I recall having the impression that Tyson wasn’t prepared for the fight, he thought he would step in and kill the no-name bum. He had Rocky syndrome.
Add to that the fact that Cus D’Amato had died and you could almost predict what was to come. We watched the best fighter of his generation die in the ring that night. Oh, he’d still fight, but nothing after that was unexpected. He was rudderless, just a goon being milked for money by Don King, and it showed.
Huh. Looking it up, it was HBO and not PPV. I do very clearly remember watching the fight. (I was on the left side of our couch). Perhaps misremembering another Tyson fight on PPV. (the muddled wheels of memory now thinking the talk with my dad about PPV was due to one of the super quick 1st round knockout fights because it wasn’t worth it, but who knows for sure…it was 25 years ago. 
)
I was 14 and I loved Tyson. Loved Punch-Out. I had talked my dad into ordering an earlier Tyson fight on PPV, and it was over very quickly (possibly the Spinks fight?). So my dad had no interest in wasting money on this one. When I woke up Saturday morning and this was all the news, I was stunned. So was my dad. I think they replayed the fight that night on ESPN or HBO or something. I remember watching it with my dad, but not live. Maybe it was the following weekend.
ETA: Apparently it was on HBO, so I think ESPN or some other cable network re-played it. I could’ve sworn I was begging my dad to order it. Maybe I was begging him to subscribe to HBO.
To add my unreliable memories to the mix, I watched it live as well. I was 17, and I remember it being NBA All-Star weekend, and we were trying to decide whether to watch the fight or the Dunk Contest (the fight was on HBO, so we didn’t have to worry about paying for it). We decided to watch the fight, figuring it would be over quickly then we could switch over to the dunk contest.
I was as shocked as everyone else by the fight, and what I remember most is that Tyson’s corner had no idea what to do. Just total incompetents.
Then the next day, I was sitting in the same seat with the rest of my family watching Nelson Mandela get released from prison. Just seemed like the whole world changed.
This is one of my all-time favorite fights. Allow me to add some points that may or may not have been mentioned.
At this point in Tyson’s career, Mike had abandoned the notion of being a technical fighter and was strictly a head-hunter going for the quick knockout. His trainer Cus D’Amato was dead, Don King was beginning to enwrap him in his tentacles and his entourage consisted of hangers-on, ass kissers who knew nothing about the sport of boxing.
The lead up to the fight, Tyson had arrived in Japan and during a training session was knocked flat on his ass. This was captured on tape, was widely circulated prior to the Douglas fight but was viewed as nothing more than a lucky punch. A lucky punch that caught him right on the chin and showed the lack of preparation he displayed going into the fight.
Tyson always had trouble with bigger, taller opponents. Tyson stands at 5’10 while Douglas was listed as 6’4”.
During the fight, when Douglas got in trouble and got Tyson into a clinch, he leaned into Mike putting his full weight onto him. Also if you watch the fight, you’ll notice that coming out of the clinch, Douglas didn’t just back out but he continuously shoved Tyson big-boy style. Leaning into him wore him down and shoving him backward had to get into Mike’s head who must have thought: “This guy is not intimidated by me.”
Douglas pulls to an early lead. He’s ahead on points, is much more effective with his punches and is not fazed in the least by anything Iron Mike throws at him. By contrast, Tyson’s face is beginning to swell particularly around his left eye. His corner men, the same ass-kissing, home boys he brought along with him, have no clue as to providing strategy. This is most comically demonstrated by having to resort to a rubber glove filled with ice water to treat the swelling.
Tyson finally catches Douglas with a strong uppercut in the 8th round. Douglas took the shot hard and was legitimately knocked down. The official in the ring did not pick up the count by the ringside ref and this is where the bs about the long count arises. Utter horseshit cooked up by Don King. Douglas could have gotten right back up if he had wanted to. Instead he remained clear-eyed, was listening to the ref’s count and got up prior to a 10-count.
Tyson thought he could finish Douglas off in the next round but Buster was ready for him, showed he was not hurt by the knockdown and at this point, there is no question that unless he is knocked out, Douglas is going to win this fight.
I had always thought that if you looked at Mike Tyson back in the day, it appeared he had no neck. It was if his head went straight down and was bolted into his body in the style of Frankenstein. When Douglas knocked Tyson out in the tenth, he hit Mike so hard, I swear his head would have come clean off if he didn’t have such a strong, thick neck.
Tyson goes down and is groping about for his mouth guard which he does find, shoves into his mouth and groggily gets back up when the ref calls the fight. Tyson has cited this as one of his greatest career accomplishments. Yes, he got his ass whupped, probably had it coming and without question took a hell of a beating but he recounts that he still remembers thinking in the fog that he had to get back up, continue the fight and in order to do so, he had to have his mouth piece in.
