Twenty Years Later: Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas Still Stings

The Mike Tyson of my childhood was a glowering teddy bear, a mellifluous assassin, the single most captivating athlete of my youth. A man without parallel, the only athlete who never lost. Sure, there were other athletes whose talents captivated, Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson chief among them. But Jackson and Jordan were heavily packaged athlete superheroes who stood for all that was good in the world: hard work, Nike, sacrifice, Nike, team work, Nike, the rewards of a life well-lived, and ... Nike. Tyson? No one offered a better preview of life's complexities than Mike Tyson. He was an incandescent comet, burning bright across the sports sky. The winking, gap-toothed star of the video game that we all played for hours, the partner to Little Mac on Mike Tyson's Punchout.

Our own undisputed childhood champion.

We didn't know him, and we didn't know what he stood for, and we all knew he was somewhat dangerous, a careening wagon of caricatured excess, but we all, every single of one of us of my generation, loved Mike Tyson. That's why 20 years ago to the date, February 11, 1990, you and I were so crushed when Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas.

I was 10 on February 11, 1990. And when I woke up the morning after the loss and turned on SportsCenter my world came crashing down. How could Mike Tyson -- the biggest, baddest, most unbeatable person in all of sports -- have lost to a boxer we'd never heard of?

And in Japan? While we were all sleeping?

For people of my age, Tyson was a mythological figure before we even knew what the word mythological meant. Most of us had rarely, if ever, seen him fight live because his fights were late and on premium cable. Tyson's fights took place on HBO, and we'd only just persuaded my dad to add basic cable to the Travis family repertoire. There was no way in hell he was springing for premium channels.

None.

Even now my dad won't pay for movie channels. In fact, he wouldn't pay $2 more a month for the NFL Network when the Comcast dispute blew up. "Not doing it," dad said.

As a result, despite my affinity for Tyson, I'd only seen him fight live one time. The other fights I watched on replay and read about in Sports Illustrated. But that one July night, while playing in the state baseball tournament in Waverly, Tennessee, we were in a hotel that had HBO. Tyson was fighting a man named Carl "The Truth" Williams.

I was giddy over being able to watch the fight.

We all knew, all the boys gathered around the flickering television screen, that Mike Tyson was going to win, going to dominate. Just as Kid Dynamite had dominated our free hours on Mike Tyson's Punchout.

One of the other boy's fathers surveyed the room, "You reckon The Truth will last more than a round?" He dragged out The Truth, laced the name with sarcasm. The Truth occupied five syllables.

The room roared with laughter.

There were no Carl "The Truth" Williams fans. In fact, I didn't know a single boy my age who didn't love Mike Tyson. We all did, every single one of us.

It was July 21, 1989, and Mike Tyson, then 23, was at the peak of his athletic powers. Carl "The Truth" Williams, a large man wearing white trunks emblazoned with "The Truth," entered the ring and banged his red gloves together. He looked afraid, terrified, certain that something bad was coming.

For a moment, we even felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

Only a twinge.

We wanted the baddest man on the planet to do what he did ... and Tyson didn't disappoint.

The Truth lasted for one minute and 33 seconds.

Then, Tyson floored him with a devastating left hook that sent the Truth spiraling off into the ropes.

We all went crazy in the hotel room, screaming, yelling, jumping on the beds. Even our dads were loud.

Mike Tyson was still undefeated and unchallenged, an uncoiled ball of pure fury, and he was now 37-0.


Less than six months later on that cold February morning, we all woke up to a shock -- Mike Tyson had lost to someone named James Buster Douglas, a 42-1 underdog.

Tyson was 37-1.

In those days they replayed the fights on HBO and, as luck would have it, my grandmother, having recently signed up for cable, was in the midst of a free preview of the premium station. My dad and I went to her house and waited for the replay to begin.

Somehow, someway, even though I knew he'd already lost, I still believed that Tyson would find a way to win.

And Tyson almost did, summoning all his energy for a massive uppercut that floored Douglas in the eighth round. By the time I watched the replay there was already an argument that the referee had taken too long to make his count against Douglas. But this argument seemed beneath Tyson, even to a 10-year-old, the baddest man on the planet didn't need to make arguments about how long counts took.

He was Mike Tyson!

The men he knocked down wouldn't have gotten back up even if they were given until 100 to make the count.

But Douglas got up.

Sitting there on the floor in my grandmother's house, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, a wobbly Mike Tyson in his black leather shorts, a Tyson who was retreating instead of attacking, a man who might lose.

And then came the 10th round.

Buster Douglas unleashed one big punch after another into the mythical and unbeatable Tyson. And then Douglas hit Tyson with an uppercut followed by three other huge punches and Tyson fell to the blue mat. As the referee stood above him counting, Tyson groped around on the ground for his discarded mouthpiece, put it in backwards, and attempted to stand on wobbly legs.

Too late.

Iron Mike had lost.

As I watched Buster Douglas celebrate, I felt a sadness creep over me. For most of my life as a sports fan, I'd root for the underdog.

Not now.

As Tyson lay on the ground I remember feeling sorry for him. Thinking even then that Tyson had lost something that he'd never regain. He was an unbeatable force of nature, the baddest man on earth. But what becomes of the baddest man on earth, once he's no longer the baddest?

What more does he have left once that idealization is punctured?

We've all seen what Mike Tyson has become, a paunchy celebrity vagabond. But at that moment 20 years ago we were all trying to come to grips with what Mike Tyson no longer was, the lion of the ring, an unbeatable perfection, the last perfection of our lives as sports fans.

I turned to my dad then.

"I can't believe Mike Tyson lost," I said.

"Eventually everyone loses," my dad said.

And that was news to a 10-year-old.