob. At first it appeared the champion was merely starting sleepily: circling slowly, hitting his opponent with his killer eyes. First, 91 seconds passed and 93, the length of two of Tyson’s three previous fights, and nothing had happened. Then Douglas landed a couple of rights, probably just enough to shade the round. But no one was much worried.

Early in the second, Tyson connected with a bearish left and Douglas winced. Ah-ha, we thought. But back he came, and after one punch a short right hook Tyson’s knees wobbled a fraction. In the corner afterwards, Bright began talking very fast indeed. The third round was about even. But in the fourth and fifth, Douglas kept connecting. Tyson could do nothing. His eye started to close. The huge, half-full stadium was eerily quiet the silence broken only by the cries of Douglas’s small claque: “He didn’t come to fight.”

In the seventh, a point Tyson had reached in only six of his 37 previous bouts, the champion finally roused himself. There was a hard left then a combination. But Douglas only smarted. Then he moved out of trouble again. And in the eighth he swept back. Two rights from Douglas hit home. Suddenly, the champion was on the ropes it appeared to be all over, and then, as if from a hole in the ground, it came: a right uppercut that landed flush on his tormenter’s chin. It was Douglas who went down.

When the count failed to come, many of us assumed the fight had already been stopped. Next, we thought at least this was the turn of the tide, and that Douglas was finished. But, in the ninth he surged onwards suggesting he might indeed have winked when he was down. Again, Tyson was on the ropes. Any other man would surely have crumpled. Bright, by now, was simply open-mouthed.

And by the next round the unbelievable had become the inevitable. Right, right, left, right, left. After 83 seconds, Tyson was down and out. Amid the shambles in the ring, a Japanese official, as usual, read out a lengthy statement. On local TV, a Toyota ad with the slogan ‘ Tyson Power’ that had been running all day suddenly disappeared. Then the MC announced ‘the new heavyweight champion of the world, James ‘Buster’ Douglas’. ‘This is a great day for boxing,’ someone near me said. But it wasn’t.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tyson is held up by one of his entourage after the fight. Photograph: Michael Brennan/Getty Images

After the fight we found out about the judges. On the nine finished rounds, the American judge had Douglas ahead 88-82, one Japanese judge scored it level 86-86, the other Japanese judge had Tyson ahead 87-86. No one with half a brain never mind a knowledge of boxing could have had Tyson ahead. But the steal was already on the cards, their cards.

Douglas, however, is a man with perspective. He has known terrible tragedy in his life: his brother shot himself, his mother died recently, the mother of his son, Lamar, is critically ill, he is estranged from his current wife and from his father Bill, who was displeased by his apparent lack of courage when he fought Tony Tucker. That at least he has nailed once and for all. Courage? The man is drenched in it.

Tyson is a born-again Christian, but not so as anyone would notice. Douglas is deadly serious: he thanked Jesus several times and dedicated the fight to his mother. ‘I want to be a people’s champion. I want to be a champion for the Lord Jesus Christ.’

Back in the headquarters hotel everyone was as dazed as Tyson . ‘That son of a bitch had it coming to him for a hell of a long time,’ said a drunk. Trevor Berbick, Tyson ‘s sparring partner, was at his most enigmatic. ‘God is not sleeping,’ he said, ‘and justice must prevail.’ ‘Today, Trevor,’ said an American boxing writer wearily, ‘I’d believe anything.’

But whose justice? Don King was not sleeping. He was said to be on his feet protesting after the long count. Most of the day, however, he was unusually quiet in public. The Douglas camp have contractual ties to his organisation, which has sewn up heavyweight boxing. But relations were very strained before all this. Tyson is King’s banquet ticket Douglas was only supposed to be the hors d’oeuvre.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James “Buster” Douglas shows off his new WBC heavyweight belt at the Columbus airport on 12 February 1990. Photograph: Timothy E Black/AP

Tyson has already signed to meet the No1 contender, Evander Holyfield, in Atlantic City in June. There was a get-out clause, which no one expected to invoke, substituting Douglas for Tyson. But Sulaiman said a Tyson-Douglas rematch, if there is no result, would be mandatory. Now the Holyfield camp is livid. “It’s bullshit,” said his handler Dan Duva. “If we have to, we’ll go to court.” Maybe the only way out is for Douglas, Holyfield and Tyson to meet in the same ring. Otherwise, the lawyers could take everyone’s money.

In the meantime, this has brought out a little humility in almost everyone. Last night, Douglas was undaunted but could not quite sound arrogant: “I know and the world knows who the champion is today. What more can I do but knock him out? I’m not worried about the politics. It will work itself out.”

Tyson was almost humble too: “I had him out before he had me out. But the easiest part of all is winning. We all lose in life, we lose in love. I’m pretty much a decent character, I can handle it. I tell you, my friend, greater fighters than I have lost.”

A lot of journalists and experts were thoughtful too. Some claimed they knew all along that Tyson was a myth, but I never heard them say so on Saturday. The only man believed to have predicted the result was Tim May of the Columbus Despatch which just happens to be Douglas’s local paper.

The last word

