The ESPN special ‘42 to 1’ Opened a Portal Back Into a Special Time For Me

There are moments in life when you feel as if you somehow have been transported back to an event or an occasion that always will hold special meaning to the time traveler.

Watching ESPN’s latest entry in its “30 for 30” documentary series, 42 to 1, was like that for me. Not that the 50-minute special, directed by Ben Houser and Jeremy Schaap, broke new ground or revealed much, if anything, I didn’t already know. In fact, there was much behind-the-scenes stuff that might have been included and maybe even should have been, had the documentarians had more time to tell the familiar story of James “Buster” Douglas’ epic upset of seemingly invincible heavyweight champion Mike Tyson on Feb. 11, 1990. But this particular stroll down memory lane is especially significant to me because, well, I was there. It wasn’t the best prizefight or sporting event I ever covered live and in person, but it was the most compelling because it was arguably the biggest upset not only in boxing history, but maybe ever in the sports world. Being courtside for Villanova’s shocker over Georgetown and Patrick Ewing in the 1985 NCAA championship basketball game pales by comparison.

“Forty-two to one stands right at the top,” veteran Las Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro, who is an instrumental figure in the actual lead-up to Tyson-Douglas and throughout the documentary, said of the seemingly one-sided matchups he has made betting lines for during his long career and did not go as expected. “There’s nothing even close to it. I’m tired of hearing about the `Miracle on Ice’ (the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, loaded with college kids, shocking the veteran Soviet Union squad in the semifinals en route to the gold medal in Lake Placid, N.Y.). Yes, we understand it was a big upset . But you know what? (The U.S.) was only a 3 to 1 underdog as opposed to a 42 to 1 favorite (Tyson). I think it’s a little bit different.

“Forty-two to one? I’d lay 50 to one you’ll never see it again.”

Nobody with the possible exception of Douglas and a few fellow dreamers in his support crew thought that it might be possible for the often-unmotivated, frequently out-of-shape heavyweight from Columbus, Ohio, to cash the lottery ticket he had been given only because Tyson needed to fight somebody before he moved on to a scheduled June 1990 pairing with Evander Holyfield that both parties already had agreed to.

“Buster Douglas is a dog,” Tyson’s promoter, Don King, had dismissively said, not even attempting to throw a positive comment toward the designated victim who surely was about to become Iron Mike’s 38^th victim. “He’s always been a quitter. Buster Douglas has a history of quitting. He quit with Tony Tucker in 1987. Really, that’s why I chose him.”

ESPN sports anchor Charley Steiner, on the evening the presumed massacre was to take place (which was actually the following day in Tokyo, 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time), advised viewers that “Tonight’s heavyweight championship fight might be best titled `30 seconds over Tokyo.’”

So why had I arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun eight full days before the first punch was thrown in earnest? Because my paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, was years away from having its travel budget slashed to the bone and because our then-executive sports editor, Mike Rathet, believed that there are certain athletes who were of such high interest that doing stories about them off TV simply would not suffice. Mike had dispatched another PDN writer, my colleague Elmer Smith, to Tokyo to report on Tyson’s perfunctory second-round TKO of pudgy challenger Tony Tubbs on March 21, 1988. I figured my trip to Japan would end on a similarly quick and emphatic note, but then the beauty of sports is that nothing is ever absolutely certain.

The day before I headed to the airport, I attended, but did not cover, a fight card in Atlantic City where other reporters, including Robert Seltzer, my counterpart at the Philadelphia Inquirer, asked why the PDN was spending so much money to send me halfway around the world to witness a fight that seemed a foregone conclusion. “Because Tyson is Tyson,” I replied, “and we want to be there if the mother of all upsets occurs.”

In retrospect, maybe the mother of all upsets wasn’t as long of a long shot as might have appeared at first glance. Tyson’s personal life was unraveling; his marriage to actress Robin Givens was on the rocks, he had fired capable trainer Kevin Rooney nearly two years earlier and instead would have the Bobbsey twins, Aaron Snowell and Jay Bright, working his corner. He also, an inside source had advised several media members, was shuttling Japanese hookers in and out of his hotel suite at night as if they were a relay team passing the baton at an X-rated track meet. In a story authored by Eric Raskin for Playboy a couple of years ago, I was quoted as saying that, if sex really does sap a boxer’s strength in the weeks before a bout, it was amazing that Tyson had enough energy to crawl into the ring before the opening bell.

Meanwhile, Douglas – whose potential never had been questioned, only his commitment to push himself in training – was in the best condition of his career, and his mind was right, too, having dedicated the victory he dared to believe he could get to his late mother, Lula Pearl Douglas, who had passed away less than three weeks earlier.

