The most exciting sporting event I’ve ever watched was not a Super Bowl. It wasn’t a World Series seventh game. It had nothing to do with the World Cup. It wasn’t the Big Ten Network’s six-hour salute to Ohio State - “BTN Hearts Them Buckeyes!” It wasn’t that hot day in Peoria when Joey Chestnut ate 14 live goats in 27 minutes. No, the greatest, most thrilling event I ever saw - and arguably the biggest upset - occurred 30 years ago this week: the world heavyweight championship fight between Iron Mike Tyson and journeyman Buster Douglas on Feb. 11, 1990.
It’s difficult to comprehend that it’s been three decades since Tyson and Douglas squared off in Tokyo.
I didn’t even witness this event in person. I watched it on TV in my tiny Omaha studio apartment. It was my first apartment and I was damn proud of it even though the walls were so thin I could hear when the people next door flossed.
For starters you need to understand that back then Mike Tyson was considered unbeatable. He routinely knocked out most of his opponents just as they were removing their robes. They’d lie in a crumpled heap at his feet while he snarled over them with “bad intentions” as Tyson called it.
His victims, er, opponents, were frequently viscerally afraid of Tyson. No less of a fighter than gold medal winner Michael Spinks looked like he was about to wet his pants before their fight in 1988.
Joe Frazier’s son Marvis basically turned to Jell-O before his fight with Tyson in ‘86 and was knocked out around the time the person singing the Star-Spangled Banner was on “the bombs bursting in air.” If you want to get technical, Marvis was KO’d in exactly 30 seconds.
In the late eighties Tyson was frequently photographed with a couple of pet tigers he kept in his backyard lair in Las Vegas. I remember thinking a tiger looked afraid of Iron Mike in one photo. I’m not making that up.
It was understandable that Tyson’s opponents - and his tigers - would be frightened. In a pre-fight interview he once described how he was gonna rip off his opponent’s head and eat his children. No one doubted Tyson’s sincerity.
Going into the fight with Buster Douglas, the 23-year-old Tyson had a record of 37-0, winning 33 by knockout and 17 by first-round KO.
How big of a favorite was Tyson to beat Douglas? Imagine the Golden State Warriors of 2017 about to play a donkey basketball team consisting of senior citizens on three-legged donkeys and then double that.
In 1990 I was a casual boxing fan at best, even though I’d later attend a couple of Tyson fights in person including the one against Bruce Seldin at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996 when he KO’d Seldin in round one. The fight is best remembered because Tupac Shakur was shot inside a car driven by Suge Knight on the Vegas strip afterward and died six days later. The disturbance began inside the MGM Grand and I happened upon a scrum inside the hotel as I was leaving the arena.
By the Seldin fight Tyson had served his prison term and his best days were behind him. Not so when he fought Douglas in 1990. At that point Tyson was in his prime, had never been tested as a pro and seemed invincible.
Tyson was a 42-1 favorite but to the world it may as well have been 400-1. Douglas, from Columbus, Ohio was almost a complete unknown and given no chance. You could get better betting odds that pigs would fly, that hell would freeze over, or that Iowa State would win the Big Eight football title.
Sitting in front of my little TV set on that February night as the fight was about to begin I spent more time reflecting on my own life than I did thinking about what was labeled a massive boxing mismatch. Things were happening pretty fast for me. I’d undergone surgery for Crohn’s disease a few months earlier. I ended up being one of the lucky ones, since the operation and a change in diet pretty much cured me, but the year leading up to it had been a very bad, dark, painful one.
And, after several years of struggle, I’d finally broken in as a writer when I sent some material to Jay Leno who was guest hosting “The Tonight Show” for Johnny Carson on Monday nights. I’d prepared packets for Pat Sajak and Arsenio Hall who both had new late night talk shows. Sajak rejected me and I’m still waiting to hear back from Arsenio. As an afterthought I sent some jokes to Leno who I didn’t think even used writers. Jay called me when I was at my lowest point, staying at my parents’ house recuperating from surgery. He began paying me $50 for every joke he used on “The Tonight Show” WHETHER IT GOT A LAUGH OR NOT.