Finally. After the shock of the outcome is made known, Don King starts in with the meshugana about the long count, HBO re-ran the fight the next week. They got Tyson and Douglas to sit for an interview. The two fighters shook hands and fielded a few questions with Tyson sporting a pair of sunglasses no doubt to cover the swelling that had yet to subside.
That was one of the most surreal things I ever saw. The world heavyweight champion boxer had incompetent, unprepared corner men. I don’t care how bad you think your guy is going to whup the other guy, bring a full kit of stuff to the fight.
The other thing I think I remember is seeing Tyson change his hand position. Early in his career, he kept his hands right under his chin, touching his chin. Later on, he had an open handed stance. This fight, after getting kicked around for a few rounds, he went back to what had worked in the old days. I feel like he was thinking, these idiots didn’t train me right, better go back to what Cus taught me.
I might be misremembering this, but didn’t it come out later that the judges had Tyson ahead on points before the knock-out? Douglas utterly dominated the fight, but he really had to knock Tyson out to win.
According to the LA Times in 1990:
ROUND LARRY ROZADILLA KEN MORITA MASAKAZU UCHIDA
1 DOUGLAS 10-9 EVEN 10-10 DOUGLAS 10-9
2 DOUGLAS 10-9 DOUGLAS 10-9 DOUGLAS 10-9
3 DOUGLAS 10-9 TYSON 10-9 TYSON 10-9
4 DOUGLAS 10-9 EVEN 10-10 EVEN 10-10
5 DOUGLAS 10-9 DOUGLAS 10-9 DOUGLAS 10-9
6 DOUGLAS 10-9 EVEN 10-10 TYSON 10-9
7 EVEN 10-10 TYSON 10-9 EVEN 10-10
8 TYSON 10-8 TYSON 10-8 TYSON 10-8
9 DOUGLAS 10-8 DOUGLAS 10-9 DOUGLAS 10-9
TOTAL DOUGLAS 88-82 TYSON 87-86 EVEN 86-86
I honestly have no idea which match Ken Morita was watching. And Uchida puzzles me as well. But based on those cards, no Tyson would not have needed a KO to win if he could have won the final three rounds with Morita and Uchida.
Pay no attention to what a thief and murderer like Don King said about bad referring.
Major, major upset. At the time people were saying that Tyson would be champion for 12 or 15 years. He still had a lot of fans.
I was 12 and was very upset that he lost. I remember the long count in the 8th, it was talked about back then. I loved Tyson as a kid.
The “long” count was talked about, but even back then it was clearly just sour-grapes whining from that lying crook Don King.
I saw the fight live on HBO, and have watched it since on YouTube. Amazing stuff.
But I have been privileged to see three of the greatest upsets in heavyweight history - Leon Spinks over Muhammed Ali, Michael Spinks over Larry Holmes, and Douglas over Mike Tyson.
You could beat Tyson if you could back him up. You would have to be able to take a punch to last long enough to do it, but that’s how he could be beat. Douglas did it first, then Holyfield did it twice.
Bill Tilden, the great tennis player, said the difference between a good player and a great player is that the great player misses fewer easy shots. This should have been an easy shot for Tyson.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Geez, 25 years. Boy, I’m old.
I recall it. Tyson was lethal and it was totally unexpected. I never watched the match as the outcome seemed assured.
I did discuss the match later with Fred Casey (former heavy weight boxing champion of Australia) and while there is no comparison between the standards he wasn’t all that surprised by the result.
However, I do vaguely remember Cassius Clay beating Sonny Liston- not that I had any great interest in boxing at the time.
I’d like to believe Muhammed Ali was the best- although Rocky Marciano was pretty sharp.
I agree with Ciceros friend. Tyson lost anytime he ever fought a fighter approaching his standard. Holyfield, Lewis. Douglas was the first real test he had. And he flunked.
Hell, even Holyfield was a jumped up light heavyweight like Michael Spinks. And Tyson lost two him, both times.
In retrospect, of course, you’re classifying those who defeated Tyson as approaching his standard, and those who did not as not approaching it. So, by definition, you’ll find Tyson wanting, because you’re already defined anyone he beat as substandard and anyone he lost to as a legitimate contender. You could apply the same standard to almost any boxer save Rocky Marciano.
At the time, everyone who observed Tyson thought he was one of the greatest boxers who ever lived. Second thoughts only started after Buster Douglas knocked him out. What is clear, based on the evidence, is that Tyson was not the same fighter in that fight or after it as he was before; his professional life, accompanied by his personal life, went off the rails, and he was not equipped with the life skills to right his ship. (This is as opposed to, say, Douglas himself, whose life was in complete turmoil at the time of the fight but who chose to deal with it by concentrating on his craft.)
