1. Buster Douglas reigned as undisputed world heavyweight champion in 1990 after knocking out Mike Tyson.
42 Facts About Buster Douglas
1. 2.
Buster Douglas defeated other heavyweight world champions Oliver McCall, Trevor Berbick, and Greg Page.
3.
Buster Douglas reigned as the world heavyweight champion for eight months until he was defeated by Evander Holyfield in his only title defense.
4.
Buster Douglas's father ran a gym at the Blackburn Recreation Center near Downtown Columbus and subsequently introduced young James to boxing.
5.
Buster Douglas is in the Coffeyville Community College Men's Basketball Hall of Fame.
6.
Buster Douglas played basketball at Sinclair Community College from 1979 to 1980 in Dayton, Ohio, before attending Mercyhurst University on a basketball scholarship.
7.
Buster Douglas moved back to Columbus to focus on boxing.
8.
Buster Douglas debuted on May 31,1981, defeating Dan O'Malley in a four-round bout.
9.
Buster Douglas was managed by former Ohio State University assistant football coach John Johnson.
10.
Buster Douglas won his first five fights before coming into a fight with David Bey weighing 20 pounds heavier than he usually had for his previous bouts.
11.
Buster Douglas was penalized two points during the course of the fight, which proved to be the difference on the judges' scorecards.
12.
Two of his wins were knockouts of Jesse Clark, whom Buster Douglas had stopped in 1981.
13.
Buster Douglas needed just seven total rounds of fighting in the three bouts combined to score the three KOs.
14.
On November 9,1984, Buster Douglas was scheduled to face heavyweight contender Trevor Berbick in Las Vegas.
15.
Buster Douglas fought just three times in 1986, defeating former champion Greg Page and fringe contender David Jaco in two of the bouts.
16.
Buster Douglas started well against Tucker and was ahead on points, but he ran out of stamina and suffered a technical knockout in the tenth round.
17.
Buster Douglas followed that up with a unanimous decision victory over future heavyweight champion Oliver McCall, which earned him a shot at Mike Tyson for the undisputed heavyweight championship.
18.
Buster Douglas had promised his mother that he would beat Mike Tyson before she had passed away.
19.
Buster Douglas, who had trained hard, surprised the world by dominating the fight from the beginning, using his 12-inch reach advantage to perfection.
20.
Buster Douglas seemingly hit Tyson at will with jabs and right hands and danced out of range of Tyson's punches.
21.
The champion had not taken Buster Douglas seriously, expecting another easy knockout victory just as the overwhelming majority of neutral observers had.
22.
Buster Douglas was slow, declining his usual strategy of moving his head and slipping his way inside.
23.
The referee's count created controversy as Buster Douglas was on his feet when the referee reached nine, but the official knockdown timekeeper was two seconds ahead.
24.
Tyson came out aggressively in the ninth round and continued his attempts to end the fight with one big punch, hoping Buster Douglas was still hurt from the eighth-round knockdown.
25.
Buster Douglas followed with a rapid four-punch combination to the head, knocking Tyson down for the first time in the champion's career.
26.
Buster Douglas awkwardly tried to place it back into his mouth.
27.
Buster Douglas was unable to beat the referee's ten-count, and Douglas was the new world heavyweight champion.
28.
However, Tyson withdrew his protest four days later amid worldwide public outcry and demands from boxing commissions around the world, and Buster Douglas was officially recognized as undisputed heavyweight champion.
29.
The defeated Tyson clamored for a rematch and Buster Douglas was offered more money than he had ever made for a fight.
30.
Buster Douglas went into the October 25,1990 fight at 246 pounds, 15 pounds heavier than he was for the Tyson match and the heaviest he had weighed in for a fight since a 1985 bout with Dion Simpson, in which he tipped the scale at just over 247 pounds.
31.
Buster Douglas came out rather sluggish, and was thoroughly dominated by Holyfield during the first two rounds.
32.
Buster Douglas merely lay flat on his back, motionless and disoriented, as referee Mills Lane stopped the fight.
33.
Buster Douglas vs Holyfield was a reported $24.6 million payday for Buster Douglas.
34.
Buster Douglas went back into training and made a comeback.
35.
Buster Douglas was successful at first, winning six straight fights, but his comeback almost came to a halt in a 1997 disqualification win over journeyman Louis Monaco.
36.
Buster Douglas was unable to continue after a five-minute rest period and was consequently awarded the win by disqualification.
37.
In 1998, having bounced back into a minor stardom, Buster Douglas was knocked out in the first round of a fight with heavyweight contender Lou Savarese, for the lightly regarded IBA heavyweight title.
38.
Buster Douglas made a guest appearance in the 1990s cop show Street Justice.
39.
Buster Douglas made his feature film acting debut in the Artie Knapp science fiction comedy film Pluto's Plight.
40.
On February 23,1990, Buster Douglas made a special appearance as a guest referee on WWF's The Main Event III in a match-up between Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage.
41.
Buster Douglas has helped raise money for his hometown, donating $10,000 to the Police Athletic League shortly after his bout with Tyson, and establishing a charitable effort in his own name.
42.
Buster Douglas was inducted into the Columbus Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame in 2024.