Since he did up to 10 of my jokes in a single monologue it was enough money that I was able to move into an efficiency unit at the Beacon Hill Apartments adjacent the complex laundry room that was open all night. Sometimes I’d be awoken at 3 a.m. when vibrations from the dryer were shaking my headboard.
A few months after I started writing for him Leno told me that Carson would be retiring in a year or two and that I was in good position to be hired fulltime - which meant I’d achieve my dream and move to L.A. to write comedy for television.
I’d also just heard from my agent that a screenplay I’d written had been optioned by Universal Studios and was going to be developed for Michael J. Fox who was a very hot actor coming off “Back To The Future.” So after years of failure and illness I was finally healthy and in a good place.
That Saturday night when Tyson entered the ring I was busy writing jokes for Leno about Florida’s draconian new ban on dwarf tossing. (Why, Florida, why?)
I was also enjoying a free trial of HBO a pay network I had no intention of sticking with after the weekend. I was mildly excited that one of the offerings during my three- or four-day trial was a Mike Tyson fight against some guy named Buster.
Buster Douglas was a man who was on the ropes in life when he walked into the ring that night. His wife had left him and his mother had died 23 days earlier. Many experts predicted he wouldn’t make it to round two. We were used to watching Tyson destroy much better known opponents.
At the opening bell the 6'4 Douglas came out strong, using his superior reach to get to Mike. Tyson was short for a heavyweight and looked like a black, muscular Danny Devito next to the rangy Buster. But everyone just knew that any second Tyson would uncork a vicious punch that would put Douglas on his back.
After the bell sounded to end round one HBO’s Jim Lampley said, “Douglas will shock the world if he makes it to the middle rounds.”
In the second round Douglas kept the pressure on, peppering Tyson with repeated jabs that scored. He was landing three punches for every one that Tyson landed.
Tyson seemed off, possibly distracted. Surely he’d wake up and end this quickly. I put down my notebook. Dwarf tossing could wait.
Douglas not only won but dominated the second and third rounds. In the fourth round Tyson came to life and landed a haymaker to Douglas’ chin that would’ve dropped your average hippopotamus. I’ve seen bridges that would have collapsed after being hit like that. Douglas kept coming forward.
In the fifth Douglas used a flurry of punches to wobble Tyson. The HBO guys began speculating about the biggest upset in boxing history. Still, Douglas had shown a lack of stamina in previous fights and although Tyson’s eye was closing you still got the feeling he’d deliver a big punch to end this thing.
Douglas’ strategy seemed to be to throw combinations and then tie Tyson up before he could get off. It was working. Tyson only got to throw single punches before Douglas grabbed on to him.
I’d always rooted for the underdog but I found myself really getting into this fight and cheering for Douglas. As a sickly kid in Nebraska that everyone had pretty much written off in life who was devoid of connections and wrote his jokes and scripts on a manual, secondhand Smith-Corona typewriter his mom bought at a garage sale I guess I related to somebody trying to overcome prohibitive odds.
By the end of the seventh round I’d moved off my sofa and was sitting on the floor three feet from the TV something I normally only did when Loni Anderson came on “WKRP In Cincinnati.”
The man who many thought was probably the greatest heavyweight of all time was in real trouble.
I later learned that in bars and at parties across the country everything stopped while people focused on TV, aware that something miraculous could be unfolding. It was turning into one of those seminal events where you remember what you were doing and who you were with.
In the eighth round Lampley’s voice began cracking. I remember the crowd in the arena was pretty quiet. Maybe because they were polite Japanese fans or maybe because they didn’t believe what they were watching.