It was a jumble of circumstances that would have stamped Douglas as far less likely to have his butt kicked, had all information been available to the public. In addition to his litany of personal woes, an arrogant Tyson had made the same mistake that often brings down the luminously gifted. He figured he could just show up and win because, well, hadn’t he always done that?

During a TV interview prior to squaring off against Douglas, a clearly bored Tyson dropped broad hints that he had not exactly punished himself into peak condition.

Q: Do you always go into the ring feeling like you’re invincible?

A: Yeah.

Q: Let’s get to Buster. What’s you biggest concern going into this fight?

A: I got no concerns.

Q: What do you think Buster’s …

A: I don’t have any idea what he’s thinking. I don’t care. I’m a champion, you know what I mean?

So prohibitive a favorite was Tyson to continue his reign of terror that almost every sports book in Las Vegas didn’t bother to post a line. That’s where Vaccaro came in, unwittingly setting the stage and the now-legendary numbers for the title of the ESPN documentary.

“Well, almost none,” Vaccaro said after an unseen voice mentions that every other sports book was taking a pass on Tyson-Douglas. “I did. Let me set the stage for you. In 1990, the biggest star in sports was Mike Tyson. `Iron Mike’ was a knockout machine. In 37 fights he’d never been on the canvas. Never hurt, never challenged. Nobody thought James `Buster’ Douglas would be any different. No one thought Buster could win.

“Back then I was at The Mirage and I decided we would take action on the fight. The favorite? Tyson, of course. The underdog, Douglas. The odds? Forty-two to one.”

That where the steadily rising line stopped, in any case.

“Well, naturally everybody thought, including myself, that Tyson couldn’t lose the fight,” Vaccaro pointed out later in the program. “So the opening odds were set at 27 to 1. But I kept raising the odds to maybe get a bet  on James `Buster’ Douglas. From 32 to 1 to 37 to 1, but we still couldn’t get anyone to bet on the underdog until we got to the pinnacle – 42 to 1.”

Even then, most of the bets that did come in were from well-heeled types who figured they’d put up a lot to get a little on what seemed to be a sure thing.

“We got a thousand, $1,500 here and there on Douglas,” Vaccaro continued. “But, you know, we actually took about 10 bets on Mike Tyson at 42 to 1, meaning you’d have to bet $42,000 to win $1,000. One gentleman put up over $160,000 on one bet to win, like, $4,000. It was incredible.”

Here’s guessing that guy was looking for a tall building with a roof from which he could jump off after Douglas methodically beat up and finally stopped Tyson in the 10^th round. The only time a window of opportunity opened for the soon-to-be former champ was when he connected with a ripping right uppercut that dropped Douglas for a nine count in round eight. Tyson supporters to this day insist that referee Octavio Meyran was slow with his count , but Douglas was looking straight at Meyran and knew he could get up before the toll reached 10. He then demonstrated he wasn’t as hurt as he might have appeared by again seizing the upper hand with a dominant ninth round.

Alas, the mountaintop Douglas had just scaled proved to be a slippery slope. He had slain the most fearsome beast in the heavyweight jungle, all right, a feat that would bring him a $24 million payday for his first title defense, which came on Oct. 25, 1990, at The Mirage, against Holyfield. But the determined, in-shape Douglas had again slipped back into the shadows by then, and when he weighed in at a jiggly 246 pounds against Holyfield, 14½ more than he had for Tyson, there was a mad rush toward the betting windows by attendees hoping to get a hefty wager down on Holyfield before the odds shifted. The race belonged to the swift as Holyfield delivered a beautiful counter right to win by knockout in the third round.

At 58, Buster Douglas appears to be fat and happy these days. You can live a pretty good life if you are intent on making a $24 million windfall last, and the fighter previously known for wasted potential still is riding the high surf generated by one magical performance. He now serves as a boxing instructor to young kids in the same Columbus gym where his late father, a tough middleweight named Billy “Dynamite” Douglas, first dreamed of making his son into the world titlist he never got to be himself. It is a success story with only one undeniably positive chapter, but that sometimes is more than other people ever get a whiff at when the book of their lives is written.

I came back from Tokyo with the kind of memories that aren’t easily erased. One of my sons received my souvenir program; he now lives out of state and I don’t see him as often as I would like. I hope he held onto it because I suspect it might be worth something now.

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

Editor’s Note: ESPN’s “42 to 1” premiered Tuesday evening, Dec. 11, at 9:00 PM EST. The next showings are scheduled for 2:00 AM Wednesday morning, Dec. 12, on ESPN2, Sunday, Dec. 16, at 5 PM on ESPN2, and Sunday, Dec. 16, at 9:00 PM on ESPN. All times Eastern.

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