So I think it’s fair to say that Tyson was not well equipped to deal with adversity, and in that sense he was inferior to boxers who could excel in the face of adversity, like Buster Douglas did that amazing morning in 1990. But at the height of his powers, guided by the right men, Tyson was an awesome fighter who could have taken on anyone.
Could you please name any heavyweight whom Tyson fought who could remotely be placed in the same class as Tyson, except Holyfield and Lewis? Larry Holmes would be the obvious one, but that fight was when he was well past his prime. Michael Spinks? Great boxer. Not a real heavyweight IMO.
This may be your opinion, but it is not based on fact. Those who had an opinion of Tyson based on a knowledge of boxing were split on Tyson’s ability. It was obvious from the beginning that he lacked stamina and discipline and was not reaching his potential as a boxer. His line of victories came from facing second-rate competition. The reason his loss to Douglas was considered such an upset was because Douglas was not considered much of boxer at all, not because Tyson was so highly regarded for his actual ability. Boxing insiders frequently said that Tyson would lose the first time he faced serious competition. They didn’t have to wait that long, he lost to a second rate fighter in Douglas.
You could do it with star punches, too, but those were hard to come by.
Oh good, something new. I was getting tired of that Jerry Rice stickum thing, honestly.
This is one of those sports things that seemed like a super big deal at the time, but after a while I realized that it didn’t really change much of anything. Think Jean Van De Velde’s triple bogey heard 'round the world, or the Orlando Magic grabbing the #1 draft pick after barely missing the playoffs, and then picking up Horace Grant, or Konishiki being denied Yokozuna promotion and leading to shrieking alarmist panics that the Sumo Association would never give the rank to a foreigner. Paul Lawrie pulls off the historic win, makes this or that Ryder Cup team, and then is never heard from again. The Magic win one freaking conference championship, promptly get stomped into paste by the Rockets, lose Shaq to the Lakers, and never accomplish a damn thing again. Akebono and Musashimaru get tsunatori, eventually followed by four Mongolians, oh, and now the Japanese born rikishi can’t even sniff the rank (the last one to make it was Wakanohana, just to put it in perspective).
Well, first, let me get to the fight itself. Douglas owned it. Period. He was quick and alert and mobile and he almost never allowed Tyson to get the kind of offense he wanted. Especially in the early rounds, he got a lot of unanswered shots. If a fighter has a considerable height or reach disadvantage (and especially if it’s both), he’s going to want to keep it as tight as possible, and Douglas took advantage by really smothering him every time Tyson closed in. Meanwhile, Tyson’s failings were well-documented by the announcers. Didn’t move his head. Didn’t go to the body. Didn’t work combinations. Didn’t move around. Didn’t work.
Given this (and even setting aside all the unbelievable sickening crap he’d be wallowing in on a regular basis later in life), I can’t honestly see why there are still so many diehards who insist that he got robbed. I know it’s become pretty much standard practice to focus on one tiny, tiny crumb and go on and on and on and on and on about it, utterly ignoring the remaining 99.99% of what happened and not even being aware that there is a big picture, but why should Tyson get this privilege? Look, even if there was a long count (which there wasn’t), all this means is that Tyson got his butt handed to him for eight rounds and then pulled one out of his hindquarters on an incredibly lucky shot. Ask any wrestling fan familiar with the difference between “job” and “put over” how mighty and invincible this totally does not make him look.
Which brings me back to my original point…what did this change, really? Douglas was a one-hit wonder; literally the moment Evander Holyfield carved him a new one, that was it. He’s a lot closer to Clubber Lang than Rocky Balboa, in that he took down the champ under ideal circumstances, had reality catch up to him in his very first title defense, and then vanished off the face of the earth. And even if Douglas hadn’t shattered the aura of invincibility and started Tyson’s downward spiral, Holyfield would have. I mean, let’s be honest, once Holyfield entered the picture, it was pretty much him and everyone else. Let’s not forget, too, that Tyson’s rape conviction was a 20-ton roadblock in his career regardless of how many or few minor stumbling blocks he ran over beforehand.
It’s strange, though. All throughout the 80’s I kept hearing about how Tyson was this beast with an aura of invincibility and everyone was afraid of him etc., and I literally have not seen a single fight of his that demonstrates this. I think it speaks volumes that most kids of the era (myself included) know him mainly as a video game character. Why was he so feared? Who did he beat that mattered a damn? I couldn’t say.
In fairness, after George Foreman spent a fight losing on points to Michael Moorer, we kinda sorta treated him like Beowulf for eventually pulling out that one perfect punch and striding out of the ring as the world heavyweight champion.
Aside from Don King, do such people exist?