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Like many a great fight, this was not always a good fight. It was not so much a spectacular display by the challenger as a mediocre one by the champ. Tyson looked stolid, muzzy, otherwise engaged. He stood around like a fire hydrant in black shorts, an easy target for Douglas' advantages of height (5 1/2 in.) and reach (12 in.). The champ threw few punches, and fewer of his lethal paradiddles -- left-right-left-right! -- that turn his victims' heads into punching bags and their guts to soup.
In the waning seconds of the eighth round, a Tyson uppercut with a lot of steam on it rang Buster's bell just before the timekeeper could ring his. Douglas collapsed and skidded on the canvas. Referee Octavio Meyran Sanchez glared Tyson into a far corner and began his count, so that Douglas had a few extra seconds to rise to his feet. He was still genuflecting at the count of nine, but he seemed ready to continue.
Two rounds later, Douglas returned the punishment, and then some, to Tyson: an uppercut followed by a sturdy combination that felled the champ. Another slow count could not save Tyson. He rose to all fours, grabbed for his mouthpiece and pathetically placed its end between his teeth, like a dazed dog with an old toy. The war was over. For Douglas, it was time to celebrate and mourn. In a TV interview, he told his dad that he loved him. Douglas said he won the fight "because of my mother, God bless her heart." And then the new undisputed heavyweight champ dissolved into manly tears.
In Columbus the citizenry prepared a triumph for a good fighter who knows how to be hard in the ring and human outside it. In Houston, Foreman said he was ready to dispatch all comers -- including Don King. And in Philadelphia, Stallone was shooting Rocky V. He must feel about his boxing movies the way John le Carre does about cold-war novels after the communist thaw: What do I do to top real life?