@The contributors who watched the Tyson-Douglas fight live?

[Ghazan]

In his prime Iron Mike was considered boxing's answer to Genghis Khan he conquered the boxing world with ease and dealt with his rivals without mercy..as Sean G said..'he looked like a gladiator when entering the ring' Iron Mike was the undefeated,undisputed heavyweight champion of the world..and then the biggest upset in sporting history took place..iron mike lost to a relative unknown buster douglas on a cold morning in Tokyo.

@contributors who watched the fight live..what was going on in your mind when you were watching mike getting humiliated..was it:

A)this was some sort of a prank..mike threw the fight so he could get a huge sum for a rematch.

B)the real Mike had died in a car crash in 1988..and this was some imposter (don king can go to that extent) ..like the famous 'Paul(mccartney) is dead' phenomena of the late 60s.

C)some other reason(please state it)

And if you say..'I knew it was coming'..stop lying there was no twitter or facebook..so not many people knew of his wild partying binges..and he still had the skills even after rooney ..he demolished carl williams in 90 seconds in july '89

[Joana]

oi , sou do Brasil , por isso posso dizer que você parece Neymar

[Doc(tracey)]

hi ghazan , i watched it live and at the time although tyson wasn't great i still thought he would win till buster landed that uppercut , tyson seemed slow and not really there but when he decked buster it all seemed back to normal and tyson would ko the game douglas but douglas did the impossible and fought back stronger. i can't explain how much of a shock it was to see tyson on the deck scrambling around for his mouth piece being counted out it will stay with me forever . the big shock was that tyson was supposed to be unhurtable because of his 19.5" neck and douglas had swallowed it against tucker.
i think it gets lost how well douglas fought that night he showed skill guts and balls to beat iron mike .

imagine mathew hatton outboxing then ko'ing floyd and your in the right area of how much of a shock it was.

[john]

You r right,mike was shone as an invcble God,in the mdia I wtched the fight with my dad,and he ws in shock for a week,LOL

[fishnet]

Ghazan, none of the above. I was cursing the Gog damn ref on why he had it counted so slow in the knockdown of Douglas ( I thought then it was somewhat like the WWF - hulk Hogan era)... i was such a small kid that time but i already love boxing as my grandpa was a boxer himself and we had no other option but to watch what he's watching.

[Tyler Dirden]

I just couldn't accept he had lost-
C) I was convinced that 'Iron' Mike Tyson would've won at 1st thinking Douglas was given a long count allowing him to get to his feet in the 8th round after being dropped by a Tyson uppercut under one of Busters jabs. It was only later when I wasn't blinded with belief of ' invincibility' that I saw how Douglas was watching the referee and only waited till the count of 9 then got up.

[hollowtoothpaste164]

i was 10 years old.....

i had been watching Tyson fight since i was 6 years old. it was a shock to watch, but for a brief moment, when Tyson put Douglas down in the 8th, i remember thinking "ok, its over now".....of course, Douglas came back and KOd Tyson

to be honest, the bigger shock was 6 years later, when Tyson lost to Holyfield....i was a few years older, and i had a greater sense of how dominant Tyson was....i remeber thinking his loss to Douglas was an aberation, and that it would take an act of God to beat Tyson again....i believed ALL the hype

i remember my Dad talking about the fight the week before, and worrying that Holyfield might actually get killed in the ring

of course, Holy dominated every second of that fight and KOd Tyson in pretty brutal fashion....
this really turned my world upside down......it would be like seeing the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers get slapped around by the lowly Cleavland Browns 44 to 13.......i just couldn't make sense of it

it was probably the greatest sports related shock i have ever experienced

[Thunderousheat602]

C:
1. Wow this guy actually showed up in shape and is fighting with some heart. It wont matter, there is no way King sets up a show in Tokyo where Tyson will lose.
2.I was thinking what the *bleep* the clowns in his corner were doing.
3. After the first time I saw the inflated condom, I thought about needing to stop by the convenience store and pick up a pack for later on in the night in Ole Mexico.
4. Yelling: Ah hell, that blankety blank (foul language) got me excited about witnessing an upset and now he's down, get up you mother *beep*
5. Wow, wow. Then I thought about the few friends that believed Tyson would beat Holyfield and had open wagers out with me in the event they ever fought, how can I keep these guys on the hook. As it turned out, many of Tyson's fans were in denial, many still are, and they happily stayed on the hook which finally paid off several years later.

There was no shock in Tyson's performance as it was well known by that point he was a basket case and was going to have clowns masquerading as cornermen for the fight. What I didn't believe was King would dare put him in the ring with anyone that would be a big enough threat that Mike couldn't still beat on his worst night. Well, it turned out Douglas had the fight of his life and millions of dollars went up in flames.

*I really can't say I watched it live, I wasn't at the fight and I can't remember what type of delay CCTV had for it back then.

[Asian Stud]

A stubborn laid back right uppercut to stab the charging bulls throat works. Lennox copied it and beated tyson as well.

[galactus177]

Great question. First, I will say I saw it coming, not before the fight but certainly by the third round. You're right about one thing. No one had any reason to believe Douglas would win. The only reason I knew Tyson might have his hands full was that I've met him many times and saw what was going on around him. I wrote for a magazine in NJ at the time and I attended all of his fights in Atlantic City.

The TOTAL MESS that was his marriage to Robin Givens contributed to Mike's slow erosion. Part of me has always believed that Mike wanted to be relieved from the limelight. I'll never believe he threw the fight. That's just foolish. I do know that Mike wasn't training seriously and that there were people who placed a lot of money on Douglas. It's not as easy to fix a big fight as some people think. However, it's easy to know if a fighter isn't training.

The Givens situation was disgusting. Mike couldn't go ANYWHERE without Robin AND her mother. It was sickening. I can still remember the "Fake Pregnancy" story. If she was ever pregnant, I was too.

As for Kevin Rooney, he has to be the most OVERRATED trainer of all-time. I was a dealer in AC at the time and I've dealt to him many times and watched him blow MILLIONS. I've also seen him staggering DRUNK on MANY occasions. He had a SEVERE alcohol problem. As for his worth as a trainer, I've always said that he was just a below-average trainer who just happened to have a good work relationship with Tyson and be in the right place at the right time. The blueprint was already laid out by Cus. It's similar to the way Freddie Roach got his start. He was an assistant for Eddie Futch. The difference is that Roach actually made the best of it, while the uneducated Rooney thought the money would last forever.

Firing Rooney was the best thing Mike could have done. Sadly, it wasn't really Mike who did it. It was Robin. Still, besides his brief stint with Vinny Pazienza, you can see that Rooney has done nothing in boxing since then. If he was even half decent, his reputation with Tyson would have landed him more jobs. He was a raving alcoholic.

As quiet as it's kept, it was Jim Jacobs who kept the team together. Cus started it but he was already old and in bad health. No one expected Jacobs to die at 51 of pneumonia.

I think it was a combination of the fact that Mike wasn't prepared, had HORRIBLE trainers and simply took Douglas too lightly. I can't help but wonder if Don King wasn't one of those with huge money on Douglas. Also, I really think that, maybe subconsciously, Mike just wanted out. He was surrounded by a gang of con-artists and yes-men. It was really disgusting.