Buster Douglas shocked Mike Tyson -- and the author

	A five-punch combination dropped Mike Tyson for the first time in his career. Sakai/Kyodo/Reuters
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By Richard Hoffer

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The fight was such a foregone conclusion that Sports Illustrated didn't intend to cover it. Mike Tyson was at the top of his game back in 1990 and Buster Douglas ... well, he had more or less quit in his last fight. Oddsmakers put the bout at 42-1 because they had to put it at something. The fact that Don King was staging it in Tokyo, where the audience might be more forgiving of a competitive fiasco, kind of told the story. This was little more than barnstorming.

It wasn't really worthy of our coverage, put it that way. But at the last minute, our managing editor Mark Mulvoy decided if the upstart National was going to travel to Tokyo for this caper, then so would SI. Living in California, I was counted as closest. Or most expendable. But, still, it was last minute (I wasn't that close), and by the time I arrived the Tyson camp was shut down and all pre-fight oratory was concluded. True, I had been told to file no more than a couple of paragraphs for what would be boxing's cruelest joke -- all the other writers, the "boss scribes," King used to call them, there were mocking this newcomer's pitiful mission -- but I was still anxious enough about my footing here that I began seeking unorthodox sources.

Which is to say I bothered to talk to Buster Douglas the day before the fight. His camp couldn't have been more delighted to have me; nobody else had called for an invitation and he had been pretty much ignored. The tale he put on me -- his mother had just died, he was newly dedicated -- was terrific, if a tad boiler-plate. But I doubted I'd have occasion to weave any of it into my brief. The last I'd heard from Mulvoy, I might have to write a page, at most.

Of course everybody knows what happened, Douglas (newly dedicated) scattering Tyson and his mouthpiece all across the ring. It was the biggest upset in all of sports (bigger even than Upset's upset of Man O' War in 1919). There was lots of intrigue, even so, with King claiming that the first knockout "obliterated" the second knockout and the WBC conspiring with him to overturn what has so obviously happened. But what I remember most about the shocking conclusion of the fight, even the sight of Tyson on his knees searching for his mouthpiece, was the "boss scribes" at ringside turning back to laugh at me in absolute delight, my few pathetic paragraphs up in smoke. It was one thing, I realized, to witness something of historic proportions, as this certainly was, and another to wallow in a colleague's meltdown.

As it happened, I was better prepared than the "boss scribes," with all that Buster material in my notebook. I was able to file sheaves of background, all sorts of psychological uplift in my overnight story. I filed so much that the editors back in New York had to break it into two stories (one that ran under another writer's byline -- go figure). I know that Mulvoy was pleased with his gut decision to send me. He called me the next day, waking me up after my all-nighter, positively ecstatic with our coverage. "Go get a massage," he said. "It's on me."

I did not get a massage, I can tell you that. Whether I put it on my expense account is another story.

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