Suddenly in the eighth, Tyson unleashed a nasty right uppercut that sent Buster staggering backwards before he toppled to the canvas. Ah, this was it. Douglas had made a valiant effort but he was done. The referee began counting. And counting. Because this was boxing, and there always seems to be controversy, many claim the count went too long. At one point the referee paused, as if he’d forgotten what comes after six.
How long was the count? You could’ve gotten in line for a sushi dog in the arena when the ref was on two and been back in your seat when he got to eight.
Just as suddenly as he went down Buster was up on his feet at the count of nine. The count was so long he’d actually grown a small beard while on his back.
The bell rang, ending the round and probably saving Douglas, who looked unsteady.
In the ninth round Douglas unbelievably came roaring back and staggered Tyson, who used the ropes to stay upright. The two men traded flurries of punches like welterweights. You never saw action like this in the heavyweight division.
Mike Tyson was now fighting for his life.
Tyson’s left eye, the target of numerous Douglas jabs, was almost completely closed as the fighters came out for the start of the tenth round.
In the tenth Douglas landed punch after punch while Tyson scored regularly with big blows to the head that Douglas mostly walked through. Then Douglas landed a textbook perfect uppercut and Tyson went down for the first time in his professional career.
As the referee was counting, in one of the most memorable, haunting images in sports history, the disoriented Tyson fumbled for his mouthpiece that was on the canvas. He found the mouthpiece and shoved it inside his mouth backwards as the referee counted him out.
The ref hugged Tyson who didn’t seem to know where he was.
Buster Douglas, a complete no name, had somehow knocked out the legendary Mike Tyson to become undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
HBO microphones picked up the voice of Tyson’s co-trainer, Aaron Snowell, who was explaining to Mike what had just happened - that the ref had counted him out.
I had chills down my spine. It was just such an enormous upset that it felt like a hallucination.
There was pandemonium in the ring. I’ll always remember the expression on Buster Douglas’ face after the fight. Pride, yes, but also disbelief. You could tell by looking into his eyes that even he was stunned that he’d won.
Time hasn’t dimmed my excitement at witnessing this incredible spectacle, although later reading published reports that Tyson was fatigued during the fight because he’d spent the night before with a roomful of Japanese prostitutes did somewhat diminish the thrill. But only a little.
Feel-good stories aren’t supposed to be tainted. Japanese hookers didn’t influence the outcomes of “Rudy” and “Rocky.” In “Cool Runnings” the Jamaican bobsled team didn’t climb out of last place because Norwegian team members were getting happy ending hand jobs at a Calgary brothel, although that would’ve been a vastly superior film.
Still, Douglas had pulled off an incredible, historic upset. For one amazing night this struggling journeyman whose personal life was a chaotic mess had become the biggest thing on the planet. He pretty much proved that anything is possible.
When I watched the fight again on YouTube before writing this column I got chills down my spine all over again, three decades later.
All things considered it was the most amazing sporting event I’ve ever watched. I don’t think I’ll see a bigger upset in my lifetime unless Lindsay Lohan wins “Celebrity Jeopardy.”
In a perfect world Douglas would go on to have a distinguished, long career and defend his title numerous times. Because this was boxing, it didn’t happen. Instead he put on quite a bit of weight and lost the title to Evander Holyfield eight months later.
Buster Douglas was the fight game’s version of music’s one-hit wonder. You could call him the Sir Mix-A-Lot of boxing. I could go into detail about Buster’s not-so-exciting, not-nearly-so memorable post-Tyson life, but to me that’d risk tarnishing the memory of one astonishing night. Certain people - Bob Beamon with his miracle long jump in Mexico City and Capt. Sully Sullenberger who landed the US Airways flight on the Hudson River - only need to be known for their one phantasmal feat. I’d include Douglas in that group.
Suffice to say that Douglas soon enough faded into oblivion. What hasn’t faded is my memory of an upset for the ages.
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Brad Dickson is a former writer for "The Tonight Show," a humor columnist for the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a best-selling author of two books and a professional speaker. You can find Brad on Twitter at @brad_dickson.
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