Sport: Just Like in the Movies

Buster Douglas was worthy of Rocky in his stunning defeat of Tyson

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A come-from-nowhere pug gets a shot at the heavyweight title. His beloved mother has just died; the mother of his own son is suffering from a severe kidney ailment. His body is depleted by penicillin shots and antihistamines taken for a nagging infection. And now he must step into the ring against a champion who has destroyed every opponent with awful precision. The odds against an upset are so high that most Vegas casinos don't even lay down a betting line. But our plucky hero surprises everyone by carrying the fight for the first seven rounds. Then, in the eighth, he is knocked down and staggers to his feet at the end of an agonizingly long count. Somehow he rallies to reclaim dominance, and in the tenth round he crushes his foe to the canvas for an even longer count. Eight . . . nine . . . ten! The winner and new heavyweight champion of the world!

That's the way it went, as the lightly regarded James ("Buster") Douglas, 29, knocked out Mike Tyson, 23, in Tokyo last week, ending the champ's four- year reign. The papers called it "the biggest upset in boxing history," but they could just as easily have said cinema history: a story like this happens only in the movies. To be exact, it happens only in Rocky movies. Douglas' shocking victory over the previously undefeated annihilator provided all the improbable thrills of a Stallone fist film. And more. Rocky never got the benefit of a long count, so that his opponent could later complain, as Tyson did, "I knocked him out before he knocked me out." Rocky never had his championship belt stripped from him, as Douglas had, hours after the fight, when boxing authorities declared the title vacant pending a review of the Douglas knockdown.

And Rocky never ran into Don King, the Boss Greed of boxing promoters. King's electrified hair stood on end when he realized that Tyson's match with top contender Evander Holyfield, a huge payday slated for June, would now be a fight between two nonchamps. King soon came to his senses. He proposed a Tyson-Douglas rematch, with Holyfield to meet the winner and ageless challenger George Foreman lurking like a threat behind Holyfield. By midweek the boxing commissions had dropped their charade and acknowledged what every viewer knew: Douglas had won the fight. The underdog was the champ.

"I don't want them to stick me with Rocky," Douglas told David Letterman. Still, this mild man from Columbus is stuck with a hero's biography. His father Bill was a sparky middleweight who funneled his dreams into young Buster. Another inspirer, Buster's manager John Johnson, helped steer his fighter through recent family tragedies -- especially the death of his mother Lula last month -- and toward a bout with Tyson. Boxing savants expected it to be one more anonymous sacrifice to the Kong of sport. But Douglas had strength, stamina and grace. And he lacked what other Tyson victims have brought into the ring: fear of an "Iron Mike" mugging.

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